I’d worked hard to keep my mind filled with anything and everything that wasn’t the woman I’d fallen for.
But nothing I did worked.
Lying in bed at night, I could almost feel her beautiful auburn hair in my fingers as I flipped through pages of the team’s playbook.
Watching television, the sound of her laughter would ring in my ears anytime I found something funny.
Eating my boring dinner, her teasing words would drift through my mind as the image of her waving a burger in my face danced in my head.
In just a few short weeks, Georgia had reminded me that I was human, that I was a man, and that I was worthy of love.
And now, it was gone.
Just like my career was going to be if I didn’t come clean with everyone in control of my role on the team.
But there were some things that just weren’t meant to be shared.
I trudged into Coach Reed’s office and stood just inside the door until he looked up and motioned for me to sit.
“Quinn Miller,” he said slowly. “Enjoy your little vacation last week?”
Of course, Coach knew about my trip to Raleigh. I shrugged. “Was just a quick getaway.”
His lips that were already frowning curved even further down. He laced his fingers together on his desk and leaned forward on his massive forearms. “Let’s go over a few things. You show up to my house with my daughter and announce you’re her boyfriend.”
“Sir, I had no idea that you were taking the head coaching job. Hell, I didn’t even know that it was up for grabs.”
He completely ignored my statement and forged ahead. “Then, less than a week later, you go and get arrested and charged with a felony.”
I hung my head. “That’s right.”
“And if you weren’t in deep enough shit, you decide that a trip with your buddies is in order. Son, do you hear how outrageous this all sounds?”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned back and jabbed a finger in my direction. “You were drafted by the Cardinals. At the combine, you broke the record for fastest forty-yard dash at 4.23 seconds. Runner-up for Rookie of the Year. Offensive Player of the Year your sophomore season. Third season in the league, you shattered records that no one thought would ever be broken. Every sportscaster on television started calling you a future Hall of Famer. Boys in college were telling every coach in the league that you were their role model. Seasons four, five, and six, it was more of the same. You were unstoppable.” He paused as my stomach sank. My career stats were impressive to say the least, but I hadn’t thought about them in a while. It hurt too much to really see how far I’d fallen in the last few years.
“Then something happened. The success went to your head maybe. You thought that you didn’t have to work as hard as everyone else perhaps. You’d made your mark on the league, and there was nothing that could stop you. Who the fuck knows? But you quit going to practice. Didn’t show up to training camp. Late on game day. That shit kept on for two years before the team that drafted you had enough and traded you to the Steelers.”
I’d always dreamed of retiring with the team that had taken a chance on me all those years ago. When they’d announced they were trading me to Dallas, it had been a sucker punch to the gut. I’d had no choice in the matter, and the dream of having my jersey retired had faded away. Just like dreams, it was hard to even remember the hope that I’d had as a young player with stars in his eyes. I’d wanted nothing more than to play ball and show everyone that the Cardinals had made the right choice.
“Then you pulled the same shit there. Too smart to have to learn their playbook, too good to practice with your new teammates, too arrogant to care when you were put on probation. You started dropping the ball. Couldn’t break the tackles the way you used to. People were saying you were washed up. A has-been. Too old. They couldn’t risk you bringing down the team morale anymore, so after one season, they cut you. And you landed here. The only fucking team that thought you were worth the risk.” He pushed to his feet and leaned across the desk. “You get here and immediately seem hell bent on showing us all that you were not worth the gamble.”
It was a verbal assault, one that hurt like hell. Being slapped in the face would probably have been less humiliating than sitting across from this man as he listed my accomplishments and failures all in the same breath.
And I fucking deserved it. He wasn’t right on all counts; there wasn’t an arrogant bone in my body. I’d never once thought that I was too good to practice. Everything else though, it was all spot-on. But I couldn’t tell him any of that.
“I don’t really know what to say.” There were plenty of things that I could say, but none of them would have made a difference to the man sitting in judgment across from me. He’d already made up his mind about who I was, probably from the moment I’d walked into his home with his daughter on my arm. All I could do was hope that I was able to perform on the field so that he couldn’t take the starting job away from me on principle.
He hefted his weight back down into his seat, the chair squeaking and groaning with the motion. “You can start with an apology.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him immediately.
“Next, you can tell me what the fuck is going through your head.”
I didn’t think that I could tell him that his daughter had been almost the only thing on my mind for days, and I refused to tell him that I was battling the same demons that had been plaguing me for years.
“Sir, I promise you. I came to Atlanta to play ball. I came here with one goal, and that was to be a great player again. Yeah, I’ve already stumbled a bit––”
“A bit?” His brows were raised. “Don’t know that I’d call doing heroin a little stumble. Sounds more to me like it was a colossal leap off the bridge of self-destruction.”
I cleared my throat. “I’ve stumbled. But I haven’t fallen. And I won’t. I swear that to you. I will be here every day for training camp. I won’t be late. I won’t be absent. I’ll be here ready to perform. Ready to show you that I still have what it takes to play in the league, for this team, for you.”
His ruddy face was still as his shrewd eyes studied the man sitting before him. I meant every word of what I’d just said, and if he had asked me to, I would have dropped to my knees and begged and pleaded and groveled.
Finally, after an agonizingly long minute, where the tension between us was so thick not even a knife could have cut it, he shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Miller. Not a fucking word.”
My stomach dropped as heat surged to my face. Walter Reed had a reputation of being tough to win over. Hell, I didn’t know many guys who had played for him who would have ever said they liked the guy. But they would tell you that you could earn his respect. And at the end of the day, I didn’t have to be liked as long as my talent and character were respected.
“Sir, I––”
Once again, he cut me off, pushing to his feet and waving me away. “Meeting’s over.”
I didn’t know what this meant for my career. He couldn’t cut me, but he could make sure that I never saw a minute of playing time. I pushed out of the uncomfortable office chair I’d been seated in and tried one more time. “Coach, I’m going to prove you wrong.”
I jerked my chin and then turned on the heel of my foot and stalked through the door of his office, pulling it closed behind me. When the latch clicked into place, I sagged against the cold wood and squeezed the back of my neck.
Breathing in deep, I pushed away from the door just as I heard Coach Reed’s deep voice from the other side of the door. “I sure hope so.”
19
Georgia
I picked invisible lint off my dress as I sat on Quinn’s front step. I’d been there for over an hour, and the brick was brutal on my ass. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and that only had a little to do with the blazing Atlanta heat.
God, what was I doing there? I’d spent the better part of the week texting him with no respons
e. I’d come to his apartment twice, both times no one was home. Finally, I’d decided that I would just sit and wait. He had to come home at some point.
I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook when his truck rumbled into the lot. Nine a.m. I should have guessed he’d be back after a mandatory workout.
His eyes flashed wide when he saw me, and if I knew Quinn at all, he was already debating the merits of doing a U-turn.
I also knew he was too nice of a guy to blow me off to my face. Ignoring texts was one thing. Tucking tail and running was another.
I stood, dusting off the back of my skirt, as he pulled into a parking spot and cut the engine.
Packing down the nerves ricocheting in my chest, I waved at him through the windshield. The look on his face wasn’t one of surprise but more resigned acceptance. I lost view of him as he folded his tall body out, one sneaker hitting the ground before the other.
As he rounded the hood and started the short trip up the sidewalk, he kept his head down and moved slowly, as though he were trying to delay the inevitable. That was fine. He could walk as slowly as he wanted, but he wasn’t getting out of this long overdue conversation.
“Hey,” he said when he got close. “What are you doing here?”
His face was pale, his blue eyes dull and rimmed with dark circles. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and there was a slight limp as he’d crossed the lot.
Was he on something?
I shook my head. He looked exhausted, not high.
“Well, you won’t answer my calls or texts, so here I am.” I lifted a shoulder, hoping that I looked nonchalant. My emotions had been all over the place for the last few weeks. Seeing him looking so beat down though, I did my best to shelve the anger, for now.
After searching through his keyring for what seemed like forever, he unlocked and opened his door, gesturing for me to go inside. I brushed past him, my shoulder grazing his pecs, as I tried and failed to ignore how damn good it felt to be close to him again.
I was mad and confused by everything that had happened, but I was also human. And my mind wouldn’t let me forget the way Quinn’s fingers felt as they gripped my scalp while his mouth covered mine. His kisses were intoxicating, and the part of me that had let the irritation go ached for more of them. But I hadn’t come here to jump into bed with the man. I was here to find out once and for all what the hell was going on. I was there for the truth.
He dropped his duffle bag by the door and walked past me to the kitchen. “Water?”
I shook my head and then realized that he couldn’t see me. “No, I’m good. I, uh, I do need to use the bathroom.”
He tipped his head to the hallway, still not looking at me. “First door on the right.”
I followed his directions and walked into a small bathroom, flipping the light switch and vent fan and then running the water in the sink.
There was no medicine cabinet, so I dropped to a squat in front of the sink and pulled the cabinets open. Feminine products, a hair dryer, and toilet paper were the only things in there. I closed the cabinets and then peeked behind the shower curtain. Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash lined the ledge, but no signs of anything that shouldn’t be there. Though, I was pretty sure the hall bathroom wasn’t going to be the preferred drug hiding spot.
After I flushed the toilet and quickly rinsed my hands, I stepped out of the bathroom and tiptoed down the hall looking into the open door of the bedroom I passed. The bed was covered in a light pink bedspread and there were women’s clothes draped on the back of an armchair in the corner of the small room. It must have been his sister’s bedroom, but either she was a neat freak like her brother, or no one had been there in a while. I took a step into the room when Quinn’s voice startled me from behind.
“What are you doing?”
I jumped and then turned and plastered a fake smile on my face. “Sorry. Just, uh, got lost on the way back.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. A thousand square feet can be a real maze sometimes.” Stepping around me, he pulled his sister’s door closed and then strode past me to the living room. When he stopped and settled onto the couch, I kept going to the kitchen. “Think I’ll have some water after all.”
I pulled the fridge open and quickly scanned the contents. Bottles of water and sports drinks were on the top shelf, the others filled with prepped meal containers that had labels with what they had inside. Fish, chicken, and brown rice.
There wasn’t a single beer or bottle of wine in the fridge, not even half forgotten in the back. I frowned and grabbed a bottle of water before opening the freezer. A bag of ice and a carton of ice cream. No liquor bottles in sight.
Everything inside his apartment looked perfectly ordinary. Maybe a bit cheap for a professional athlete, but nothing about the space indicated that he had any sort of problem.
“Georgia?” His voice floated through the air to where I was still standing in the kitchen, confused.
“Sorry,” I said, quietly shutting the freezer before joining him in the living room. I perched on the edge of the far end of his couch.
For a few moments, neither of us said anything, both just staring at each other while awkward silence blanketed the room. It wasn’t supposed to be like this between us.
I’d come over here, guns blazing, ready to tell him off and put him in his place, but now that I was sitting in front of him, I didn’t have the first idea what to say.
“How’ve you been?” Maybe starting off slow was the best way to get him to finally tell me what the hell was going on.
He looked away, his unfocused eyes landing on something in the corner of the room. “I’ve been better. You?”
How had I been? It depended on when you asked. I’d spent days bouncing back and forth between anger and confusion, frustration and sadness, determination and clarity. Just when I thought I had gone through every emotion on the scale, a new one would hit me.
But how I’d been most of all?
“Lonely,” I admitted. “It’s been pretty quiet around my house the last week.”
His eyes met mine for a fraction of a second, the pain that was gripping my heart reflected back at me. He missed me too.
I wanted to scoot down the couch to him, throw my arms around him and breathe in the way he made me feel. But I couldn’t do any of that if he wasn’t going to be honest with me. And when those steely eyes cut away from me, I knew that any chance of getting him to talk was slipping away.
“What the hell is happening, Quinn?”
He used his thumb and forefinger to toy with his bottom lip. “What do you mean?”
“I mean with us.”
“Georgia, I—”
“No. Don’t give the ‘you’ve been busy’ bullshit you fed me. I mean what is really going on? We had something pretty freaking amazing. And I know you felt it too. Something like that, you aren’t too busy for. You don’t walk away unless you have a really good reason. So, tell me the reason. No bullshit. Just facts.”
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “There’s nothing going on. I have a lot on my plate right now.”
My heart, which had been aching, now pounded with irritation. Why the hell couldn’t he be the guy who had shown up on my porch with a bag full of bread and butter, ready to make me feel better? What had happened since dinner with my parents to turn him into the man before me, one who didn’t answer my calls and could barely look at me?
Frustration caused the words to tumble from my lips, the tone so much harsher than it should have been. “Where’s your sister?”
His attention came back to me. “She’s out of town.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded. “Out of town? Where?”
“Visiting friends.” His eyes avoided mine, and that was the final straw.
I’d told myself that I wouldn’t let my temper get the best of me, but sometimes it was better to get everything out in the open. Ripping the Band-Aid off quick always hurt less than trying to slowly
peel it away. And, as silly as it may seem, I had serious feelings for Quinn. And damn if I was going to let my heart get crushed because I was too busy trying to tiptoe around his feelings.
“Is that what they call rehab these days?”
His head snapped toward me, eyes wide. “What?”
“You know, I’ve spent the last two weeks since you were arrested trying to figure out how I missed the signs. I asked myself, were you acting differently when we were together? Making promises you didn’t keep? Restless or antsy? I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the idea that this stand-up guy who stormed into my life with cinnamon sugar toast and Sunny D actually had a heroin addiction and I somehow just never saw it. Last night it hit me. Maybe there was nothing to see.”
His lips thinned and he stood up, towering over me. “I can’t do this right now. I’ve had a long morning.”
I rose to my feet and stepped in front of him. “Don’t you dare talk to me about a long morning. I haven’t slept in a fucking week.”
And that was when Quinn broke. “I can’t fix that! Jesus Christ, Georgia. I can’t fucking fix everything.”
My head snapped back. What the hell was he talking about? “I never asked you to fix anything.”
He started to pace his living room like a caged animal. “Not yet. But you would eventually. And I’m sorry, I would love nothing more than to be the man to move heaven and earth for you, but I can’t. Do you understand me? I can’t!”
He planted his hands on his hips and stared at me, his sapphire eyes wild and tortured.
And I stared right back, unwilling to back down. Especially when backing down meant losing the only man I’d ever truly wanted to keep.
I took a step toward him, but he backed out of my reach. Careful to keep my voice low and even, as though I would spook him, I said, “So, let me fix it.”
He laughed sadly. “You can’t. Nobody can. And that’s the fucking problem. I’m playing a losing game here.”
The Hardest Play Page 13