I slicked my tongue over my teeth and nodded. "Hmmm. Awesome, okay, well, I was trying to do this privately, but what the hell ever."
"Do what privately?" Matthew asked. He leaned in closer, and I had to shut my eyes against the smell of him. He was clean from his shower, clad in dark jeans and a charcoal Wolves shirt that molded to his body in a way that was positively sinful.
I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. "I'm going to apologize preemptively for the things in that room that I cannot control, okay? But please, just give me five minutes after the inevitable freaking out is over."
Matthew searched my face but didn't answer right away.
"Please," I repeated. "Please trust me right now."
Finally, he nodded. "Okay."
Before I turned back to the conference room, I glared at Carter and the other players who started following us. "Don't even think about coming in that room, or you'll be on garbage pickup for every community event from now until kingdom come."
Carter grinned and saluted me.
"You look nervous," Matthew said just before we reached the closed door of the conference room.
"That's because I am nervous," I admitted. My fingers gripped the handle, and I took a deep breath before pushing it open and walking in.
My mom scoffed at my reappearance, Ashley narrowed her eyes, and my dad sighed in relief.
All reactions I expected when they saw me.
Then ... then they saw Matthew.
My mom pinched her eyes shut. My dad rubbed the bridge of his nose.
And Ashley, Ashley went white as a sheet. "What the hell is this?" she whispered.
"Ohhhhhkay then," Matthew said from behind me.
"What the hell is going on, Ava?" Ashley said, standing slowly from her chair and pointing a finger at me. "You better start talking right now."
I held up my hand and took a position at the front of the room so I could see all four of them. Matthew had his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, color high on his cheekbones, but he was keeping his attention solely on me.
"I'm going to try to keep this as short and sweet as possible," I said to my family. "What I have to say isn't up for debate or discussion. This is a courtesy conversation so that you know what to expect moving forward."
My dad crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the ground. Ashley's foot was bobbing furiously now that she was sitting again, and my mom looked like she was about to pass the hell out.
"It's him," I said, pointing at Matthew. Quickly, I glanced at him, heart squeezing at the intensity in his eyes.
"What is?" Ashley ground out, face pinched and eyes narrowed on me.
"All of it. The flowers you found, the message I was leaving, the man who's made me so happy, it's him. Anything else you thought was the truth was simply a misunderstanding driven by a ridiculous desire to be relevant to the three of you."
"Damn, that's some harsh shit," I heard someone mutter excitedly in the hallway. Matthew closed his eyes and shut the door with one hand.
"This is a circus," my mom hissed and went to stand.
"You can stand if you want, Mom, but I am not finished," I told her.
“Abigail, she’s earned the right to be heard,” my dad said implacably when my mom looked like she was going to storm out no matter what I said.
I gave him a small smile and kept going. "I regret lying about Matthew. I regret that I let my fear of your reaction influence my actions more than any one of you could ever know because I am in love with him." I looked at Matthew as my voice wobbled at the end. His jaw was tight, his arms now crossed over his chest, his brow furrowed at my words. "I am in love with you, Matthew Hawkins, and I'll risk any recourse, any complication, and any fallout for you to trust in that more than you've ever trusted in anything." I pressed my hands to my chest and met his stare. "I want this, between us, to be the truest and most constant thing you've ever known because that's what it is for me. And I know you were mad at me. You had every right to be furious over what happened, but I'll earn your forgiveness out of sheer force of will if I have to."
He huffed out a breath that could have been a laugh, or it could have been disbelief. But in his eyes, I saw my first glimmer of hope that this just might be working. There was a warmth there that I hadn't seen since he knelt next to my car in the parking lot just before I left to catch the ferry.
"This is insane," Ashley said under her breath, eyes wide and frantic when I glanced over at her. "I was engaged to him, Ava. Don't you think that's a little ..." Her arms flailed out when she couldn't find the words. "I don't know, incestuous or something?"
I laughed. "No, Ashley, I don't think that. I think there's a reason he ended up here and why our pasts unfolded the way they did because he's it for me." I looked back at him. "You're it for me." I shrugged.
"Ava Marie," my mom said in a low voice, "if you think that—"
"Quit talking, Abigail," my dad interrupted.
My mouth fell open. My mom blinked, and Ashley stared at my dad like he'd lost his mind.
"Excuse me?" she whispered.
He sighed. "I said quit talking. It's not about you. Or me. If Matthew was able to move on from what Ashley and Adam did to him, then why the hell can't we?" He straightened the front of his suit jacket and gave Matthew an assessing look, then brought his eyes back to me. "Anything else you need to say, Ava?"
"Uhh"—my eyes ping-ponged between my mom and dad—"nope. That was pretty much it."
He nodded, then held out a hand to my still seething mother. "Let's go. Ashley, if you need to stay, we'll wait for you out in the parking lot."
My mom acted like she wasn't going to leave, but Ashley gave her a look. "Mom, I'm thirty-three. I hardly need you to fight my battles. Please go."
Before my parents left the conference room, my dad paused in front of Matthew and held out his hand. Cautiously, Matthew took it for a hard shake. My dad nodded at me, and then they were gone.
And then, there were three, I thought with a tiny bubble of panic slipping up my spine. As soon as my parents were gone, he and Ashley regarded each other warily.
What must he be thinking? What if this entire thing was a giant mistake? I tapped my fingers along my thigh.
"What are we supposed to do now, Ava?" Ashley asked. There was nothing snide or hidden in her voice, but her hands were knit tightly together, and the diamond in her ring glinted from the lights in the ceiling. Her knuckles were white; that was how tightly she was keeping herself in check.
"I'm just letting you know that he's in my life if he'll still have me." I kept my eyes off Matthew's face. "I don't expect anything beyond you accepting that, even if you're not comfortable with it."
Her blue eyes glanced from me back to the man standing by the door. What was she thinking?
"Okay," she said, standing slowly.
"I know this is weird, Ashley," I told her.
Her eyes fell shut. "Am I free to go now?"
I took a deep breath, unsure of how her stoic reaction made me feel. But I remembered what Matthew had said to me just a couple of days earlier. It wasn’t always about me, or when I wanted to talk about things, or how I wanted to process them. If I wanted Ashley to respect this, then I shouldn’t push her. I nodded. "Yeah. Thank you for hearing me out."
Ashley nodded back, clenched her jaw together behind closed lips.
She gave Matthew a quick look. "I’m glad you two are happy," she ground out. A shaky hand swept across her forehead. "But right now, I just want … I need to go talk to my husband about all of this. Ava, I’ll talk to you … later."
Then she calmly walked out of the room.
The door shut with a quiet click, and I let out a heavy breath.
Matthew still said nothing.
Then he took a step toward me, unfolding his arms from his chest. His eyes bored into mine.
"Say it again," he said.
My breathing picked up, quick and erratic as I backed into the wall behind me. "S
-say what?"
He stopped within reaching distance of my body. "Say it again, Ava. Now that there's no audience, no prying eyes, and no one to stop me from kissing you once the words are out."
My face flushed hot with relief, and I smiled a little. "I'm in love with you, Matthew Hawkins."
Matthew braced his hands on the wall, effectively caging me in. His forehead rested against mine, and he exhaled. "Again."
I smoothed my hands up his chest and gripped his neck tightly. "I'm in love with you."
He kissed my temple, then my cheek, the tip of my nose, on either side of my mouth, just shy of my lips, which sought out his. He chuckled.
"Again," he whispered over my lips.
"I'm so in love with—"
His mouth cut off my words, his tongue swept into my mouth with authority and precision, drawing a moan from my lungs. I wrapped myself around him, my arms twined around his neck as his mouth ate at mine. His hands gripped my back, my bottom, and slowly, he turned the kiss into something slow and sensual, moving his frame against mine in a way that had me wishing we weren't in a bright conference room across from my office.
As soon as the thought zipped through my brain, a sound broke through the fog of imagined sexy times.
It was applause. Obnoxious whooping and hollering.
Matthew broke away when he realized I'd stopped kissing him back. We both turned our heads toward the sound, and through the tiny window in the door, we saw about four faces pressed up against the glass. Carter had his phone up, capturing the whole thing with a wide smile on his face.
"Awwww, yeah baby, get it done, Hawk," he hooted.
Matthew's frame shook with laughter as their faces backed away from the glass to give us privacy, and I buried my face into his broad chest. He kissed the top of my head and wrapped me tightly in his arms.
Nothing, nothing had ever felt better. And nothing ever would, I knew with certainty.
"Have you heard it enough now?" I said, tilting my chin up so I could look into his face.
He chuckled, dipping down for another searching kiss on my waiting lips. When he pulled away, we were both breathing hard.
"I’ll never be able to hear it enough," he whispered. "I love you too, Ava."
My mouth stretched in a happy smile.
"Can we get out of here now?" I asked.
His grin was devious, and I narrowed my eyes.
"What is that face?"
"Nothing," he said lightly.
But then he dropped his arm, sweeping it under my knees as I shrieked with laughter. "Matthew, don't you dare! They'll never let me live this down."
He smacked a kiss on my lips. "I'm planning on that, beautiful girl."
Carter was so kind as to open the door for us, and when we left the conference room, there were easily a dozen players waiting. They roared their approval as he swept into my office so I could grab my purse, then followed us down the hall like our own personal parade out the front doors.
"Your place or mine, Slim?" he asked as we approached his truck.
I sighed, tightening my hold on his neck.
"Anywhere," I told him honestly. "I'll go anywhere as long as I get to be with you."
Epilogue
Ava
Four months later
“I don’t think I can watch,” I said from behind my hands, which were covering my eyes. Allie yanked them away from my face ruthlessly.
“If I have to watch, then so do you.” She waved her hands in front of her face. “I can’t breathe.”
Normally, we’d be up in the owner’s box, but at the beginning of the fourth quarter, we made our way down to the sidelines because this was a moment when we both needed to be as close as possible.
Robert Sutton Stadium—newly renamed during the offseason after Allie poured millions of dollars into renovations and improvements—was packed to capacity at seventy-two thousand, four hundred and fifty-six fans. They were on their feet, stomping, screaming, and slamming hands against the seats in front of them because we were up by seven with one minute and thirty seconds left in the NFC championship.
If we held off Green Bay, we’d be in the Super Bowl.
My phone buzzed angrily from my back pocket, where I’d shoved it as security led us down to the field. Since I had time, I whipped out and grinned at the text from my dad.
Dad: Matthew’s got this, kiddo. Don’t look so nervous.
My dad had watched almost every game of the season—a show of support that meant the world to Matthew and me—and even if he missed a game or two because he was in surgery, he always texted me when he watched the highlights. Normally, he never caught sight of me on camera. Today made sense, though, since I was standing next to the owner, who was recently engaged to the quarterback.
The quarterback currently sitting on the bench was unable to help his team any more than he already had. Luke’s head was bent down, his hands clasped between his knees, a deceptively casual pose for a man who I knew was probably vibrating from the need to be doing something. Anything.
While the commercial break wound down, and our defense lined up on the grass, the noise level got higher, and higher again when Matthew turned and jacked his arms up, calling for more and more from the people wearing black and red.
From where I stood, I could hear his roar of demand before the fans gave him what he wanted. The muscles of his arms were coated in sweat and dirt and grass when he crouched down into position. The offense lined up, quarterback pointing and yelling, trying to be heard over the deafening sounds of our fans.
They were hungry for this. Starving and ravenous for a win that would mean the world to a city that had supported these players for years. Normally, I would’ve taken a second to glance around the stands to soak it all up and see the tangible fruition of all our hard work in these moments before the outcome was known.
Every event, every tweet and picture and signing and practice and moment that endeared our players to those fans led up to this.
But my eyes stayed glued on Matthew.
I never knew that I could want something so badly for another person. In my mouth was a coppery tang of blood from where I’d accidentally bit my lip when he sacked the QB in the third quarter on fourth down, stopping a scoring drive in its tracks. My hands were raw from wringing them together, and my throat was coated with thick, grainy sand from all the yelling I’d done in the past three hours.
The ball snapped crisply into the QB's waiting hands, and the defense shoved forward, pulled like a rip cord into action. The receivers ran downfield in hopes to catch whatever bomb he was planning to unleash on us.
Matthew dropped back suddenly, instead of rolling around to try to grab the quarterback, and I narrowed my eyes. The ball zipped forward, and he lunged sideways, arms outstretched, taped-up hands extending to an almost inhumane length.
From midair, he snagged the ball and hugged it into his barrel chest, then he slid to the grass while his teammates piled on top of him in celebration of his game-ending interception.
Everything around us erupted.
The players on the bench.
The fans in the stands.
Allie and I screamed, clutching each other tightly. She was wiping happy tears, and I struggled to breathe through the violent eruption of adrenaline coursing through my body.
Luke was standing on the bench, hands raised in the air, and a massive smile splitting his face. All he had left to do was take the field and kneel the ball, and we were going to the mother effing Super Bowl.
Matthew finally stood up from the ground, and the crowd somehow got even louder. The entire stadium shook from the sheer force of energy pulsing from every square inch. He tossed the ball to the official and jogged off the field so that the offense could finish what he’d just set into place.
Briefly, he caught my eye, and I caught a flash of white teeth behind his helmet, underneath the grit and grime coating his face.
Then his coach snagged him for a hug,
and he was swamped by all the players on the bench for hugs and back slaps and ridiculous victory dances that would end up in a gif somewhere.
Allie sighed and slung her arm around my shoulders. “Holy shit.”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah.”
“They’re going to be so exhausted tonight, aren’t they?”
I watched Matthew toss back some Gatorade, admiring the way his thick throat worked on a swallow. “Yeah.”
He threw the crumpled cup aside, and his eyes zeroed in on me as the clock wound down. Luke had kneeled once. He’d only need to do it once more, and the game would be done. The players would storm the field, shake hands, say their congratulations, and Matthew would start in on the post-game ritual that would keep him occupied for the next couple of hours.
As he started toward me, fire banked bright in his eyes, and I wished we were alone at our apartment. It used to be his, but Frankie and I decided we wanted a shorter commute to work, so we’d moved in during the bye week.
Matthew shouldered his way through the players, and as soon as he was close, I leaped into his arms, wrapping myself as tightly around him as I could.
“You did it,” I said into his ear, placing a kiss under the sweaty line of his hard jaw. “I’m so proud of you.”
He pulled his face back and grinned happily. “Think you can put up with two more post-game massages, Slim?”
It was our ritual once he got home even though he’d already been worked on by the team masseuse. Of course, our massage took place in the massive sunken tub in the bathroom and was done stark-ass naked while I worked on the kinks in his shoulders and back.
I kissed him hard, and the fans in the stands directly behind us whooped and hollered.
“I’ll do a million post-game massages,” I told him fiercely when I pulled away. “You’ve earned them tonight, big guy.”
He dropped his forehead and rolled it against mine. “Love you, Slim.”
The Ex Effect Page 23