Page 44 of Her Football Star Ex

Had Ivy snitched on me?

He chuckled as he turned the wheel to take the curve in the road. “You had the dart board sitting in the coat closet one night when I brought Jaxon back home. The photo was still pinned to it, with about a hundred holes poking my face.”

I covered my face with my hands, so embarrassed that he had seen that. “I promise I only did that once,” I said, daring a glance back at him. “And it involved a late night with Ivy and lots of wine.”

Probably a whole bottle, in fact.

“You have nothing to feel bad about,” he said, surprising me at how chill he was about the whole thing. “In fact, I wouldn’t blame you if you did it every night. I deserved it after what I did to you.”

And when he looked at me with his eyes all soft and pleading, I really did believe him. He’d done nothing but apologize since the moment he told me everything.

I just hadn’t been in a place where I could hear or accept his apologies before. But I was getting closer. A little less angry at him every day. Which told me I was moving closer to the acceptance part of the grief cycle.

I said, “For what it’s worth, I don’t hate you as much as I did.”

And as I watched him for his reaction, I saw his Adam’s apple bob, like my admission was bringing on some strong emotion he was trying to repress.

It seemed to take him a moment, but when he was able to speak again, he said, “I appreciate you telling me that.” He swallowed again, and when he spoke his next words, his voice was thicker than it had been before. “I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”

With his words and the sincere way he said them, a mix of emotions swirled through me: hope that something like that was possible and a wish that there had never been a need for forgiveness in the first place.

Oh how I wished we could go back in time and fix things before they started going downhill. Because even though I was finally getting to a better place and had picked up the pieces of my life, I’d give anything to have my little family put back together.

But since I couldn’t go back in time and fix everything before it happened, I tried to think about the possibility of what he wanted. And even though I knew I still wasn’t there yet, I said, “I hope I can forgive you someday, too.”

16

Vincent

“I seeyou haven’t bought any furniture since the last time I was in here,” Emerson said to me when I came back to my living room after putting Jaxon in his bed. “Is it too much to hope that you have an extra bed for guests in that third bedroom of yours?”

“Um, not exactly.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I don’t really have a lot of extra space in there with all my gym equipment.”

I guess I probably should have considered where she would sleep before insisting she stay over. I’d just been so determined to have her not stay at her house that my thought process hadn’t gone that far.

“Okay.” She said the word slowly as she looked around my small living room that had a single couch—a very worn and not super comfortable couch from my pre-Emerson days that I’d been meaning to upgrade. “I guess I can just sleep on the couch then. You have extra blankets, right?”

Yeah, having extra blankets would have been good too.

“I might have one somewhere…” I said, not sure if I’d ended up switching the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer yet. Jaxon had insisted we have a picnic inside on Thursday night and accidentally spilled his cup of milk all over my only extra blanket. “I think I started to wash my extra blanket but with the big game on my mind, I may have forgotten to switch the load.”

“Do you want to check?” She raised her eyebrows, looking hopeful.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I hurried down the hall to the closet where my washer and dryer were. And sure enough, when I opened the lid, I found the blanket.

And of course it smelled like it had been left in there a few too many days. So I added some more detergent to the washing machine and started it again.

I went back to Emerson.

“No blanket?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Well, I guess I can just wear my coat if I get cold.”

Sleep in her coat?

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