Chapter Twenty Ruby
Chapter Twenty
Ruby
“I need to hit something,” I announced as soon as Griffin opened the door.
“I’ll volunteer as long as you don’t break my jaw.” He moved aside, tweaking the back of my ponytail. “I almost came to see you yesterday. I’m out of books. The cowboy one was steamy. I think I learned a few things.”
The teasing joke went straight over my head. He was shirtless and I hardly noticed, and if that wasn’t an indication of my foul mood, I don’t know what was.
With a sigh, I brushed past him, about to sling my gym bag onto the couch when I stopped short. Marcus was sprawled out on one section, hand on his chest and his eyes glued to the TV. He was shirtless, too, but I really didn’t care about that.
“Shhh,” he said. “This is a really good part.”
In theory, I knew what I was seeing, but I was wide-eyed and slack-jawed all the same.
“I know,” Griffin said. “I’m shocked he’s still here too. Can’t figure out how to get rid of him.”
“What the fuck?” I breathed.
“I’m trying to watch here!” Marcus yelled. “Do you mind?”
Griffin whistled. “She does swear when the situation warrants it. I like that more than I should.”
“Shut up,” Marcus hissed. “Go somewhere else. She just saved Rochester from the fire, and they’re in their pajamas. If I miss something good, I’ll never fucking forgive you.”
Griffin wrapped a hand around my elbow and gently steered me down the hallway off the kitchen, leading us toward Steven’s home gym. I lifted a hand and pointed dumbly back in the direction of the family room. “He’s . . . he’s watching Jane Eyre.”
“You’ve got us well and truly trained in finding period-appropriate seduction techniques, birdy.
He views it as a learning opportunity now.
” Griffin smacked my ass and grinned when I let out an indignant squeak.
“Oh, don’t pretend like you don’t love it.
” He crowded behind me as we walked, using my hips as handles to steer me into the room, dipping his head down to speak closer to my ear.
“If you’re a good girl and do all your exercises, I’ll spank you in the shower after I clean all your sweat off. ”
Turning my head to look up into his face, I arched my brow haughtily. “I walked into the house saying I needed to hit something, and this feels like the best course of action?”
“Workout. Sweat. Shower. Naked spanking.” He booped my nose. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t actually dredge up a shred of annoyance when he did it. “Can’t think of many other things that would turn my frown upside down quite like that.”
I rolled my eyes, but his mood was undeniably persuasive.
“Not even football?” I asked, easing myself onto the rubberized floor to go through some stretches.
Griffin joined me, his legs together in a straight line.
Quite easily, he hinged forward at the hip and wrapped his hands around the bottom of his feet, bringing his head down while he groaned through the hamstring stretch.
“Sometimes,” he said. “I love playing the game, but all the other shit that comes with it can be pretty overpowering.”
“Like what?”
“The press—they’re the worst.”
I hummed, taking the stretch deeper. “Lauren showed me an article from the fair. They totally skewed what you guys were doing.”
He laughed. “Yeah, they love doing that.”
My brow furrowed. “Doesn’t that bother you? I got so mad, and it wasn’t even about me.”
Griffin shrugged, his face carefully blank. “Every once in a while, yeah. But trying to fight is like that guy with the rock going uphill. What do they call that?”
“Sisyphus,” I answered. “Pushing the boulder up the hill. They’d call that a Sisyphean task.”
“That’s it. Not that I remember the story; I think I slept through that class a lot in college.”
“It was a punishment,” I said. “He was a horrible ruler. Sisyphus angered the gods by killing his guests as a show of power, and by cheating death. Once he was with Hades in the underworld, they cursed him to push a boulder up the side of a hill, only to have it slide back down every time it neared the top. He was doomed to repeat the same task for eternity as a consequence for his choices.”
Griffin eased out of his stretch and gave me a thoughtful look. “Yeah. That. Sounds pretty fucking miserable, doesn’t it? Doing the same thing over and over and never achieving what you want?”
“It does,” I agreed quietly. To varying degrees, we all fought that battle.
The literal definition of insanity—doing something the same way over and over and expecting different results.
With Griffin, for the first time in my life, I was choosing a different course of action, something wildly out of character.
And because of that deviation, because I broke a pattern formed by myself, I was finally getting the things I’d always wanted.
“I was like that in college,” he said, eyes firmly trained on his hands where they wrapped around his feet as he bent his legs in another stretch. “Wanted one thing. Never acted in the way that would get me what I wanted, over and over and over, and I could never figure out why it wasn’t working.”
“What did you want?” I asked.
He let out a quiet breath. “Respect.” His eyes landed on mine briefly, then moved away again.
I opened my mouth to respond, but he kept talking.
“I hate the league dynamics too. Constantly changing rules, even if they’re for a good reason, affects how we train and how we’ve been playing for years.
” He sat up, crossing an arm over his chest and holding it down with his other, his eyes focused elsewhere.
“My body can’t recover like it used to either.
I’m thirty-two, and most days after a game, I feel twenty years older than that. ”
I thought about all the times I’d changed the subject, unwilling to open up the neatly compartmentalized box where I’d kept the topic of my hand-me-down heart.
Was it the healthiest way to go through life?
Maybe not. But sometimes, it was also the only way you felt like you could move forward.
Coping mechanisms came in a million different shapes and sizes, and I was the last person to judge what his were.
I chewed briefly on my bottom lip, trying to decide how far I wanted to push.
Griffin had pushed me—gently, which still surprised me for the great big oaf he could be sometimes.
He didn’t bulldoze through my reserves; he simply listened and let me know how important it was that he didn’t make anything worse.
For a hard-to-define relationship, he’d stepped into that space in the absolute perfect way. Perfect for me, at least.
So I took a deep breath and held his gaze for a moment. “And you hate that your brother is there too.”
His eyes stayed fixed on mine. “And I hate that my brother is there too.” Griffin swallowed, his jaw flexing briefly. “Feels like pushing that fucking rock up the hill, you know? Everyone’s waiting for it to fall right back down to the bottom.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?” I asked.
Griffin blinked. “A couple years ago. We played his team. They won by three points after a bullshit holding penalty set them up for a last-minute field goal, and I wasn’t particularly gracious as a loser.”
“And before that?”
The dry, unamused laugh Griffin let out had my brows lowering.
“Before that,” he said slowly, “is not a very fun story.” He nudged my foot with his own. “We only have a couple days left, birdy. My brother’s ruined a lot of things, but I don’t want him ruining this.”
Right then.
It wasn’t a harsh reply, but I chewed on my bottom lip, brain churning over the possibility that I’d overstepped while we moved through a couple more stretches in companionable silence.
I moved into another position, noting the way his eyes tracked over my new sports bra.
It was another high-necked number—I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel comfortable putting my scar on display—but it left my back almost bare underneath a black mesh shirt, two straps crisscrossing in the middle of my spine.
Only a couple more days left, I thought, with a slight pang in my chest.
There were a dozen reasons why I should be thrilled at how this all had played out. More than that, even. And I still somehow found myself wanting.
I’m not ready, I wanted to yell, but I didn’t.
Can’t we have just a couple more days past that? I almost asked.
But I didn’t do that either.
There’s more to be learned here, I almost told him.
Not just the sex, but other things too. Just once, I wanted to know what he looked like when he was sleeping.
What his voice sounded like first thing in the morning.
What the skin on his chest smelled like when he wasn’t fresh out of the shower.
It was more than those superficial details, if I was being honest.
What was he like during a game? Was he sad after a loss? Who took care of him when he was sick? What made him and his brother hate each other so much? Maybe if I knew those things, then I’d feel more at ease with his whirlwind presence in my life.
What a mark he’d left on me, and he wasn’t even gone yet. A scar whose existence would be known only to me.
If I knew Griffin—the real, honest version of him, not what the press would have me believe—then I could make peace with only having him for a short time. Already he’d shown much more than he might have intended, and each glimpse simply amplified my desire for more.
More of everything, really.
I let out a slow breath, standing up and swinging my arms back and forth to loosen my back, then dropping my fingertips down to brush the floor. Griffin joined me, and it was my turn for lingering glances in the general vicinity of his chest and stomach too.