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“Your publicist?” I echo. We’re still separated by the couch, and he still hasn’t moved, and I hate the distance spanning between us.
“Ellie Dalton. Luke’s wife. She snagged me the second I moved to town, and she always tells me shit about controlling my narrative,” he says. He takes a step forward and rests his palms on the back of the couch.
“I’ve spoken with her. She helped run that camp Austin and Cory did, and I put in a call to her and she got Jonah and Cade in.”
“She’s incredible. And she’s been booking my charity events for me. She’s probably a good person to interview about me.”
“Have you considered telling her about us?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I haven’t considered telling anybody about us. It’s too damn risky.”
“Well, my boss knows. Might as well get someone from your team in on the fun, too. Maybe Ellie could even help us.”
“How?”
I shrug. “She can help us control the narrative. We can figure out how to spin what happened. She can feed me ideas for what to cover since digging into the personal lives of players and the coaching staff is part of the reason I was hired for this position.”
He sighs. “I’ll think about it. This is all…a lot. Tonight was a lot. I came over here half expecting you to tell me it was over, that you couldn’t do this, and instead we’re teaming up with my publicist to find ways to hide what’s going on…”
“You thought I was going to tell you it’s over?” I repeat.
He shrugs. “I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
“Neither was I, and to be perfectly honest, I’m still not. This couch is separating us and it feels like I just need you to hug me and make me feel like everything is going to be okay.”
He strides around the couch and pulls me into his arms. “I would hold you forever if I thought it would make us feel like everything’s going to be okay. But I’m not sure how we’ll ever know that…or how we’ll ever feel that.”
I don’t, either, and that’s maybe what scares me most.
CHAPTER 11: LINCOLN
I drop my mouth to hers.
I was silent on the ride home with Sam as I contemplated what to do. How can we be together after what went down tonight?
But the moment I stepped into the house and saw her, I knew it couldn’t be the end.
God, I love her. So much.
I can’t be the one to end it.
And she wants to fight for this…for us. Whatever that means.
If she’s prepared to fight, then so the fuck am I. I’m not going to give up on us.
Clearly our fathers also want to fight, only it’s against each other instead of for each other. And clearly her father hates me with a passion he’s not afraid to hide.
But maybe I’ve been approaching this all wrong from the start. What if we’re forced to work together because of our jobs, and in doing so, we prove to the world that our father’s fight isn’t our fight?
What if they can watch us growing closer through the stories she tells?
She shows how I’m not the piece of trash her father seems to think I am.
I show that she’s not the manipulative woman my father sees her as.
It’s an angle I hadn’t thought to use. We’ve been so busy with our careers and filling every free second with each other that we haven’t had the time to think through how we move beyond this rut.
And maybe that’s the answer. Or maybe Ellie will have additional ideas that we haven’t thought of.
