The Hardest Play

by Teague, A. S.

  “What chick from my party?” Aiden asked.

  “You’ve been holding out on us,” Trav interjected.

  Shane sounded shocked. “You’ve been in Atlanta for a month, and you’ve already got a girlfriend. Trav, you’re about to lose your spot as the ladies’ man in the group.”

  “Wait a minute!” Aiden’s voice boomed. “Dr. Reed’s sister? Are you fucking my surgeon’s sister?”

  I let them all try to talk over the other for a minute before finally interrupting them. “You sound like a bunch of old women. I don’t know why I even answer these team calls anymore. You just gossip like high school girls.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Griff laughed. “You wouldn’t miss a call, even if your precious truck was on fire.”

  The guys all laughed and murmured their agreement. Griff was right. We’d started these calls after we’d gotten drafted, and here we were, eight years later, still going strong.

  The five of us had played in college at Oklahoma together, and even though we all played a different position, some on offense and some defense, we respected each other’s opinions. We’d spend each call talking about what we did right or wrong in our previous games. We also talked about what was going on in our personal lives, gave each other shit, and made sure to let each other know that even though we were all playing for different teams, spread across the country, we were still there for each other.

  Once a year, I organized a trip for us to take, just the guys, partly because it was nice to get away but mainly because I needed them.

  Jamie was the only blood family I had, but the four of them were my brothers. We’d been through everything together since our freshman year of college. Kids, marriages, heartbreak, injuries. There was nothing that I wouldn’t do for them, and I didn’t have to ask if they felt the same way.

  But I wasn’t interested in talking to them about my love life. At least not yet. I’d been the guy in the group who dated the least. Which was exactly why they were always on my ass about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the company of a woman, but my entire career, college and professionally, I’d been focused on the game and taking care of my responsibilities. I didn’t have time for a girlfriend then, and if I was being honest, I really didn’t have time for one now. That didn’t mean that I could deny the attraction I felt toward Georgia though.

  “Quinn, man, what the fuck? You gonna answer or not?” Aiden boomed.

  “I’m not fucking her,” I told him.

  “Yet,” Shane chimed in.

  Yet, I agreed. Not that I was going to say that aloud.

  “So, what’s the deal, then?” Griff asked.

  I may as well give them something, because otherwise they’d never let it go. “I ran into Georgia at a bar a week ago. I asked for a tour of the town. She gave me her number. That’s it.”

  “Bullshit,” Aiden spat.

  I grimaced. “No bullshit, man.”

  “Aiden, lay off him,” Griff interjected.

  Out of all the guys, Griff and I were the closest. Aiden was practically a football god, his talent natural. Shane and Trav were defensive players because they were big brothers who loved to smack the shit out of people. They worked hard and partied harder, even now.

  But Griff and I, we had to fight and claw our way to the top. We hadn’t grown up living the privileged lives the others had, and it helped us form a bond that was unshakable.

  “Listen, guys, there’s nothing really to tell anyway. Can we please change the subject? You know, talk about how Shane can’t stay away from the strip clubs?”

  The guys all roared in laughter, and I breathed a sigh of relief when they pounced on the new topic of conversation. While I listened to Shane talk about the latest chick he’d met, my phone buzzed.

  I pulled it away from my ear and looked to see that Griff had sent a text.

  Griff: You don’t wanna tell the guys about her, fine. But don’t leave me hanging.

  I smiled as I typed out a quick response.

  Me: I’ll call ya later.

  Griff: Sounds good. Brooke says hey. Allie wants to know when you’re coming to visit. She’s been dying to show everyone her prairie dogs that Aiden got her for her birthday.

  Me: I thought you told her no.

  Griff: So did I.

  I laughed and then turned my attention back to the phone call. Shane was still rattling on about women, so I took the chance to interject. “Guys, if we’re done talking shop, I’m getting outta here.”

  “Hot date?” Aiden chirped.

  “Yeah, with the guys at the stadium,” I shot back.

  We said our goodbyes, and I disconnected the call, tossing my phone on the couch beside me. I needed to get dressed and head to the practice facility to get a few reps in, but now that she’d been brought up, I couldn’t get Georgia out of my head. That seemed to be how it was since I’d run in to her last week. Everything about her, her smell, the way her hair shined in the sun, her mischievous grin any time she shot a zinger at me, echoed in my mind on a loop.

  I’d come to Atlanta to reinvigorate my career, not to meet a woman. The last thing I had time for was a relationship, and it should have been the furthest thought from my mind. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and any chance that I’d be able to walk away from her now was slowly slipping away with every passing minute. It had only taken one date to get hooked.

  Lunch had been amazing, but that had been five days ago, and while we’d texted a few times since then, we hadn’t had the chance to talk much between my practice schedule and her work schedule. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t heard anything at all from her over the weekend.

  I snatched my phone and pulled up her contact. I thought about sending a text but then decided that I’d rather hear her voice and pressed the button to connect the call.

  It rang three times before she answered.

  “Hello?”

  It wasn’t the bright, cheerful voice that I was expecting. “Georgia?”

  “Hey, Quinn.” Her voice was soft and gravelly.

  “Did I wake you up?” I looked at the clock, suddenly unsure of what time it was.

  She cleared her throat, but it didn’t help. “No.”

  When she sniffed on the other end, I asked, “Are you sick?”

  “No.” Her voice cracked. “I’m fine, really.” She coughed a little, and then her voice was a little lighter when she asked, “What’s up?”

  “Hadn’t heard from you in a couple days. Just wanted to say hey.”

  “Oh, well, hey,” she replied. “Sorry, I’ve been meaning to text. I’ve just been a little…busy.” Her voice cracked again.

  “You sure everything’s okay?” Something was off. There had never been a time when I’d talked to her that her voice wasn’t light and airy, full of humor or excitement. This didn’t sound at all like the woman whom I’d spent the last week chatting with.

  “Well, actually…” She trailed off.

  When she didn’t say anything more, I prompted, “Yeah?”

  The phone rustled on her end, and after a second, her voice came back, much stronger than it had been. “I didn’t get the job.”

  Confusion washed over me. “What do you mean? You said the other day that it was as good as yours.”

  She laughed, though the sound was devoid of any humor. “Yeah, well, apparently not. But it’s fine. I’m fine.”

  She was not fine. “What happened?”

  “My boss called me into his office Friday before I left to inform me that the trustees had decided to go in a different direction. They said something about creative differences and a bunch of lame excuses. They wanted to take a more conservative approach, didn’t want to push the envelope, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what my drawings did.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d gotten a glimpse of some of her drawings, and while I knew nothing about landscapes and golf courses, her renderings were pretty damn impressive.

  “Well, it’s their l
oss.” It was cliché, and it was obvious that she thought so too with her distracted response, “Hmm, yeah.”

  “What are you doing right now?” I asked her.

  There was more rustling in the background. “Lying in bed.”

  “Up for company?”

  “I’m fine, really. I’m sorry I was kind of MIA this weekend, but you don’t need to worry about me.”

  “Who said I was worried? I’m just trying to find something to do tonight,” I joked. She didn’t laugh, so I scrambled. “Jamie’s locked in her bedroom, begging for me to get out of the house and leave her alone a bit.”

  “Oh, well, I’ve got some stuff to do around the house. But maybe we could get together next weekend?”

  It felt like a brush-off, but I didn’t let it stop me. “Yeah, maybe next weekend. You’re just gonna be hanging out at home tonight?”

  “I’ve got to catch up on some laundry and go over the next project our office is up for.”

  “You sure you’re okay? I know you wanted that job.”

  “Yep, I am all good. But you know how much I hate talking on the phone, so…”

  I was totally being brushed off. But what Georgia didn’t know was that I didn’t give up easily. “Alright, well, I’ll talk to you soon. If you’re free this week, I don’t have practice. We’re not required to attend another camp until next month. So, I’ll just be here, driving my sister crazy.”

  She laughed a little. “I’ll text you when I have a free night.”

  “Talk to you soon, darlin’.”

  “Text you soon,” she corrected, and I chuckled as we disconnected the call. I’d never met a woman who hated talking on the phone as much as she did. Hell, I didn’t know a man who hated it either.

  I looked around the empty room and made a decision. Pushing to my feet, I yelled down the hall, “Jamie, I’m heading out for a bit!”

  It was muted through the door, but she shouted back, “Take your time! As much time as you want!”

  I snagged my truck keys and shoved my feet into a pair of flip-flops before locking the apartment door behind me.

  I may have been overstepping, but everyone knows that with great risk comes great reward. And if the reward was spending time with the incredible Georgia Reed, a woman whom I had somehow already found myself falling for, then I was willing to take whatever risk was needed.

  8

  Georgia

  I ran my fingers over the back of my phone. They were itching to pick it up and call Quinn back, beg him to come hang out so I wouldn’t be alone like I’d been all weekend. He’d cheer me up, and if he couldn’t, then at least it would give me a reason to get out of my bed. I thought about sending a text to at least apologize for avoiding him for the last two days. But I couldn’t really think of what I would say that wouldn’t make me sound like I was throwing the most epic of pity parties. Which I absolutely was.

  I was a happy person. For the most part, at least. I hated feeling sad. There wasn’t much that got me down, but I’d wanted this job. I’d poured my heart and soul into the project, convinced that I’d done what was needed to land the gig and show my company that I was better than the restaurant landscapes they kept handing me.

  Not that I didn’t enjoy them, because really, I loved designing anything, but I wanted more. I needed more.

  But I hadn’t been able to do much more than alternate between crying with my head under my pillow and sleeping in an attempt to avoid the tears that seemed to leak out of my eyes without end.

  A pang of guilt vibrated in my stomach as I thought about how I’d lied to Quinn about what I was doing today. I eyed the laundry that was piled up in the corner of my room. I had absolutely no intentions of doing anything with it for at least the next week, if not month. And as far as work went, after my boss had informed me that I hadn’t gotten the bid, I’d promptly told him that I was going to take a few days off. But I hadn’t wanted Quinn to see me at my pathetic worst, even if I had a feeling it wouldn’t have bothered him in the least.

  Our lunch last week had been amazing. Easy, fun, natural. There was never a lull in the conversation, and when he’d taken me home, I’d had to force myself out of his truck. I could have easily spent the rest of the day with him, listening to his stories about his friends, telling him how crazy my childhood had been growing up with a bunch of brothers and Piper.

  Quinn was a guy who had no hidden agenda. I knew in my bones that he was good and honest, and I couldn’t get enough of him. Not to mention, his lips were absolute perfection and I would give anything to feel them again. Once I managed to shake the horrible funk I found myself in, that is.

  I groaned and turned to my side. I loved my bed; it was like sleeping on a cloud. But after almost forty-eight hours of lying in it, I was having a hard time getting comfortable. My phone chimed, and I pulled a pillow over my head. If it was another text from my brothers or Piper, I was going to scream.

  They meant well, and I loved them for it, but I couldn’t take one more lame-ass joke from Lawson or another empty threat of bodily harm to my boss from Hampton.

  My phone chimed again along with my doorbell ringing, and I grumbled as I turned to my side. I prayed that it wasn’t Piper. She was my best friend, but she was so bad at saying the right thing to make you feel better.

  “Oh my gah, give me a minute!” I half-yelled as I dug through the covers to find my phone. When I finally managed to pull it from the depths of my down blanket, I pulled open the doorbell camera app.

  When Quinn’s handsome face filled my screen, I squeaked.

  Shit!

  I glanced around the room.

  There was a pile of tissues on the floor next to the bed from the countless tears I’d wiped away. The nightstand was covered in coffee mugs, water bottles, and an empty carton that had once held ice cream. The TV mounted to the wall across from my king-sized four-poster bed was on, Netflix asking if I was still watching.

  But the most horrifying part of all was my reflection in the mirror on my dresser. My hair looked like squirrels had nested in it, which at this point I wasn’t totally sure they hadn’t. My face was pale, my eyes red and puffy. And apparently, I’d forgotten to take my makeup off before I’d cried myself to sleep two nights ago, because there were still streaks of mascara on my cheeks.

  The doorbell rang again, jolting me out of my horror-filled stupor, and I scrambled to connect to the doorbell camera.

  I sucked in a deep breath and cleared my throat before answering, “Quinn!”

  His head swiveled around until his gaze landed on the camera. His mouth split into a wide grin, and he pulled a large gift bag from behind his back. “I have a gift for you.”

  I was a sucker for gifts. “Give me just a sec, okay?”

  “Take your time.” I watched as he turned on a heel and went to sit on the top step, setting the bag down beside him.

  I shoved the covers from my lap and jumped out of bed, scanning the room for something that was clean and not wrinkled to hell to put on. I didn’t think it was appropriate to go to the door in the nightgown I’d been wearing for three days.

  Glancing back at the screen of my phone, I calculated the odds of how long he would wait for me to shower and decided that it was probably best to just douse myself in perfume and call it a day. When I spied a simple T-shirt dress draped over the armchair in the corner of my room, I practically sprinted to it and pulled my nightgown over my head before replacing it with the black cotton dress.

  My hair was going to take a full day of conditioning to make it look less like I’d been electrocuted over the weekend, and since I didn’t have time for that, I smoothed it down the best I could before pulling it up into a sloppy bun. The clock on my nightstand said it had been three minutes since I’d asked Quinn to give me a second, but I still needed to at least brush my teeth if I wasn’t going to scare him away.

  After a quick rinse with mouthwash, I scrubbed the old mascara from my cheeks and gave myself one last gl
ance in the mirror.

  I looked terrible, but this was as good as it was going to get, so I made a dash for the front of the house.

  I plastered on a smile and pulled the front door open. Quinn stood and turned, and I sucked in a breath.

  How was it possible that he looked so freaking good in a simple pair of pale green shorts and white polo?

  “I know you said you were busy today, so I just came by to drop this off.” He held the enormous bag out toward me.

  I took the gift, my eyes bulging as I realized how heavy it was. “Ah, thanks?”

  “Ah, you’re welcome?” He mimicked my questioning tone.

  I cracked a small smile. “Should I open it now?”

  He shrugged. “If you want. If you need to get back to work and open it later, that’s fine.”

  “No, I’ve got a minute.” I had all the minutes in the world for him. I stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind me before imitating his action from a few minutes ago and settling on the top stair. He sat beside me, not nearly close enough. The smell of his cologne, of him, assaulted my senses, and I had to fight the urge to press against him.

  “Ankle better?” he asked, his chin tipped toward my foot.

  I nodded. “Yep. Almost back to normal. So, what’s this for?”

  “Just open it.”

  I set the bag on the step below us and peeked into the bag.

  “A loaf of bread?” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye.

  He bumped my knee with his, and the contact felt so damn good. “Keep going.”

  I pulled the loaf out and handed it to him before digging through the rest of the bag. “Is this?” I turned and looked at him.

  “Everything you need to cheer you up.”

  “I don’t need cheering up though.” I needed a hell of a lot more than that. Like those old guys at the golf course to give me a chance.

  He frowned. “Come on now. You don’t have to pretend that you aren’t upset over not getting that bid. Not with me.”

  I swallowed the wave of disappointment that washed over me again. “I’m fine. Really.” I gestured at the bag that was full of his mother’s remedies for sadness. “This is sweet, but I’m okay.”