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“What’s wrong?”
We sit on the couch, and she relaxes back, setting her feet on the coffee table.
I sit up straight as I turn to look at her. “I’m sure you heard about the fight between Grayson and Austin, and I just wanted to talk to you about it.”
Her brow crinkles. “The fight?”
“Have you been talking to Austin?”
She shakes her head. “He’s been busy with workouts, and we had some fun together, but it pretty much just fizzled out.”
“When did it fizzle?” I ask.
She purses her lips as she looks up to the ceiling. “A few weeks ago. Maybe a month or so. The last time I saw him was before their OTAs in May.”
That was after I moved out.
Was he only seeing her to try to get to Grayson?
Once I moved out and Grayson stopped coming around here, he didn’t have a need for that anymore.
But Kelly and Austin talked the first night I saw Grayson at the Gridiron. He wouldn’t have known Grayson and I had a history at that point.
He also didn’t go home with Kelly that night. As I recall, she wanted to go to the Gridiron again so she could see him again, and he’d seen Grayson and me together by then.
I don’t say anything about any of that, though. I’d hate for Kelly to feel like he was just using her. If she puts that together, then fine—but I don’t want to be the one to hurt her. Instead, I say, “He recorded Grayson talking to my brother at the charity ball and posted a video that went viral. Then Grayson confronted him at the Gridiron, and I guess it got physical.”
“I saw the video,” she says quietly. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’m fine. We agreed to keep up the ruse with my brother a little longer, so he was just saying what he had to say, and Austin happened to be behind him, catching the whole exchange to share with the world.”
“Ugh, I’m so sorry. What a dick,” she says.
“I’m sorry he’s a dick.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “It’s okay. I never expected anything serious with him. It was more of a good time, and he was good at the sex.”
“Are you heading back east this summer?” I ask. She heads to Louisiana every summer and spends a few weeks there with her parents before the next school year gets underway.
She nods. “The first session of summer school ends Friday, and I head out on the red eye for three weeks.”
“I’m glad I came by to see you, then,” I say. I give her a hug, and we settle on the couch for game shows and laughing.
Between work, organizing everything for the first of the three events I’m catering, and fitting in time with Grayson, I stay plenty busy in the next three weeks.
It’s the second week of July when she gets back, and I head over to see her.
Training camp starts in two weeks, and Grayson and I have spent as much time together as we can. He hasn’t proposed despite Ellie’s suggestion, and we haven’t spoken about it again. Instead, I appear with him at different community events, and we present a united front as we do our best to ignore the noise surrounding our true intentions with each other. It’s nobody’s business but ours.
I’ve learned over the last month that everybody has an opinion, but the only thing that matters is our truth.
“How was Louisiana?” I ask when I walk into the house.
When I spot her sitting on the couch, she’s…crying?
I rush over and sit beside her. I sling my arm around her shoulders. “Oh my God, Kelly! What’s wrong?”
I glance down between her hands and see the stick, and my heart leaps into my throat as I glance down at it.
