Page 76 of End Game
He strokes his chin. “There’s this guy on the team. He was married, had the cutest little boy, right? They used to have me over for barbecues and whatever. He had a great set-up. Then he got swept away in all the press when we won the championship. Next thing I know, he’s got his side piece an apartment close to mine and she’s picked up dick because he’s not paying attention to home. They’re both ruined. It’s awful.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“It seems ridiculous with my reputation, I know, but itisresponsible to not be responsible. I make no promises, no commitments, and no one gets seriously hurt because it’s not serious.”
I don’t give him a lot to go on. I just watch him blankly, processing everything he’s told me and well aware that he didn’t answer my original question. Like he reads my mind, he grins.
“Your original proposed situation had you and Poppy going out andyoufucking around with someone, not a random girl doing it,” he says softly. “When I think about it in that light . . . I’d have been pissed.”
“Why?”
He considers this. “A competition thing, I guess. It would’ve bothered me to think someone else had you and you were comparing us or maybe you were thinking of him and not me.”
“Exactly,” I say, giving him a shy smile. “But I wouldn’t say I was pissed.”
“What were you then?”
“I was embarrassed, I think.”
“By what?” he blurts, a laugh in his voice. “What could you possibly have been embarrassed about?”
“That I was a number,” I say, slipping a laugh in my voice too. “Same reason as you, I guess, I’m just a little less confident about it.”
“For what it’s worth and it may be worth nothing, but I didn’t fuck that girl that night.”
I don’t want to be relieved, but there’s no denying the sigh that escapes my lips. “So you didn’t do anything with her?”
“I didn’t say that, but I didn’t sleep with her. I’m not going to lie to you, even if it’s not what you want to hear. I also didn’t sleep with Selma Puress. Just throwing that out there in case you saw a picture online.”
Looking straight ahead, I just nod.
“I know what that sounds like, but I didn’t realize I’d be explaining myself later.”
“Why are you?” I look at him, my brows pulled together. “Why are you telling me this, Branch?”
He shrugs and looks at the water. “I don’t know. Maybe it felt like it mattered.”
“Do you think I want to hear that? I mean, I can’t get mad at you and you certainly weren’t wrong, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear some girl had her lips around your cock hours before you stuck it in me.”
“Gee, just put it out there bluntly, why don’t you?” he grins.
“Why mince words?”
He looks at the sky, a softness on his rugged features. “Maybe,” he breathes, “maybe it bothered me to consider you thought I just wrote you off like another girl.”
“But didn’t you?”
“Depends how you look at it. Did I think I’d be back here? Hell, no. But I knew from the moment you got out of that car and shook my hand that I was going to have a hard time putting you in a box, you know?”
“I hate boxes, if you’ll remember,” I say, referring back to our unpacking conversation.
He laughs. “This is what I mean. The more time I spent with you, the more I wanted to spend even more. Even that first night, the night we went to Crave, if I could’ve gotten Finn to let me stay behind with you, I would’ve.”
His words are sweet and maybe even what I want to hear. Still, it’s just another one of those things that will make it even more painful when I’m home with the baby and he’s sleeping with half of Detroit or wherever they are.
“This conversation seems a little too deep for late morning,” I say, getting up and starting down the sidewalk. He follows a step behind, giving me the space he can tell I need.
His words at any other point in my life would’ve left a huge grin on my face and maybe even had me riding his cock if the timing was right. But with it following up the words that he’ll never be serious, never settle down, until he’s out of the league?That makes it a little less sweet being that I’m pregnant with his child.
