6. The One Where It All Goes To Shit
6
The One Where It All Goes To Shit
OLIVER
Paxton Rhodes’ bright blue Ford Raptor pulled into Greyson and Alice’s driveway about twenty minutes after my brother left me standing like a statue in my office. I eventually gave up on my coffee in favor of a shower. Like if I scrubbed the scent of her off my skin, I might actually be man enough to make the right goddamn decision. Because her scent alone was enough to make me fold.
Asshole .
The irony was, I’d confronted him after he wrestled Alice into agreeing to marry him. But it wasn’t the same. Alice was his direct employee—and she’d fucking hated him.
That wasn’t us. Had never been us. Leighton clicked into my life like she’d always been there, a piece I hadn’t realized was missing. She became one of my best damn friends. And she was, hands down, the most radiant woman I’d ever seen.
Coming from a guy who grew up around the Emerald Bay model circuit, that was saying something.
But she wasn’t like them. No hate to the women who kept our city's cosmetic surgeons busy, but Leighton was their polar opposite—soft in all the right places, with an expressive forehead and a smile that could blind a man. She was just as likely to post a video of her Jeep kicking up desert dust as she was to snap a sun-drenched beach selfie. And I fucking loved it. She breathed life into this house without even trying.
But…
A great deal of that life was the joy she brought my kids. Especially Mattie.
I sat watching my little girl piece together a three-D magnetic puzzle that made my brain hurt just looking at it. I wasn’t sure if she’d build rockets or run a company someday, but I knew she’d be brilliant at either. Mostly, I just wanted her to be happy. Healthy. Ideally now , not ten years from now when she was unraveling all the damage we’d done through years of bullshit with Carly.
A day that had started on cloud nine had abruptly dropped off a cliff. I felt like Wile E. Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon—only instead of an anvil, it was my older brother and his ruthless logic.
Leighton didn’t strike me as the type who would just walk away from us.
Them.
From them , I corrected internally.
But she also did everything at full volume. No halfway. No hedging. It was all or nothing. Which made her addictive as hell. But if I messed this up—if sex was what broke us—would she pull out with the same intensity she’d come in with?
Fuck.
What the hell had I been thinking? Wrong head, idiot.
I palmed my face and glanced between Mattie and the Raptor parked across the street.
Clearing my throat, I asked, “Who’s in the mood for pancakes?”
“We just ate, Daddy,” Mattie replied, not looking up from her puzzle.
“Yeah, but Auntie Alice makes the best syrup—with the butter already melted in. I can make room for one more if you guys wanna crash Saturday brunch.”
Her eyes flicked up, narrowing suspiciously. Beau, however, let out a cheerful yippee and made a beeline for the front door.
“To Uncle Grey’s?”
I nodded. Mattie slowly set down her tiles with surgical precision. Thankfully, her hesitation melted in the foyer. The moment her Converse were tied, she was out the door, racing after her little brother.
“Beautiful day,” I noted as I approached Leighton, where she stood on the beach watching the waves behind Greyson’s place. After a round of hellos and making sure the kids were happily situated with Alice, I wandered outside to find her. Maybe it was the fisherman’s kid in her, but when she was thinking, she was always by the water. Then again, maybe it was just a coast-baby thing. I was the same.
“The best,” she agreed, but when she turned to face me, it wasn’t joy I saw. It was worry. Fuck, I wanted to kiss it right off her face.
“Not hungry?”
“A little nauseous.”
“Yes, well—a gallon of vodka will do that.”
She snorted, a genuine smile lighting up her face. “Come on, I wasn’t that bad.”
“No,” I said, scoffing as I bumped her elbow with mine. “But I was hoping that look on your face was just a hangover, and not my doing.”
“Ollie,” she chided, looping her arm through mine. “You’re not the cause of my premature grays.”
“Grays?” I echoed, eyeing her messy bun, frizz-curls falling over her lightly freckled nose. The breeze tossed one across her cheek, and it took every ounce of restraint not to tuck it behind her ear. I followed her gaze out to the ocean, searching the horizon like maybe some sign would appear to tell me I hadn’t just broken everything. Again.
I let the silence stretch too long before finally asking, “Whatcha thinking, Trouble?”
She swallowed. Kept her eyes on the water a beat longer before turning toward me. “I’m thinking you seem... troubled .”
“Punny.”
“I try.” She smiled, then tugged gently on my arm. “Did I mess up? Did I ruin this?”
Fear. That was fear in her eyes.
Without thinking, I cupped her face, bending just enough to meet her gaze. “God, no, Leigh. Takes two to tango, beautiful.” I wasn’t sure where to start, so I just hedged, “It’s not?—”
“But it is,” she interrupted, easing my hands from her face with practiced grace. Like she already knew what I was going to say. Like she’d seen the wheels turning and was sparing me the burden of voicing it.
“It’s fine, Ollie. Really. I didn’t expect anything from you. Thanks for...showing me a good time. I had fun.”
Knife. Heart.
“Fun?” I scoffed. “You say that like I took you to Disneyland, not?—”
“Do me a favor,” she said, arching a perfectly skeptical brow, “and save the post-game analysis for Coach Sartori.”
“Probably a good plan,” I muttered.
If there had ever been a metaphorical elephant in a room, it had never sat so squarely on my chest.
She pursed her lips, rocked on her heels, and then turned to me with a smile I hated—too polished to be real.
“Leigh, you’re?—”
“Still me,” she said quickly. “Are we still...us?”
“Always,” I said, ignoring the way the word scraped my throat raw.
One time? I finally got to kiss the girl of my dreams and it was going to be a one-time thing? Fuck. Me.
“We have to be, right?”
“Maybe it’ll be easier, now that we got it out of our system?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. There was no getting Leighton Rhodes out of my system. She lived under my skin. Every breathy laugh and moan burned into my memory.
“Me, you, pizza, tunes with Tillie. Little Beau. Staggering sexual charisma aside, it works, right?”
I laughed harder, even as something inside me cracked. “That aside, yeah. I guess so. Only fools mess with what works.”
“Exactly!” she chirped, but I wasn’t the only one swallowing around that lump in my throat.
“I meant what I said earlier.”
“That only you could give me better orgasms than Obi? You know, I believe that.” She elbowed me and I grinned despite myself.
“No. That you were incredible. It wasn’t a mistake. I don’t regret it. Couldn’t.”
She nodded, her voice softer now. “But it can’t happen again?”
“Right.”
“Because the family dynamics would just be...”
“Weird,” I supplied.
“Can’t have that.” She rocked on her heels and held out her pinky. “Zero weirdness.”
“ You’re the weirdo. Don’t look at me .”
“Rude.”
I laughed and linked my pinky with hers, locking her in. “Is that legally binding, Rhodes?”
“You know it,” she said with a huff, letting me wrap an arm around her shoulders as the wind picked up.
“Leigh!” Alice’s voice cut across the yard. She and Grey stood side by side in their matching Lululemon, Jax behind them, Beau bouncing on his toes beside Alice. Mattie stood still, hands in her pockets. “You coming?”
“Be right up!” Leighton called, then turned to me with a soft smile. “Wanna take a walk? Alice finally feels good enough to move.”
“You want me to hang back?”
“I’d prefer you came.”
Maybe. Probably not. But I smiled anyway. “Lead the way, Trouble.”
And just like that, I watched the woman I’d dreamed about for months slip through my fingers like sand.
I spent the whole day regretting every word we’d said, bracing myself for her absence.
But I shouldn’t have bothered.
Because Monday night, the security system chirped—and before I could mope my way to the front door, Leighton Rhodes had kicked her shoes off and was bouncing barefoot across my foyer, holding two pizzas over her head like a goddamn champion.
“Hi, Ollie,” she muttered like an afterthought, already yelling, “Tillie!! Move your cute little ass!”
“ Leighton! ” I scolded.
“Oops. Sorry. Tillie!! Skedaddle your keister! Neon Purgatory’s new album dropped and I’ve waited all damn day to listen with you!”
“Leigh,” I warned, even as my grin split wide.
“Right, fuck—darn. I’ve waited all darn-tootin’ day to play it together!”
She hoisted her phone like a boombox, shoved the pizzas into my arms—and Jesus, were her hands made of iron? Those were scalding hot—and marched up the stairs like nothing had changed at all. Like we were still just...us.
* * *
Q-four is always a shit show, but this year was worse than most. Leighton had, in fact, stopped dropping by for the bulk of November. That—or I’d just been gone too much to see her. Since I hadn’t had a face-to-face with my kids in two weeks, the latter felt more likely.
Between holiday campaigns rolling out and final sign-offs on Black Friday launches, end-of-year meetings, charity galas, and next-year goal setting, I’d basically been drinking my calories since Halloween.
Add in our cousin Ellington—acting GM for the Bombers —and Coach Sartori waiting on my final okay for mid-season performance reviews, trades, and contracts, and I was cooked. Ellington handled most of it these days, but he still wanted me visible. Which was why I’d been guilted into appearing at this year’s Turkey Trot, our annual five-k fundraiser for youth sports.
Come Thanksgiving, I felt about as good as the dead bird Greyson’s chef was about to roast.
But I wasn’t the only one who looked like death warmed over.
When Leighton opened her door after my third knock, she gave a half-hearted smile before turning and slogging through the loft.
I peeled a scrap of paper off her shirt where it clung with static—some crumpled receipt. “Uh... Hey, Trouble. You okay?”
“Yeah,” she yawned, dragging herself toward the coffee machine. “Kaia, Alice, and I were up too late. Didn’t get home until two.”
“Oh shoot, I didn’t realize she was in town already.”
“Yep,” she said through another yawn. “Maverick gets in this morning.”
“Excited to see him. I, uh... figured you’d be ready to go, but you’re looking a little?—”
The glare she leveled at me shut my mouth on impact. She looked exhausted.
“Nothing a carafe of coffee can’t fix,” she mumbled, grabbing the carafe and filling it with filtered water, yawning as she did.
“You get any sleep?”
“Maybe? Some? I don’t know. I just can’t seem to feel rested lately.”
“You sick?”
“I don’t think so. Just... stressed.”
“Well. Splash some water on your face and pull yourself together—we have a race to win.”
“We?” she asked skeptically, arching a brow.
“Well, you . But you get the picture.” I, unfortunately, would be manning the registration booth with a few of our more charismatic players. As I watched her nearly fumble the carafe, I stepped forward, bracing a hand against her lower back and swiping the glass from her hand.
“Here. Let me help.”
“Mmkay. Thanks, Ols.”
“ Ols? ” I chuckled, watching as she rubbed her face with both palms, then gave her cheeks a slap like she could force herself awake. She pulled the coffee canister from the cabinet, but once she returned to the machine, her scowl deepened and she started flinging open drawers.
“Leigh.” Slam . “Leigh?”
“What?” she snapped, before catching herself. Her eyes shut tightly as she exhaled, then softened. “I’m sorry. I’m... anxious. Stressed. It’s fine. You’re fine.” Gentler this time: “What?”
“What are you looking for?”
“Out of filters.”
“Oh,” I said, deflating a little as I glanced at the now-full reservoir. “That’s alright. Get cleaned up, I’ll buy you a sludge cup on the way. My treat.”
“It’s fine,” she muttered, ripping paper towels off the roll and cramming them into a makeshift bowl before pouring the grounds directly on top. All I could think was... bleach. And extra fiber?
“Stop looking at me like that. Why is everyone giving me pity-eyes lately?”
“You just seem a little...” The daggers in her glare had me adjusting course. “...burnt out.”
“Not all of us can be Ollie the jolly billionaire,” she muttered, and something about the bitterness in her voice made my spine straighten. Leighton had never—not once—thrown my money in my face.
“Hey,” I said, stepping in closer, lowering my voice as I met her tired eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry.” She pressed her fingers to her sternum, rubbing lightly over that scar I’d kissed like a prayer only a month ago. When her eyes opened again, they were softer. “It’s not you. Terrible night. Let me wash it off and we’ll start over?”
I wanted to say we didn’t need to start over. That I was here if she needed me. But the little nod she gave me was so Alice-coded it shut me up. And just like that, she disappeared down the hall, and I heard the shower turn on.
Yikes .
What the hell happened at work last night?
I turned for the fridge to find her something warm before dragging her downtown—and stopped short.
Empty.
Like, truly empty. An expired tub of vegan yogurt. Half a bottle of creamer. Peanut butter.
I moved to the pantry. Same story. A few slices of plain sourdough, a couple cans of vegetables, an oversized bag of rice, and another of russet potatoes.
Shit.
I toasted the bread and spread some peanut butter across it before grabbing the honey and cinnamon from her spice rack. Then I sprinted out to the Bentley, snagged a couple bananas from my backseat snack stash, and sliced one up to layer on top. I poured her a cup of coffee and set both on the counter.
Trying to play it cool, I poured my own cup and wandered into the living room.
Which was a mistake.
That damn sectional. The same one where I’d first kissed her. Where I’d stripped her bare. Where I’d...
I was so caught up in the memory that I didn’t even see what I knocked off the armrest. Bending over, I picked up a small stack of envelopes—and froze.
I’m not usually a nosy fucker, but when the top envelope had a red FINAL NOTICE stamp, I tensed.
A credit union. Power bill. Her Visa.
Two of them had red slips inside. Past due.
Confusion buzzed down my spine, followed by something a hell of a lot sharper.
If she was struggling for money... why the hell wouldn’t she say anything?
When Leighton reappeared, skin dewy from the shower, hair braided back in two perfect rows, and wrapped in a track suit that would’ve had me drooling if I weren’t so preoccupied wondering what the fuck I’d missed in the last three weeks.
Her eyes flicked from her toast to me, then down to the stack of envelopes in my hand.
Her face paled.
“What the hell are these?”