Page 29 of Broken Promises

“Yes, Coach,” I say to his back. He’s walking away, already having dismissed me.

I rush to the locker room to grab my bag and then head onto the bus. I take my now usual seat next to Ben. He’s already uploaded tonight’s photos onto a tablet and is going through them. He pulls back his hair when he’s editing like this, which reveals a thick, jagged, white scar on his forehead. I want to ask him about it, but Gideon said it was rude.

“You didn’t get any pictures of my wife, did you?” I ask.

“Your wife was there?” He looks up at me in confusion. I may have spent a lot of time last night complaining that I wasn’t going to be seeing Willa for another week. He fell asleep in the middle of my rant.

“Yeah. She surprised me.” A smile breaks out on my face just thinking about the way I felt when I saw her. The heaviness in my heart that I’ve been carrying around all these weeks instantly lifted with her little frown. I love when she gets angry and puts me in my place. She’s fucking adorable.

Ben releases a breath and his shoulders relax. “Thank fuck.”

I laugh a little too loudly. There’s a lot of grumbling and “shut ups” thrown my way from the guys trying to nap. Which is honestly stupid since we’re heading for the airport, not another city.

“I didn’t get a shot of her. I wasn’t at the right angle for that, and San Diego’s security were being dicks about where they would let me go to get a shot.”

“I’m sure they didn’t want you to get a shot of me and make them look bad. It was their choice not to resign me, and I just made them look dumb.”

Ben chuckles. “I thought you were cheating on your wife,” he says with a sigh. “Then I was annoyed with myself because I got some really good shots of you interacting with her.” He tips the tablet so that I can see the screen too and shows me the shots he took.

“I would never cheat on my wife,” I say, not looking at what he’s showing me because I’m still hung up on what he just said. “I would never risk losing her.”

“I thought that too, but then you spent over an hour complaining that you wouldn’t be seeing her. Add that to what these pictures are telling me, and you can see where I would get confused.”

I look down at the pictures. There’s one of me touching my heart, a huge smile on my face. The next one is of me and Gideon, our arms around each other and our sticks pointing towards the stands. You can tell from our faces we’re pointing at people we care about. The last one is of me with my hand on the glass, a look of complete awe on my face. Willa’s hand is visible, but that’s it.

“You didn’t take pictures of her on purpose, but you still took them of me when you thought I was cheating?” I ask.

“I could’ve probably taken a picture of her, but I would have had to change angles, and I was there to shoot the team, not the crowd,” he says. “And I took them because of how you look. Like you were in love.”

“You thought I was in love with a mistress?”

“No.” Ben pinches the bridge of his nose. “I was praying it was your wife. But I didn’t know for sure. If I was certain, I wouldn’t even be sitting next to you.”

“Ouch.”

“I’ve had enough of morally shitty people in my life,” he shrugs. “I won’t choose to have a friend like that.”

“Does that mean you’ll send me those?” I ask.

He laughs quietly. “Yeah, I’ll send them to you and then delete them. I caught the tail end of that press conference.”

“You’re a really good friend, Benny boy.”

“Just send them to your secret wife like you know you want to.”

“Hey! You have a secret boyfriend,” I point out.

“He’s not a secret. It’s just complicated,” Ben argues.

“I like that. I’m stealing it. My wife isn’t a secret, it’s just complicated. Sounds way better than what I’ve been saying.”

“What have you been saying?”

“That she’s so hot she’ll melt brains. So I’m basically saving lives.”

Ben sighs loudly and turns back to his tablet.

I smile and grab my phone. There’s already a text waiting for me.

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