Luke’s smile was soft. Soft! It was sweet. And he looked like he might vomit.
OMG, join the club.
“I do,” Luke said. He licked his lips. “I’m not someone who believes that regret is this big evil to be avoided. It’s how we learn. If we won every single game, we’d never be forced to sit back and rethink our strategy, to replay our choices, see where we could have been better, been faster. Regretting the ability to get to know Cassandra is something I can’t change, but I can change the regret I have over not speaking to the media a couple of weeks ago when Allie’s and my privacy was clearly invaded. It doesn’t matter that there are no legal ramifications for the person who took our picture during a private moment because I regret not protecting someone who I very much respect and care for.”
“So that’s why we’re here? You want to apologize to her?”
“Yes and no,” Luke replied. “I’ve already apologized to Allie for the pictures even though I’m not the one who took them or sold them to the media. And I’ve apologized to my teammates for the distraction it caused as a consequence.”
“The fight with Marks,” Gruden said.
Luke shook his head, grinning a little. A dimple popped next to his lips, and I fought the urge to swoon. I didn’t know I could want to swoon through panic, but there I was. Heart-eyes all around, I was helpless against them.
“The fight with Marks was ill-advised,” he said carefully. “But that is not something I regret.”
Gruden lifted his eyebrows. “No? That was a hefty fine you were given.”
Luke leaned forward. “Not for one second would I take that back. I’d pay twice that much and still do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because no one will ever speak about her the way Marks did and get away with it. Not in front of me,” he said with terrifying, incredible certainty.
My heart. Poof. It was gone somewhere in a glittery cloud of pink. Paige sighed, and I felt my lips twitch into a helpless smile. From outside the glass, I heard applause. Cheering.
Gruden grinned. “Because she’s your boss?”
Luke rubbed the back of his neck, one side of his mouth hooked up in a smile so sexy, so heartbreaking, that I felt my breath catch before he said a single word. “Because I fell in love with her.”
I gasped. “Did he? Did he just ...”
Paige sniffled. “He totally did. Oh, my word, Allie.”
“You love her,” Gruden clarified. “Does she know that?”
His shit-eating grin was one of a sports reporter who knew he just got the scoop of the season. One that would be replayed a million times. And that was just by me. I stood slowly, my ears ringing, my heart racing, my blood screaming to go find him.
For me. He did this for me.
Luke shook his head. “She doesn’t.”
Gruden tilted his head. “Why do it this way? You don’t strike me as the guy who puts this on display.”
Luke laughed. “I’m not. But I’m doing this for her. She’s given the whole team space for the past few weeks so we could focus on winning, and I wanted her to know, in front of however many people are watching this, that win or lose, she’s what I want. If she’ll have me.”
“This isn’t live, though,” Gruden said. “How will you get your answer?”
He lifted his hands and shrugged. “I guess if you guys are kind of enough to show this while I’m still down on the field warming up tomorrow night, then she’ll be able to find me pretty easily.”
I was standing before my heart chugged out another single beat, and I couldn’t feel my hands as I flung the door of the box open. The fans that were dotted around the stands roared when I appeared. My eyes raced over the field until I saw him, standing at midfield, holding a bouquet of bright pink tulips in one hand, a jersey in the other, and wearing a hopeful smile on his face.
Down the cement steps I flew, people cheering and clapping, darting out of my path as I made my way down to the field. When I reached the barrier, two smiling security guards greeted me. People patted me on the back as I waited for them to open the gate down to the field, and I swiped happy tears from my face. When my foot touched the field, Luke started jogging my way, dropping the flowers and the jersey as we got closer.
I couldn’t run fast enough.
My body yearned to fly, to erase the space between us, to be wrapped in his arms in front of the world with the bright lights overhead. Even players from the opposing team hooted and hollered as we ran toward each other. But nothing, nothing matched the sheer explosion of sound in the arena when I launched myself into his waiting arms.
They banded around me like iron, and he exhaled heavily into my hair while I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. I was so safe, so surrounded. Loved. It was too big for my ribs, too pure to be real.
But it was real.
“I love you, too,” I whispered in his ear.
He leaned back to see my face, and for one moment, we smiled at each other. His mouth took mine in a searching, sweet kiss, and everything was gone except us. All I could see and feel and smell and taste was Luke.
The whole world could’ve been watching, and it wouldn’t have mattered.
Epilogue
Luke
Fifteen months later
“I really, really wish I didn’t have to go,” I said against Allie’s smiling lips.
Her laughter was throaty and quiet, so I touched my mouth to the side of her neck to feel the vibrations of that sound underneath her skin.
“You don’t have a choice,” she answered.
Outside of our bedroom door, I could hear Faith banging around in the kitchen, making me some sort of good luck cookies that I would probably pass off to some of the younger guys who could still get away with eating sugary shit like that before a big game.
This, of course, being the biggest game.
How fortunate that Seattle had been chosen a couple of years ago as the host for the Super Bowl this year. Made our commute awfully convenient.
But I didn’t want to go to a hotel even if it was how we did things. I wanted to stay in my home, with my fiancée and my daughter. I wanted to wake up with Allie tucked into my side as I always did. I wanted to get up and help Faith make her pancakes, as that was the only thing Allie wouldn’t immediately puke up these days.
And at seven weeks pregnant, she puked a lot. According to her, Rico carried a puke bag in his pocket now when he did the pre-game walkthrough on the field. Thank goodness she hadn’t had to use it yet, because then the media would definitely hear the good news before we were ready for them to.
I wrapped my arms around Allie and growled unhappily, which made her laugh again.
“You know, for a guy about to play in the Super Bowl, you should be a lot more focused on the game than you currently are.” Her words were light and teasing, and she rubbed her nose against mine as she said them.
I ran my hand up her back and kissed her again. “I’ll be focused tomorrow. Actually, as soon as I walk out the door, I’ll forget you exist.”
She pinched my side, and I twisted away laughing.
“Liar.”
Humming, I leaned in and pulled her lower lip between my teeth. Allie sighed contentedly and met my kiss, snaking her tongue into my mouth and gripping my hair tightly.
Something crashed outside the door, and she broke away on a laugh. “I should probably go see what she’s doing.”
“You’re going to help her bake?” My eyebrows lifted skeptically. “I think I’ll leave now before it gets too messy.”
Allie snuggled in closer and pressed her forehead to the side of my throat. “Probably for the best. You know what happens when I get involved in her little experiments.”
I chuckled, but mess or no mess, even if I wouldn’t eat what Faith was baking, the moments that my two favorite girls stood in the kitchen and spilled flour and sugar and cinnamon and whatever the hell else unhealthy creations they loved to share wer
e some of my favorite moments in the world.
Allie and I might not be married yet—we’d scheduled that event for two weeks after the Super Bowl, just in case we made it that far—but the moment we made our relationship oh-so-very public, she’d stepped into Faith’s life like she’d been born to mother her.
Actually, that on-field display was what put us on Sports Illustrated for the second time that season. Every photographer in the place caught it from a different angle, but the best one made the cover, which was currently framed in my office downstairs.
Allie in my arms, us smiling at each other, just before she kissed me. It might have broken the internet for a few days—our story and my very public declaration—but it died down quickly enough.
We got engaged quietly six months later, which was when she moved in, and at the beginning of the following season, we set our wedding date. It would be a quiet affair, close friends and family, a handful of teammates and front office staff, on Orcas Island, overlooking the water.
“I know this is a bad owner thing for me to say,” Allie whispered, “but I’ll be really happy not to have to share you for a few months. Just the three of us, living life, sounds pretty perfect right now.”
This. This was why I didn’t want to leave.
I wanted to win. I wanted that so bad it made my body shake. We’d missed the Super Bowl the year before after a grueling, last-minute loss in the AFC Championship, and everything about this past season felt like vindication.
For me, certainly. But Allie too. She’d defied the odds as well, and as much as I wanted to be standing in a fall of red and black confetti twenty-four hours later for myself, for my teammates, I wanted it for her too.
She’d be able to hold the trophy and do it while wearing my ring on her finger, with our child inside her.
The thought had my inner caveman growling again, my arms banding around her slender form even more tightly.
“Do you think we’ll win?” she asked as if she read my thoughts.
I breathed in slowly. Before a game like this, I was strict in my avoidance of all the talking heads. No SportsCenter. No Pardon the Interruption. No Mike and Mike in the Morning. I didn’t want to know what they had to say.
If we won, it would be because we were more prepared. Because we would play better. The preparation was something I was confident in.
And our play would be decided tomorrow evening. There was nothing I could do about that until the moment the ball was kicked into the air.
But I knew what I felt in my gut. I’d felt it all week. That churning, bubbling sense of anticipation that came before a big win. When everything clicked seamlessly into place.
“Yeah, I think we will,” I told her. If anyone else had asked me, I’d never say that out loud. “I can feel it, Allie. It feels like our time.”
She smiled. Her hand came up to cup the side of my face, and I turned so I could kiss her palm. “I’m so proud of you. Have I told you that today?”
“Not yet.” I kissed her. “You’re slackin’, Sutton.”
Her blue-green eyes got serious when I pulled back. They searched my face intently, the way they did when it felt like she was able to read my mind. She was the only one who could.
“I don’t care if you never played another snap or won another game, there’s no one on this earth who I’m more proud of. As good as you are out there, it’s nothing compared to the man you are right here.”
Allie moved against me, not to incite or entice, but to wrap herself around me so fully, so completely that I felt her everywhere. What had I ever done before her love?
It was impossible to try to remember what each day was like before I had her in it. Thank God I didn’t have to.
“I love you,” I said against the silky smooth skin of her forehead, then I kissed her there.
“I love you too,” she whispered back. Another crash in the kitchen had Allie exhaling a laugh, carefully extricating herself from my arms. “I better go help her.”
“I should go anyway.” My hand pulled her back for one more searching, deep kiss.
Allie smirked as she stood off the bed, and I gave a quick caress against her still flat belly. “You better pretend you’re going to eat those cookies, Pierson.” She gave me a warning look and left the room.
I heard Faith laugh as soon as Allie joined her, and I smiled instantly at the sound.
Maybe I’d hold the trophy one more time, and maybe I wouldn’t.
But for the rest of my life, I’d already won.
The End
Acknowledgments
Full disclosure time, this book was HARD for me to write at the beginning of the process. And also the middle of the process. Somewhere around the end, it started getting easier, and it’s completely thanks to the people who allowed me to talk (read ‘rage obsessively’) about why being a writer was stupid, and writing books was dumb, and I was never going to do this to myself again.
My husband (aside from his terrible title suggestions) was definitely one of those people. He herded the boys out of the house more than once because these two fictional people, and the new fictional world I was entering into, were almost causing me to have a mental breakdown. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
Fiona Cole championed Luke and Allie from the beginning, and never made me feel crazy for how much I was doubting myself and doubting the story. You have the patience of a saint, my friend, and I’m a better writer because of your ability to see what my story is missing, what my characters need, and what I couldn’t figure out. #dreamteam.
Kandi Steiner and Kathryn Andrews, my football loving girls, and Amy Daws, who made time in their crazy schedules to read for me, pet my hair when I needed it, kicked my ass when I needed that too. Your feedback and friendship are invaluable to me!
It should also be said that Amy is the one who came up with the title of the book, so she gets an extra gold star for that too.
In keeping with the theme of ‘how many times can Karla doubt herself during this process’, I also need to thank Brittainy Cherry, for a particularly timely pep talk, and asking me the exact questions that I needed to be asked to figure out why I couldn’t figure out Luke. You are a freaking GEM in this community, BCherry.
Caitlin Terpstra for always being so fast as a beta reader!
Najla Qamber for being incredibly patient with me, and so amazingly talented, as I changed about a thousand things on the cover for Bombshell. You are the BEST.
Jenny Sims with Editing4Indies for the proofreading, Enticing Journey for help with my promo, along with Book Ends Tours.
All the bloggers and readers who’ve joined me in this crazy journey over the past 3+ years, you are, quite literally, the reason I’m able to keep doing it. THANK YOU.
I should also note, that while I am an AVID football watcher, and I certainly did my research on what Allie might go through as a new owner, I took a bit of creative license in order to create the world of the Washington Wolves, so any errors are mine alone.
Last, and never, ever least, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Other books by Karla Sorensen
The Three Little Words Series
By Your Side
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Light Me Up
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Tell Them Lies
Amazon US
Amazon UK
The Bachelors of the Ridge Series
Dylan
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Garrett
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Cole
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Michael
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Tristan
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Tristan & Anna : A Bachelors of the Ridge Short Story
Included in the Cocktales Anthology
Amazon US
St
andalone title
Hooked: A dark romantic comedy co-written with Whitney Barbetti
Amazon Universal Link
About the Author
Karla Sorensen has been an avid reader her entire life, preferring stories with a happily-ever-after over just about any other kind. And considering she has an entire line item in her budget for books, she realized it might just be cheaper to write her own stories. She still keeps her toes in the world of health care marketing, where she made her living pre-babies. Now she stays home, writing and mommy-ing full time (this translates to almost every day being a ‘pajama day’ at the Sorensen household…don’t judge). She lives in West Michigan with her husband, two exceptionally adorable sons, and big, shaggy rescue dog.
Photo credit: Perrywinkle Photography
Find Karla online:
karlasorensen.com
[email protected]
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