Page 59 of Home Game

But the thought of Emmett from this morning still haunted me. I’d never seen his face look as defeated as it did this morning.

I felt like instead of our usual push-and-pull, I’d broken him.

And that was never what I wanted at all.

Emmett had been in and out of my house all day, checking in but never staying around for long. Shortly after filming had started, he’d told the guys he had to step out and take a Zoom meeting back at his house. He stopped by shortly again in the early afternoon and had a quick conversation with Nathan aboutthe Racks deal, but then he left again while I was filming an interview segment for the TV show.

I hadn’t been able to get him alone to say a word to him. He hadn’t even looked me in the eye when he’d been in my house.

But now, I realized that I had a quick chance.

“I’ll be right back, guys,” I told them now. I slipped out the front door and headed over next door to Emmett’s.

I rang the doorbell.

Knocked.

And then waited there with my heart pounding for a solid three minutes before I realized he must not be home.

“Fuck,” I whispered softly as I headed back over to my house.

Even if I didn’t belong with Emmett, or belong in his world, that didn’t mean I wanted to hurt him. It was the opposite of what I wanted. The whole reason I’d gotten so upset the other night when he’d talked about his boss was that IknewEmmett deserved better treatment.

Somewhere along the way, I’d started giving a damn abouthim, even if he didn’t give a damn about me.

And once I cared, I was all in. Our paths may never cross again after this TV show was filmed, but that didn’t matter. I would never mince my words or be anything but honest with Emmett, but I’d never purposely hurt him.

The camera crew was packing up their equipment in their van when I got home. I felt like I had a mountain of guilt on my shoulders.

I had to make this right.

“Tiring, isn’t it?” Nathan said as he headed outside, carrying a thick plastic box full of tools toward his own construction van.

“More than I even realized,” I said. “I don’t know how filming interviews for the camera is more exhausting than professional football, but it is.”

Nathan laughed. “Bullshit.”

“Okay, fine, it’s not more exhausting than a game,” I said. “But it’s pretty far up there.”

“You did great, by the way.”

I smiled. “Um, Nathan, you don’t happen to know where Emmett might be, do you?”

“He’s been in and out all day,” Nathan said and I gave him a hand hoisting his tool box into the side of the van.

I know he’s been in and out all day,I thought.Not like I’ve been hyper-aware of it, or anything.

“I wanted to chat with him about something.”

“Oh!” Nathan said, snapping his fingers. “Right. He took a meeting with a rep from Racks down at our office. It was supposed to happen in a few days, but they said they wanted to push the meeting sooner, for some reason. Should be about done with it by now, if you wanted to head to the town center.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

If the execs from Racks suddenly wanted a meeting pushed to today, it definitely could have had something to do with my post last night.

Companies didn’t usually like it when celebrities posted bad things about them, and I’d gone ahead and doneexactlythat.

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