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“And kickers don’t usually get drafted. I mean, sometimes, but…”

“Hey. It’s okay. Worst-case scenario, you’ll go to fucking law school, Bett. Jesus. Don’t get dream A, you’ll get dream B. Don’t see how that’s a bad thing. Either way, you’re living your dream. Whatever you choose is fine by me.”

Secretly, I wanted him to get drafted. To know that his shitty friends would have to live with the fact that their lame attempts at reconciliation hadn’t been enough. Not when they’d looked at Bett like he was sprouting two heads when he’d tried introducing me as his boyfriend after the game last weekend.

All of them except Papi Pearce had either laughed, scoffed, or treated me like I was invisible. Bett hadn’t even gotten angry. He’d pulled me aside by the hand, taken a deep breath, and then smiled wide, the kind that went all the way to his eyes and made my heart feel full. “They make it so easy, don’t they?” he’d said in surprise and a kind of relief.

“What do you mean?” I’d asked, spending all of my effort not to challenge all of them—Marcus and Garrett especially—to a round in the cage.

“To stop caring. I don’t give a single shit about those guys anymore. I’m not even mad about it. I can just… stop pretending.”

He’d already had several moments like that over the past couple of weeks. Times when he’d seemed to realize he didn’t have to do, say, or be anything he no longer wanted to. I was so fucking proud of him.

Bett picked at a thread on Wanda’s sofa cushion where he’d pulled it onto his lap. “Vegas needs a kicker. Or Nashville. What happens if I get signed with⁠—”

“I come with you,” I said softly, already knowing this fear because he’d confessed it a few nights ago in a stuttering jumble of nerves. “Wherever you go. I can get a mechanic job anywhere.”

He shook his head. “I want you to start your restoration business.”

“And I will. I’m not in a hurry. We’ll figure it out.”

I was under no illusions about how crazy we sounded. We’d only been together a little more than a month. I knew what “they” said about falling too fast, too young.

And maybe that was true for other people.

But this? Me and Bett?

I felt it in my bones. The rightness of it. The way he went soft when I walked into the room. The way I felt my own walls crumble the minute I put my hands on him.

The unfolding of a new and bright future when I thought of sharing my life with Bett McNeely, and the promise of what it would feel like to watch his face light up with satisfaction when he tackled his goals and overcame his fears.

This new feeling was almost too much for my chest to hold. I felt like a complete idiot when I was around him these days, smiling goofily and trying to get him to laugh like it was my damned mission in life.

It was too good. And just good enough.

It was everything.

He shifted next to me. “Janine supposedly got hired as a part-time correspondent on political news with CNN,” he said in a tone laced with disgust. “Talk about a cat who always lands on her feet. She made the connection when trying to get them to quash the story about the senator.”

Bett was trying a new thing where he refused to refer to Corbett McNeely as his father anymore. I was all for it. It had turned the word “senator” into a four-letter word for us, which I was fine with, too.

No matter what he called the guy, I knew Bett would deal him a crushing blow when he went pro and didn’t allow the senator anywhere near it.

“What else did your mom say?” I asked, assuming this was coming from him having finally heard back from her after trying to reach her for the past few weeks. I didn’t want to push, but I was also dying of curiosity.

“She’s divorcing him. When she found out about Arden and the baby, she kind of lost it, I guess. My grandparents came and took her to a place for some help. She called it a mental spa, but I don’t think that’s a thing.”

It sounded like something that should definitely be a thing.

“That’s good, though, right? That her father is taking her side for once?”

Bett nodded. “He tried calling me a few days ago, but I ignored it. I’m going to wait and ask the therapist how to handle it. I’m angry as fuck, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing.” He turned his head to face me. “Is it selfish that I don’t want to fuck up my trust fund? Like, I have so many things I want to say to him about supporting my father and not looking out for my mom better, but also, I really don’t give a shit. It’s not like I want to start a new relationship with him at this point. But I could also really use that money if I end up going to law school.”

“It’s not selfish. But if he revokes the trust, he revokes the trust. You’ll be okay.”

I knew Bett wasn’t used to flying without a net. He’d always had big money, so the idea of no longer having that safety net was scary.

I ran my hand up and down his back, my fingers moving over the curved muscles as they shifted. “You know there are such things as school loans, right?” I teased. It was a subject we’d talked about before.