Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Julie
T he little voice stops us just as we step off the jetway into the Pittsburgh airport.
“Are you Asher Hansley?”
The little boy is about seven or eight, and he’s staring up at Asher with a mixture of awe and disbelief on his face. I smother a laugh at the look on the face of the man standing beside the boy who I assume is his father. Seems no boy of any age is immune to being starstruck by a famous athlete. During our two weeks away, I mostly forgot Asher is mega-famous. Except for a couple fans here and there, being away from Pittsburgh meant he could generally move around incognito. But now that we’re back, it seems like that quiet interlude is over. I haven’t really considered what it would be like to date someone famous, but I guess I better get used to it, and quick.
Asher immediately crouches down so he’s on the boy’s level.
“I sure am buddy. What’s your name?”
The boy’s grin lights up his entire face. “I’m Tommy. ”
Asher grins right back. “Nice to meet you, Tommy. You like football?”
“Yes! It’s my favorite. I play on a team, and I’m a quarterback too.”
Asher holds up his fist and Tommy bumps it with his. “Don’t tell my wide receivers I said this, but quarterback is the best position on the team.”
Tommy nods, eyes wide. “I’ll never tell,” he says solemnly. “But you’re totally right. Can we take a picture together? My friends at school are never going to believe I met you.”
“You bet.”
Asher puts his arm around the boy, and the dad takes the picture while my heart explodes from cuteness at their twin grins, and my ovaries start screaming at me to have this man’s babies. It’s a weird flex considering having kids has never been at the top of my to do list, but Asher Hansley has a way of making me consider all kinds of things I never have before.
Asher stands up and shakes the dad’s hand then turns back to Tommy. “I know it’s awhile from now, but how would you like to come to the home opener when the season starts again? If your dad gives me his phone number, I can have someone from the team call you and set it up.”
Tommy’s eyes widen again. “Really? Can I? Can we?” He looks up at his dad with a pleading expression on his face.
His dad chuckles. “Sure.” Then he turns to Asher. “Thanks for this. You made his day.”
“Anytime.” Asher high fives Tommy and puts the dad’s number in his phone to pass along to the Renegades PR people. When they walk away, he takes my hand and laces his fingers through mine as we follow the signs to the train that will take us to baggage claim.
“So, it turns out you’re, like, super famous.” I bump my shoulder with his .
He leans over and drops a kiss on my forehead. “Nah, Juliette. I’m just a simple guy from Colorado playing a little game.”
I snort out a laugh. “There’s nothing simple about getting stopped in airports by awestruck kids and their hero worshipping dads who look at you like you hung the moon. And having half the airport stare at you as you walk? That’s celebrity levels of famous, Hot Shot.”
He stops walking suddenly, pulling me out of the way of passersby and behind a column next to an empty gate, giving us the illusion of privacy. He spins us so my back is against the column, and he is standing in front of me, one hand planted next to my head, the other on my hip. The look on his face is serious, and his eyes bore into mine.
“We never talked about it…the fact that I’m kind of famous. It was easy to ignore while we were away, but we’re not away anymore. It’s not always the easiest life. I get stopped a lot and people take my picture and sometimes it ends up online or wherever. My fans are mostly awesome, and I’m used to it by now. But it just occurred to me that you maybe might not be so okay with being in the spotlight. Are you? Okay with it, I mean?”
I open my mouth to answer him, but he just plows on ahead.
“You don’t have to answer me right now, and maybe the middle of the airport isn’t the best place to have this conversation, but we haven’t even been back in Pittsburgh for ten minutes and I already got stopped and I’m thinking about it now, and I didn’t want to wait to ask you but now I’m thinking maybe I should have waited. Shit,” he mutters, face turning a little red.
Charmed by his uncharacteristic rambling but extremely in character concern for me and my feelings, I grab his face with both hands and kiss him. His other hand immediately moves to my waist. He deepens the kiss, and I pour my whole self into it. It doesn’t matter that we’re standing in the middle of a crowded airport and he is one of the most recognizable faces in the city. Or that a picture of this kiss will probably land on Instagram five minutes from now. This man is mine, and I don’t want him thinking for a second that I care about who knows it. My clients will just have to deal with it. Hell, it may even be good for business. When we break apart, Asher looks right and left, where there are at least four people gawking at the site of their beloved quarterback making out with a random girl in the middle of the airport, and then he turns back to me, a slow grin spreading across his face.
“So, I guess you’re okay with it?”
I huff out a laugh. “Yeah, Ash, I’m okay with it. This is your life. I love you means I love all of you, even the part that has strangers taking pictures of me in public places and not caring whether they get my good side. Will it take some getting used to? Probably. But I’ve always been good at figuring shit out.”
Asher kisses me again, hard and fast, and it has my entire body buzzing. “Baby, every side of you is your good side. I love you so damn much I think I need a new word for love. So, want to come to my house?” He tangles our fingers back together and looks at me with a hopeful smile.
I consider this. We never really talked about what happens now that we’re back. My mind flashes to my house. The one I spent months painstakingly decorating into what I thought the home of a successful lawyer should look like. After a week on the road and then a week in Asher’s warm and cozy family home, I suddenly realize I have no attachment to anything inside those walls. It may have only been a couple of weeks, but I think home might mean something different now.
“Sure, Hot Shot. Take me to your house.”
Asher
Julie cackles out a laugh when the car I hired to drive us from the airport back into the city pulls up in front of my house.
“What’s so funny?”
We climb out of the car, and she points to a house down the block. “I grew up right there.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Swear to God.” She laughs again. “Looks like we can walk to dinner tonight.”
I look down the street and then back at her. “Wait, your parents still live there?”
“Sure do. They’ve lived there since before Ben and I were born. I hope they never sell it. I love that house. This whole street, actually. Come to think of it, this street kind of reminds me of your parents’ street in Boulder.”
I grab her hand and lavish kisses on it, delighted by her. “Juliette we are so meant to be. I bought this house with my signing bonus before my rookie season. I came to Pittsburgh for training camp that summer and stayed in one of the furnished apartments downtown the team owns. The apartment was white and impersonal, and I was missing my family so much and was totally overwhelmed by how fast my life had changed. One day, one of the veterans had a team dinner, and he lived in this neighborhood. After dinner, I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to that condo, so I started walking. These streets reminded me so much of home that for the first time since I moved, I wasn’t homesick. I ended up right here in front of this house and there was a for sale sign in the yard. I called the number and bought it the next day.”
I look up and down the street, steeped in memories of the me who was so lonely, walking around the neighborhood, wondering what I had just gotten myself into. “It was definitely too big for just me, but something about the house spoke to me. I loved it on sight. Aside from my parents’ house in Boulder, it’s my favorite place.”
Julie leans against me, and I wrap an arm around her, staring up at the house while the driver takes our bags out of the car.
“It’s really beautiful,” she says.
“Come on, I’ll show you inside.”
I guide Julie up the front steps and when I fit my key into the lock, the rightness of walking through my front door with her is undeniable. We are barely over the threshold, and I already know the house feels different with her in it. I would almost say the house was waiting for her to come home, if I was someone who believed in that sort of thing.
“Wow, Ash,” Julie says, turning slowly to take it all in. “It’s gorgeous.”
I look around, seeing it through her eyes. The wide foyer, the cozy living room with vaulted ceilings and built in bookshelves, and the dining room I made less formal with a long farmhouse table and an art deco light fixture.
“Whoever decorated for you is brilliant. I should have hired them instead of the painfully expensive company who made my whole house white and boring.”
“Charlie and my mom decorated it for me,” I say absently, focusing more on the other thing she said. “You don’t like your house?”
She pauses for a second before speaking. “I used to like it. Or at least, I thought I did. I was going for perfect, and I guess that’s what I got. Except perfect means the furniture looks nice but is mostly uncomfortable, there’s no color except white and cream, and I can never relax there. I used to think that’s what I wanted but now…”
She trails off, and I feel like this is one of those enormous moments disguised as mundane, so I choose my words carefully.
“What do you think now?”
She looks around again, before turning back to me. “Now, I think maybe perfection is overrated, and I want a comfortable couch I can sink into to do something other than work.”
I understand how big of a deal it is for her to admit this, and I tread lightly when what I really want to do is beg her to move in with me and never leave.
“I have a really comfortable couch. You can share it with me.”
“I think I’d like that,” she says, before wandering down the hall into the kitchen. I trail after her and hear her laugh the second before I step through the kitchen door.
She’s grinning when she looks at me. “You really do have a soda fountain.”
“Would I lie about something as important as morning caffeine?”
“I just didn’t think soda fountains were a thing that people had in their kitchens.”
I reach over her head and pull a glass out of the cabinet, filling it with ice from the fridge dispenser and handing it to her. “Check out the left side of the fountain.”
She takes the glass and presses it against the dispenser, filling it with soda. When she tastes it, she laughs again, and the sound fills the room in the very best way. I want to make her laugh a million times a day for the rest of our lives.
“It’s Diet Pepsi. ”
“Sure is.”
“You filled the second tap with Diet Pepsi. Wait, how did you fill the second tap with Diet Pepsi when we just got back?”
I hop up to sit on the counter, enjoying watching her in my space. “I’m contracted with a concierge company that can do personal assistant type stuff. They sent someone to get the house ready and hired the people to come add your drink.”
“Oh, I’ve had clients with those. They always seem so handy.”
I shrug. “They can be. I like doing things for myself, so I’ve never needed an assistant the way some guys do. But during the season when I’m crazy busy and traveling a lot, it helps to have someone to call to be here when a plumber needs to get in or to stock my fridge when I’ve been away.”
“Or add Diet Pepsi to your soda fountain.”
I smile at her. “Or that. Or to track down a six-month supply of peppermint Hershey Kisses in February. Check that drawer.” I point to a drawer next to the fridge, and when she opens it, she gasps. It’s full of what I know is twenty bags of peppermint Hershey Kisses.
“We ate most of the ones we brought on the trip, so I thought we needed a re-stock.”
She looks at me in astonishment. “You are a wonderful man.”
“You got me addicted to them too. It was the least I could do after eating half of your stash.”
“What about your candy?”
I smirk at her. “Open the drawer below.”
She does, and she stares at the vast array of gummy candy filling the drawer. “I think this is my favorite place.”
“I’m counting on it being exactly that, Juliette.”
“I love your kitchen. I can’t cook for shit, but it’s the kind of kitchen I would want to cook in, if I could cook. ”
“Well, lucky for you I can cook, so you can sit your gorgeous ass on this counter and watch me cook for you right in this kitchen anytime you want.”
“It’s a deal. I’m impressed with your fancy espresso machine, too. I’ve never even seen you drink coffee.”
“I don’t, but you do. I bought it for you.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When did you buy that very fancy espresso machine that is sitting on your beautiful kitchen counter?”
“I don’t know, like four or five days ago maybe? I put it on the list I gave the concierge.” She looks a little baffled, so I reach out and snag her hand, pulling her in between my legs.
“Here’s the thing, Juliette. I want to be with you as much as I can. I know you have a house of your own and a big career and a whole life you have built, and we are going to have to figure out how to fit our lives together in a way that works for both of us. I want to do all that work with you, and I don’t want to skip any steps when it comes to you and me. I thought a good place to start was making sure I had everything in my house you needed to be comfortable when you’re here. Which, selfishly, I hope is a lot because I love you a lot and I want to be wherever you are.”
She kisses my cheek and grins. “I would have loved it here no matter what, but I love it even more with Diet Pepsi in the fountain, a drawer full of my favorite candy, and a fancy coffee machine I have no clue how to use on the counter.”
I drop a kiss on her nose. “I’m sure it comes with instructions. I’ll read them and give you the highlights.”
I hope off the counter and swing an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, we have a couple hours before dinner at your parents, and I still have to show you the most important room in the house. ”
She smirks at me. “Let me guess. Your bedroom?”
“You know it baby. I have a huge bed and the best mattress money can buy, and I can’t wait to get my hands all over you.”
Julie drops her voice an octave and whispers in my ear. “Well then you better run, Hot Shot. I don’t know if a couple of hours will be enough for all the things I want to do to you. And all the things I want you to do to me.”
All the blood in my body immediately rushes to my dick, which thickens behind the zipper of my jeans. Without another word, I scoop her up and run for the stairs, with her laughing hysterically all the way.