CHAPTER 33
EDEN
Ihad never been to a football game before.
Apparently, this was becoming a pattern in my life.
In the handful of weeks since Jagger had crashed into my world, I’d done more new, thrilling, terrifying, exhilarating things than I had in all the years before him combined.
It was overwhelming. It was perfect. It was so far outside the careful life I’d lived before him that sometimes I still caught myself waiting for the moment it would all disappear.
The stadium rose around us like its own city, loud and alive in a way that made my chest vibrate. Orange flooded everything—shirts, flags, painted faces. The crowd’s voices swelled and rolled, colliding and stacking on top of one another until the noise fused into a single, breathing thing.
I clutched the railing for a second when we stepped into the suite.
“Too much?” Jagger murmured near my ear.
I shook my head, even though it absolutely was.
The field stretched out below us in perfect green stripes.
The teams were lined up now as the first plays of the game unfolded under the sun.
The massive screen shifted from pregame hype to live action, replaying the opening snap while music thudded between whistles.
Every tackle, every completed pass, and every near miss pulled a reaction from the crowd.
Coming to a football game was evidently a good way to burst your eardrums.
“I feel like I’ve walked into a movie,” I admitted.
Jagger smiled faintly, his hand settling at my waist like it belonged there. “Tennessee fans are . . . intense.”
As if summoned by what he’d said, a blonde a few feet away sprang to her feet. “Parker Davis, you have legs for a reason. Use them!” she screamed over the railing.
The black-haired woman beside her didn’t react at all.
She stayed leaned against the railing with her arms folded, watching the field with calm focus.
I blinked as the blonde dropped back into her seat.
“He hesitates when he overthinks,” she muttered, looking up at me like I was supposed to be agreeing with her. “He needs aggression.”
I stared at her. “Are you . . . on staff?”
She looked at me, clearly insulted. “Emotionally? Yes.”
Jagger laughed under his breath. “Natalie, I don’t know what Tennessee would do without you,” he said mockingly.
She nodded as if he was being serious. “I’m a real asset to this organization, and I should get more credit for it, Thatcher,” she replied, then launched out of her seat again like a rocket.
This time she cupped her hands around her mouth, leaning so far over the railing I thought she might fall over.
“Adler! You beautiful bastard, quit dancing with the linebacker and hit the damn hole!” she yelled with pure, unfiltered frustration. “You’re faster than him—make him eat turf!”
“Well, well,” another gorgeous blonde said, distracting me from Natalie’s . . . passion, as she walked into the suite. “You made it.”
Jagger turned, his hand tightening briefly at my waist before sliding higher along my back. “Good to see you, Riley-kins.”
My heart stuttered, realizing this was the Riley. As in Jace’s wife.
Riley scoffed at the nickname, and then her gaze flicked to me, warm and assessing in the way of someone who’d already decided to like you.
Jagger didn’t hesitate. “This is my girlfriend,” he said smoothly, drawing me closer, “Eden.”
Girlfriend.
The word echoed in my head, bigger than it had any right to be. There had been a bigger word once—wife. A ring slipped onto my finger in a small ceremony that felt less like a decision and more like momentum. Ryan had been familiar. Safe in the way small worlds can be safe.
Getting married hadn’t felt romantic so much as inevitable. The next step. The next box to check when you didn’t know there were other boxes.
And somewhere along the way, that word had grown heavy. What once had felt like security had slowly tightened into something that pressed down instead of lifted up.
This—standing here with Jagger’s hand steady at my back while he said girlfriend felt nothing like that. What was wrong with me that it somehow felt a million times more thrilling than being Ryan’s wife ever had?
I swallowed down the guilt suddenly churning in my chest and worked on keeping my face calm so that no one could see the storm that had just moved through me.
Riley’s smile widened. “Eden,” she repeated, like she was tasting the name and liking how it sounded. “Finally.”
Before I could figure out what to say—Hi, nice to meet you, please don’t hate me—she closed the distance in two steps and pulled me into a hug.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I murmured, really meaning it.
She pulled away but kept one hand on my arm, squeezing lightly. “Jace has been asking about you every five minutes. He’s down on the field pretending to focus, but trust me—he’s counting the seconds until the game’s over so he can meet you himself.”
I nodded, my nerves flaring all over again. Ryan and I hadn’t grown up with siblings, so the idea of meeting someone’s brother already felt like a milestone. Meeting Jagger’s brother felt like stepping onto a stage when I wasn’t sure about the lines.
“Jace Thatcher, what the hell was that route?!” Natalie screamed. “You saw him coming—get your head around and break that tackle! Don’t let some safety punk you like that! Get up and show him who’s got the speed!”
I glanced down to where number 77, Jace, was on the ground. He pushed himself up, shaking his head like he was clearing stars. Jace’s helmet tilted, and I swear he looked up at our suite, even though there was no way he could hear her.
Natalie dropped back into her seat, breathing hard. “Idiot,” she muttered, but there was affection under the bite. “Always thinks he can outrun the hit. One day he’s gonna learn the hard way.”
“You met Natalie.” Riley smirked, apparently unbothered that Natalie had turned her fury to Jace. “And that’s Casey, Parker Davis’s wife—he’s the quarterback.”
Casey grinned at me. “Welcome to the madness.”
A whistle shrieked across the field, and the crowd shifted in unison, anticipation tightening the air.
The ball snapped, and everything moved at once.
Jace exploded off the line, cutting across the field in a smooth, aggressive arc.
The quarterback launched the ball high, and for a suspended second it seemed to hang against the sky before dropping straight into Jace’s waiting hands.
He caught it, and the stadium detonated.
Everyone in the suite shot to their feet as if pulled by the same invisible string.
Natalie screamed first, her voice slicing through the roar, while Casey clapped hard, her composure breaking just enough to show how much it meant.
Riley laughed and grabbed my arm as she joined in.
Jagger clapped once and put his fist in the air, his grin unmistakable as he watched his brother sprint into the end zone. I found myself clapping, too, laughing without thinking . . . pulled into the energy whether I fully understood what was happening or not.
Natalie leaned over the railing again, triumphant. “That’s how you finish a fucking route!” she shouted.
As if the universe had decided that wasn’t chaotic enough, her phone began buzzing in her hand. She glanced at the screen and, without missing a beat, swiped to answer. “You’re late,” she said, flipping it to FaceTime.
I only half paid attention at first. And then I looked and did a double take so sharp it nearly gave me whiplash.
The face filling her screen was unmistakable—dark hair, devastating jawline, cinematic bone structure that had probably funded at least three production studios. I’d seen that face on billboards. On red carpet highlight reels. On magazine covers in grocery store checkout lines.
Easton Maddox.
The Easton Maddox.
“Did we score?” Easton demanded through the speaker, his voice distorted slightly by the stadium noise.
“Yes,” Natalie said happily. “Because I yelled at them.”
“Breathe,” Riley murmured, patting my shoulder as she clearly clocked the fact that I was seconds away from short-circuiting.
“Is that—” I gasped.
“Yes, it is,” Riley said, entirely too amused.
“But—”
“That’s Natalie’s husband,” she explained calmly, like she wasn’t confirming that a literal A-list movie star was casually FaceTiming from someone’s pocket.
Natalie turned the phone toward me. “Say hi to Jagger’s girlfriend, babe.”
Easton shifted closer to the camera, and for a second it felt like he was looking straight at me through the screen. He smiled in that charming, practiced way that made women all over the world faint.
“Hi,” he said warmly. “Nice to meet you.”
My brain attempted to reboot again.
“Hi,” I managed, praying I didn’t sound like a malfunctioning robot.
Jagger reached over without a word, his hand closing around Natalie’s wrist. He gently but firmly turned the phone back toward her, cutting off Easton’s view of me. “I think we’ve had enough of that,” he said dryly.
All the women dissolved into laughter.
Jagger used the moment to slide behind me, his arms banding around my waist as he pulled me back against his chest. His mouth found the side of my neck, and he bit down gently, his teeth grazing skin just hard enough to send a shiver racing down my spine. “Mine,” he murmured.
I melted into him without thinking.
Across the small cluster of seats, Casey caught my eye and winked. One perfectly arched brow lifted playfully as she mouthed Hot, then doubled down with an exaggerated second wink, her grin unapologetically mischievous.
Heat flooded my face again, and I returned her wink before the crowd’s screams brought my attention back to the field.
A giant tiger was sprinting across the field, waving a flag and hyping up the crowd with exaggerated enthusiasm. The orange-and-white mascot leapt, spun, and pounded on its chest while the audience roared approval.
“Go FiFi!” Natalie screamed. Riley and Casey started cheering as well.
“That’s Ophelia. She’s married to Matty Adler, Tennessee’s tight end and Jace’s other best friend,” Jagger explained.
“And she’s the team mascot?” I asked, watching as she did an impressive backflip.
“It’s a very long and fun story,” Riley said, waggling her eyebrows at us.
That sounded interesting.
Jagger’s fingers brushed against mine. “What are you thinking right now?” he murmured.
I looked out over the stadium again.
“I can’t believe how little I’ve done in my life,” I admitted.
He frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”
“Before you . . . I’d never been to a sports game of any type. I’d never flown before. I’d never even eaten at a freaking buffet, expensive or a Golden Corral.” I gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “I haven’t done anything.”
The noise of the stadium continued around us, but it felt distant suddenly.
Jagger turned me toward him fully, and he lifted my face slightly. “We’ll fix that.”
I swallowed. “Fix it?”
“I’ll show you everything,” he said.
The certainty in his voice made my chest tighten.
“Everything?” I asked.
“Everything,” he repeated. “Games. Cities. Concerts. Food. Anything you think you’ve missed.”
The crowd roared as Parker scored, but I couldn’t look away from Jagger and the way he was watching me like I was the event worth attending.
“That’s an awfully big promise,” I told him.
He smirked. “I think we both know by now that I don’t do small.”
***
Jagger
“Hey, Jagger-meister, I’ve got one,” Jace called across the table, obviously completely forgetting the part where I’d told him not to embarrass me in front of Eden.
“No. Absolutely not,” said Matty immediately.
“What does he have?” Eden asked, and the whole table groaned because there was no stopping him now.
“Just get it over with,” I told Jace, rolling my eyes.
“That was very princely of you,” he responded, and now I was just thankful he hadn’t added crime prince to that sentence, since apparently he was on a roll.
“Why did the witch go commando?” Jace asked. No one said anything, and he scoffed, clearly offended. “To get a better grip on her broom, of course.”
The table was crickets.
Riley patted Jace’s arm like he was a toddler who had just proudly shown her a stick-figure drawing. “That was very funny,” she soothed.
“It was layered,” Jace insisted. “There was wordplay.”
“Yes, you’re completely right,” she said, shooting Eden a wink.
“There was actually only trauma,” Matty corrected her.
Eden made a strangled sound next to me, halfway between a laugh and secondhand embarrassment. I felt her shoulders shaking.
Jace pointed at her triumphantly. “See? She gets it.”
“She’s being polite,” Casey said sweetly.
Natalie leaned back in her chair. “I’m filing that under Reasons Riley deserves sainthood.”
Riley beamed like this was a compliment.
Jace looked wounded. “You people have no appreciation for high art.”
“You said broom,” Matty deadpanned.
“It was metaphorical! I was referring to—” Before he could continue that pleasant little thought, Parker, Casey’s husband, smacked a hand across Jace’s mouth, cutting him off.
“If you lick me again, there will be repercussions,” Parker said, staring Jace down for a second daringly, before removing his hand.
Natalie leaned across the table toward Eden. “For the record, this is very normal. He gets worse after dessert.”
“I do not,” Jace growled.
“You absolutely do,” Matty and Ophelia said in unison.
Eden was openly laughing now, her head tipped slightly toward me, her eyes bright in a way that did something violent to my chest.
Jace watched her for a second, then looked at me slowly.
“Oh,” he said.
“No,” I warned.
“Ohhh,” he repeated, dragging it out.
Riley slapped a hand over his mouth before he could continue. “We are not doing this.”
Casey lifted her glass. “To Eden. May she survive us.”
“To Eden,” Natalie echoed.
Everyone raised their glasses.
I slid my hand over hers under the table, lacing our fingers together.
Jace pulled Riley’s hand away from his mouth just long enough to grin at her. “Welcome to the family.”
And for once, I didn’t even argue with him.