Chapter 26
Anya
There was only one logical way for me to try to shove Parker into his own lock box in the back of my mind, and that was blatant, copious distraction techniques.
I hardly even noticed the smell of food until Parker set a plate of sexy-looking pasta beside my laptop. From the moment we got home, I’d camped out on the couch, working on all the stuff I’d effectively ignored during our time with the Wilders. Considering the proverbial honeymoon was over as soon as he left for training camp the following morning, I knew I had to get my ass in gear. Vida had emailed over a list meant to take me the entire week, but I’d cranked through almost the entire thing since we arrived back at Parker’s house.
Spike was happy to see us. Well, he was happy to see me and Leo. Parker got a haughty growl, which was an impressive step up from a warning hiss.
It was typical for me to lose track of time when I got rolling, and I’d churned out enough social media posts to get us through the next month, and reviewed all the resumes she’d sent my way. Food, apparently, had slipped my mind, because the smell of whatever he’d just made had my stomach letting out an angry growl that sounded a lot like Spike on a bad day. I pushed my blue light glasses up onto the top of my head and stared blankly at the meal.
“What’s this?”
“Food. Typically we eat it.”
As he sat on the couch, hardly half a cushion between us once he’d spread his legs out, I gave him a dry look. “Where did it come from? I checked the freezer when we got home, and it didn’t look like Louise left us anything. Figured we’d order out or something.”
His jaw worked on a bite, the muscles shifting in a way that drew my helpless gaze. “I think she’s meddling.”
My eyebrows arched. “Is that on her list of duties?”
“Apparently. I pay her a small fortune, too, so she’s really trying to get her money’s worth.” He slapped a Post-it on the table.
I leaned forward, reading the messy cursive handwriting out loud. “Cook some food for your wife. Trust me .” My eyes raised to his. “You might be right.”
Parker whistled. “Alert the presses. I want that in print.”
I snorted, twirling my fork into the skinny noodles coated in a fragrant sauce. When I took my first bite and the rich sauce hit my tongue, I let out a low, blissful moan. My tongue darted out to catch some sauce on my bottom lip, and when I opened my eyes, Parker’s gaze was locked on my mouth.
A single wrong move, and I knew what that look meant. It meant no clothes and multiple orgasms. It meant nails down his back and my hands locked tight in his hair. That one time felt like a fever dream with the benefit of time passing without any more. No one was supposed to live in a fever dream; you weren’t supposed to live in the high. Because the crash afterward was always spectacular.
Stop. Think. Don’t jump just yet.
That was my brain, and it was so much louder than anything else.
It was the right voice to listen to, and all the other parts of me knew it too. Everything felt precarious without the buffer of his family.
“Delicious,” I told him. “Thank you.”
He blinked. The heat was gone. “Of course. I was gonna watch some film.” On the couch was a tablet in a Voyagers case. “But if it’s going to distract you, I can move.”
Parker was his own distraction, but that wasn’t something I planned on saying out loud.
“Go ahead.” I took another bite, my eyes drawn to the game he was bringing up. It was a game they’d played against LA late last year. He used his finger to navigate the bar on the video, speeding through the first quarter, then stopped on a certain play.
He watched it once, shoveling a wolfish bite of garlic bread into his mouth before he backed the tape up and let it loop again. Parker’s eyes narrowed, and he repeated the play for a third time. Then a fourth.
“What are you watching for?”
The words were out before I could stop them. It wasn’t like I was a stranger to someone watching film, but I still found myself interested, wanting to know what he saw.
With the late afternoon sunlight streaming into the room, Parker’s eyes glowed a deep burnished bronze when he glanced at me. “Watching how their defense lines up against the two tight end formation. Not a lot of teams use that, so it usually means I just rewatch our games a lot.” He tilted the tablet toward me, and I angled my legs, my bent knees just a few inches from his muscled thigh. “See what they do there? There’s a slight shift in these two cornerbacks just before we snap the ball. It means they’ve got a good sense of the routes we’re running.”
I glanced quickly at the sharp lines of his profile. “Do you always see what you’re looking for?”
He nodded, eyes still locked on the screen. “Usually. We can make last-minute adjustments if the defense shows their hand. This was third and eighteen, and if we didn’t get the first down, game was over.”
“So what happened?”
Parker dragged the play back to the beginning, and I saw the way they angled their bodies, anticipating the outside routes from both Parker and Beckett. The quarterback—Christian Reyes—snapped the ball and faked the handoff to the running back, then danced back four or five steps in the pocket. His line in the middle weakened slightly, his center pushing to the right so the running back could cut up the middle, still clutching the pretend ball to his stomach in hopes of tricking the defense. No one fell for it, though, a defender reaching out to swipe at the ball in the QB’s hands when he got past the center.
My eyes moved to Parker, and I found myself leaning in as he tussled with the cornerback, who matched him step for step down the line. After he cleared twenty yards, Parker paused, then cut in a few yards, a split second before the quarterback released the ball.
It was a little high, thrown intentionally that way to avoid getting tipped, and if Parker hadn’t come in, if Reyes hadn’t adjusted his throw, it wouldn’t have worked. Parker’s arms extended, snagging the ball out of the air. In the next step, he tucked it against his body, stiff-armed the cornerback and surged forward another four to five yards past the catch before three defenders swarmed him.
The entire play took less than ten seconds in real time, but as he backed it up to watch again, I found myself watching different positions. Beckett, on the opposite side of the field, had two defenders guarding him, and as soon as the ball released, he switched modes, stepping in front of those two, pressing into their chest to slow their progress as their attention snapped to Parker. The running back, once he knew the defense didn’t take the bait, also started blocking, holding off a linebacker who tried to sneak around him to get to Parker.
On the film, Parker hopped up and shot an imaginary bow and arrow, indicating that he’d cleared the first down marker. Then he clenched his fists, the muscles in his arms straining, and then he tipped his head back, letting out an adrenaline fueled roar. Obviously, I watched a lot of football, mainly keeping my eyes on Max. He didn’t have the same kind of energy on the field as Parker. His was more focused kind of play that didn’t allow for much in the way of celebration. With Parker, though, it was like watching buoyant energy unleashed. A playfulness only possible when someone truly loved what they did. I found myself smiling, and when my eyes darted to him, he was too.
“I can’t even imagine what it’s like,” I said quietly. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if it was better than sex, but that felt like a monumental step in the wrong direction, so I kept that particular question buried.
He sighed. “Catching a ball like that? One of the best feelings in the world.” His smile faded. “When you don’t? It’s fucking awful. I still beat myself up over that one.”
My eyes dropped to my lap. I didn’t have to ask which one he was referring to.
“Do your teammates?” I asked.
His brow knitted together for a moment. “It was hard for everyone to swallow. Never heard the locker room so quiet after that game.”
“How does that work?”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you like, apologize? Do they come up and try to make you feel better afterward?”
“Some did,” he replied. “I didn’t really want to hear it, though.” His Adam’s apple bobbed on a hard swallow. “And a lot of guys didn’t say anything. We were so close, you know? I don’t blame them for being pissed. I should have caught it. End of. I bet I’ve watched that play five hundred times since it happened.”
People, I’d found, were generally very predictable. Even if their own patterns weren’t obvious to themselves, they were there. On the surface, Parker might not have seemed like a perfectionist, but it screamed out at me, clear as day. It wasn’t about keeping a perfectly clean house or always having your shit together. It was those invisible standards of conduct, and his were ingrained in him so deep that the mere thought of deviating from it triggered a tidal wave of self-recrimination.
Letting his own feelings breathe felt like punishment, so he shoved it down, shoved it down, further and further, until it eventually exploded. Like … having explosive sex with your fake wife because everything finally boiled over.
I chose my words carefully. “What do you think you learned, watching it all those times?”
After a moment, Parker tipped his head back, allowing him to rest on the back of the couch. “That I don’t ever want to do that again. That I need to be better. Faster. Bearing the responsibility for everyone’s disappointment and pain …” He got that haunted look in his eyes, the one I hadn’t seen in a few days. I wanted to trace the skin under his eyes. Even though the dark circles had ebbed, he still looked tired. “I’m really fucking sick of feeling that.”
Gently, I closed my laptop and angled toward him further. My knee brushed his leg, and he stared down at that one small place we touched, his jaw visibly clenching. “Maybe it’s time to stop watching it,” I told him.
His eyes flicked up to mine. “That easy, huh?”
I nodded. “Preparation is good,” I said, tapping the tablet. “But only if it helps you get better. If it’s just forcing you to sit in that shitty feeling, then don’t watch it. All your teammates need to know is that you’re still going to show up for them this season. Last season is done, there’s no point in dragging it forward.”
My throat tightened at the intense scrutiny in his eyes.
“What is that saying? Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” he said in a rough voice. “I will not forget. And I will not repeat it.”
The way this man broke my heart was entirely foreign. I couldn’t stop the swell of affection any more than I could stop the sun from rising. He wanted to be better than his past self so badly that I could taste it, like watching someone else get injured and immediately tasting the metallic tang of blood.
Despite the fact that it wasn’t my pain, I’d still absorbed a bit of it anyway. It was impossible not to, wasn’t it? When your life was planted somewhere, even temporarily, it was inevitable that even shallow roots would form. These didn’t feel shallow. Nothing with Parker did. They felt deep and meaningful, curling into the edges of his life without explicit permission from either of us.
It felt like getting dropped into the middle of the tornado, and somehow, I’d become the one trying to wrangle it.
He hadn’t asked me to.
No one had.
It’s not your job, Anya, I instructed myself. It wasn’t my job to fix him, it wasn’t my job to make him see things clearly, and the urge to try almost left me breathless. I’d already been trying, each time he seemed to listen to me only buoying the desire to keep pushing through.
“I don’t want to repeat the past either,” I told him.
His gaze was heavy on mine, the gentle reminder of my own failings introducing the slightest bit of tension into the room.
Quietly, I opened my iPad and tried to calm my racing heart as I started working on another scene for Vida to review.
“How do you come up with that?” he asked, and when I glanced up, his eyes were locked on the stylus in my hand. “I can’t imagine being able to draw something out of my head the way you do.”
I smiled, tilting the screen so he could see it more clearly. I filled in some shading and added some light along the animal’s back. We sat there quietly, and as I drew, I talked. “You review film and lift weights and practice for hours, right? You study the playbook night after night after night.” Pinching my fingers on the screen, I zoomed in toward the face and tapped my stylus to select a different color. “I do this over and over and over. Until my lines get better, and I can imagine the drawings more clearly. Until I can see the way it needs to look in my mind before it’s ever done on the page.”
I held my iPad out and tilted my head. “This is Gumdrop the turtle,” I said. “He’s stubborn and hates that he’s slower than all the other animals.” I flipped to a new picture. “And this is Champ the squirrel. He’s a quick-thinker, but a little impulsive. Willow the deer is shy and sweet. Peanut the badger is a little grumpy, and he doesn’t always know how to trust people.”
“And your book is about them?”
I sighed, zooming back in on Gumdrop’s face. “The first book is about Gumdrop, but she’s still tinkering with the story. Kids learn lessons differently. Breaking it down so that it’s understandable is her job. I just need to make them look cute.”
He made a small noise. “You’re bringing them to life. That’s no small thing.”
A flush of pride crept up my chest. “I suppose not.”
“Leo will get to read these some day, huh?” Parker smiled. “That’s pretty fucking cool.”
“No cooler than having a football player for a dad.”
“Nah. I think what you do is way more important.” He tapped the edge of his tablet. “I play a game that everyone just happens to love. But you’re teaching kids life lessons. Helping them learn how to read. I think you win this one, golden girl.”
I gave him a searching look. “You’re teaching them lessons too, Parker. When you mess up, then get back out there to focus on the next play, you’re showing every kid who watches you that they’re bigger than the mistakes they make.”
Every word out of my mouth was destined to shine a spotlight on my inconvenient feelings, it seemed, and I moved my gaze back down to my work, hoping he wouldn’t press much further.
Parker’s eyes stayed on my profile for a few moments, and when he finally shifted his attention back to his tablet, I let out a tiny sigh of relief. After finishing my scene and emailing it to Vida, I tucked my iPad back into my bag and stood.
While he continued watching game film, I cleaned up our dinner dishes and pulled a squawking Leo out of his bassinet when he woke up from a nap. His stretches of being awake were getting a little bit longer, and even after I finished feeding him, he showed no signs of being ready to sleep.
From his seat on the couch, Parker watched us from underneath his lashes, and even though my cheeks felt warm, I resisted the temptation to ask him what he was thinking. Spike wandered into the family room, his tail twitching ominously as he stared down Parker.
“I feel like he’s weighing the worth of my soul right now,” he said in a dark tone.
I hummed. “Oh, I think he did that on the first day.”
Parker grimaced, eyeing the cat as he hopped up onto the ottoman in front of the couch and met his gaze unwaveringly.
“What?” Parker snapped. “If you’re gonna murder me, cat, just do it. Quit toying with me like this.”
I tried to hide my smile in Leo’s neck, disguising it by blowing a soft raspberry against the baby’s shoulder. But movement from the corner of my eye made my head snap back.
Parker’s too.
Because Spike hopped from the ottoman to the couch, sniffed at Parker’s arm, then curled up against his thigh.
“Well, that’s nice. I don’t have to call the cops and have them dispose of your carcass. Saves me a lot of trouble.”
Parker was not amused.
He worked for a while longer, and I moved to the table, Leo in his bouncer, while I worked on some more sketches. Chewing furiously on my bottom lip, I hardly noticed the pencil all over my fingertips until I tweaked Leo’s foot. I left a dark smudge on his sock, and shook my head ruefully when I glanced down at my hands. There was a crumpled paper towel on the table, and I used that to clean my hands.
Leo gripped his pacifier in his hand, staring at the bright red plastic with a slightly cross-eyed expression, and I couldn’t help but laugh when his leg started kicking back and forth.
“You’ll be able to run soon enough, buddy,” I promised him.
I clicked my tongue, and his attention focused in on the sound, then on my face.
“Is little guy coming to training camp tomorrow?” I asked. “Wasn’t sure if you decided or not.”
From the couch, Parker let out a heavy exhale. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. It would be one thing if there wouldn’t be press there, but the first day is always such a fucking zoo.”
My role was clear. I show up and make myself seen, wear a Wilder jersey and allow the fans to see me with the other families. Putting on a show, not unlike what we’d done for the last few days with his family. Each performance felt just a little more real, and I wondered how impossible it would be to maintain any sort of division between fantasy and reality by the end of the season.
An unpleasant twist in my stomach had me seeking a distraction. There was a small bee toy on the table, something we’d been given at the shower, and he seemed to react well to the little tinkling bell sound inside of it.
Making silly noises, I made the bee dance in the air, zooming it in at his face right at the last minute. His little mouth curved in a gummy smile. A real one.
My breath caught. “Parker, come here. Quick.”
Repeating the motion, I got another smile from Leo, and I found myself unexpectedly laughing. Parker came behind me, his hands braced on my chair, fingers brushing along my shoulders.
“Do it again,” he urged.
I did, and when Leo smiled again, I glanced up excitedly at Parker. The elated look on his face had the strangest effect, something unexpected cracking open in the vicinity of my sternum.
A sudden terror bloomed, and it didn’t take very long to slap a name to it. I hadn’t done well guarding my heart. Not even a little. I wasn’t exactly sure when it happened—when those walls came crashing down—but I felt the impact of their implosion like a blow to the chest.
Only a sky-high plume of dust remained behind, and it was all I could do to breathe through it.
“Look at him,” Parker breathed, his eyes bright, his own smile wide, a dimple creasing in his cheek.
My eyes glossed over, and I wasn’t sure who I was crying for.
For Leo, in finding a father who would love him the way he deserved.
For Parker, in pushing beyond his own limiting beliefs that he wasn’t capable of feeling this way.
Or for me, knowing that I wouldn’t survive these two. That leaving them would break me clean in half.
Parker gestured for the bee toy, and numbly, I handed it to him, fumbling next with my phone with a desperate urge to capture little moments like this. I sat back to get a better angle, the video rolling as Parker took over for me, eliciting a couple more smiles from Leo. The little boy’s eyes danced like his body wanted to push out a giggle, but he wasn’t quite ready.
Letting out a quiet laugh, Parker straightened, threading a hand through his hair as he stared down at his son. “God, that’s amazing. I’ll probably fucking cry when he says Daddy for the first time.”
Would I be there?
Would I be back home?
Panic clawed at my chest. How did I let this happen? I felt like I’d been stripped of every rational thought when it came to this man, and even worse, given another chance, I was fairly certain that I’d march right back to where this all started and make every single decision over again.
I’d jumped straight in. No matter how firmly I’d instructed myself not to, I’d fucking jumped. Along the way, there were moments when I felt a whisper of premonition—and it always started when he kissed me. Here first. And in Sheila’s kitchen for his entire family to see.
It was tucked away in moments of pretending that the most damage was done, and I’d been willfully blind to what it meant. I’d locked that away too, hadn’t I? Pretending to love Parker was easy for a reason, and forcing myself to admit it now left me wide open for a world of hurt.
He’d hurt me without realizing it, without trying to. Not only that, but he’d hate himself for it.
And Leo. God, that little baby, I already loved him so much. I’d have to let both of them go, wouldn’t I?
The thought of it stopped my heart.
Parker’s hand curled along the back of my neck, his thumb brushing the edge of my neck, and the icy threads of panic receded at the simple touch.
“Want me to keep him in my room tonight?” he asked, oblivious to my stunning mental gymnastics.
My eyes pinched shut. We didn’t need to share a bed anymore. No midnight conversations in a dimly lit room. No magic moments that felt just like ours.
Inside the cage of my chest, I hurt. Everything hurt, every square inch of my body. There was only one reason for this kind of pain, and oh how I’d promised myself I’d never feel it again.
Falling for someone who wouldn’t let themselves love you back wrings your heart out in a way that nothing else quite did. It wasn’t a sharp pain; it wasn’t throbbing and loud. It lingered, spreading to every corner of your body until you felt it everywhere.
“I don’t mind helping,” I told him. “You have a big day tomorrow.”
Fool. What a fool I was.
We couldn’t keep doing this without a plan. Without laying out how this would all play out. My brain screamed for it.
Think this through.
Make sure you’ll be okay.
Parker’s calloused fingers drew a slight shiver when he removed his hand. Even though my legs felt weak, I managed to stand, angling toward him while I desperately tried to school my expression to something less … heartbreaking.
“You’ve earned a night off,” he said, eyes searching my face.
I managed a smile. “Okay. I’ll, umm, I’ll keep my door open in case you need anything.”
The air went thick between us, and Parker’s gaze lowered to my mouth.
Yes.
Yes , I thought with a cruel, desperate edge to my racing heartbeat. Despite how much it might hurt later, if he’d pushed, I would’ve fallen straight into his arms, knowing exactly what awaited me there.
It was more than furious passion, and it far surpassed simple chemistry.
I’d fallen in love with this incredibly complicated man. With all the sides of him, even the sides he was desperately trying to rid himself of.
“If I need anything?” he asked quietly.
I let out a shaky exhale. “Yeah.”
Parker’s eyes held mine for another beat. “What about you? Should I leave my door open too?”
Take a step , he was saying. Meet me here.
Aside from one innocent kiss, I’d allowed him the position of power, instigating those brief, searing moments of heat.
It will hurt, Anya, my heart screamed. It will hurt more than anything has before.
Walking away from him would feel like tearing out my insides.
Rolling my lips together, I looked away, allowing the moment to de-escalate, a desperately needed break in the tension vibrating between us.
Parker remained quiet. Watchful. The weight of his gaze was staggering. After clearing my throat, I busied myself putting away my tablet, then the sketch pad and pencils next to it. Parker stilled me with a touch to my arm.
When I looked up in question, he was staring at my face. He brought his hand up, licking at the pad of his thumb, then took my chin in his hand and scrubbed at a spot along my jaw.
“Pencil,” he said by way of explanation. But his eyes were fierce as he released me.
Could he hear my pounding heart?
My legs hardly kept me up as I leaned down and gave Leo a quick kiss on the forehead.
“Sleep well tonight, little lion,” I whispered. “Your dad needs rest.”
So did I.
Maybe this would all feel less terrifying after a full night to recover. The familiarity we’d fostered with family would ease its iron grip. Space to breathe would help. The start of a new day where I kept my head on straight and my guard up.
Maybe. Probably fucking not.
I felt Parker’s eyes on me as I left the room. Spike pranced after me, and when I closed myself into my room, sinking back against the door, I let out a sharp breath.
I was doomed, wasn’t I? The longer I stayed here, the worse it would get, until I was so hopelessly tangled up in this man that there was no way out. Until my roots were so deep in his life, and his in mine, that it would take a complete excavation—ruthless and destructive—to set us both free.