Page 77 of Nothing Less Than Everything

I kissed the top of her head. “I, uh… I guess I’d say that it’s okay to want change and be afraid of it at the same time.” It’s kind of what being traded felt like. The game of football never let me down, even when the business of football did.

“It’s selfish,” she mumbled. “Us and our champagne problems.”

I pushed a lock of hair away from her cheek and tilted her chin up. “Hey. Look at me. Your problems and feelings are valid. Even if they’re frivolous annoyances now, if you don’t deal with them, they’ll turn into big ones later.”

She laid on my chest for a few minutes, our breathing in sync. For once, we weren’t talking about the team. We weren’t swapping practice or rehearsal schedules. Weren’t sneaking stolen glances across a field or in a coat closet. We just were.

“Colette offered me the chance to run a new branch of a prestigious design firm in a luxury market,” she said quietly. “My clientele would be the top of the one-percenters. I’d get to work in the Upper East Side. I’d get to design vacation homes in the Hamptons. I’d get to work on historic homes in New Haven… The project budgets I would get to play with—they’d be obscene.”

I tangled my fingers with hers. “But?”

“But I’d be giving all those assignments to other designers. I would be doing Colette’s job—wining and dining potential clients. Attending industry functions and rubbing elbows with the who’s-who of New England’s elite. And I don’t know… When she was telling me about it, I should have been excited, but I wasn’t. It’s not all bad. I really like what I do, but only because at the level I’m at, I still get to be hands-on with the projects I get.”

“Would you really be unhappy with that life?” I asked. “Or are you just afraid to leave what’s familiar?” When she didn’t answer the first two options, I added a third. “Or is this about us?”

“It hasn’t been that long,” she admitted. “And this thing between us only works because I’m here. You travel a lot.” I was the one truthful part that still remained from our “pre-tackle fling.”

“But if you’re there, then this—” I twined our fingers together “—won’t have to be a secret anymore.”

“But if I’m there, you’re not.”

I looked down at her bare leg. She had her knee brace on tonight. It must have been a tough rehearsal—Wren hadn’t been wearing it often since the season began. There was tape on her ankle, and when she had first arrived, she grabbed an ice pack out of the freezer for her back.

“How many more seasons do you have in you?” I asked.

Wren toyed with my fingers, lazily thumb wrestling me. “My body’s done. I knew it when I tore my ACL.”

“How’d it happen?”

“Last game of the season,” she said. “It was my first one back after the funeral and after Preston dumped me. I made it through the halftime routine. We were on the last eight-count, doing high kicks in a line. Instead of doing what I always did and picking a spot in the stadium to stare at, I looked at the seats where my parents used to sit together. I stumbled. The rest of the girls went down into the jump split, and I was a count behind. I went down too late, landed with my knee twisted, and heard that pop. My knee had swelled up to double the size by the time I made it off the field. I went to the hospital and had surgery the next day.”

“So, the preseason game that I tackled you… That was your first time back on the turf since?”

“Apart from rehearsals. Yeah.” Wren’s eyes sparkled as she blinked back tears. “This season was for my mom.”

“But your dad doesn’t come to the games anymore.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “He lives in Westerly. Getting to the stadium is hard on him. Sitting through a four-hour game is even harder.” Her voice quieted, barely audible now. “Being there without Mom would be the hardest.”

“So, you did one more season to give him a little more of her.”

“Reds games were always their favorite thing to do even before I was with the team. Even if it was a losing season. The stadium was their place. And in a weird way, I feel closer to her when I’m there.”

I held her close as warm spots bloomed on my t-shirt from her silent tears. Pressing a kiss to her forehead, I said, “I wish I could have met your mom. If she was anything like you, I think she’d be a firecracker.”

Through her tears, Wren laughed. “She was. She knew our pregame routines and halftime routines by heart, and she’d stand up in her seat and dance right along with us.”

I chuckled. “Was she good?”

Wren laughed. “Hell no. She was terrible. I don’t know where I got my kinesthetic intelligence from, but I’m for damn certain it wasn’t from her.”

Our laughter faded, and the morose mood seemed to have lightened. Wren slipped her hand up my shirt, laying her palm against my stomach, skin-on-skin. I stroked her hair and, every so often, dotted her head with kisses. Nights like this were rare, but they were my favorite. No pretense, no events. No ulterior motives or work-related reasons to be together. Just two people resting together, trusting each other, and loving each other.

“Take Colette off the table,” I said. “Take the Reds off the table—for both of us.”

Wren peered up at me.

“What do you want in life?”

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