Chapter 16
Grayson
There are at least six reasons why bringing Carly to the CU campus is a bad idea.
Seven, if I count the fact that I’ve barely looked her in the eye since Tuesday night, and maybe eight, because I came twice last night just to the memory of hearing her weakly say my name like it was going to stop me.
Still, when Halsey actually takes Penelope for the day without canceling and Maddox texts that Coach Ramirez is off sick and he needs help having the Sunday team run drills at CU, I hear myself telling Carly to come with me before I fully think it through.
Part of it is because she’s been busting her ass on the collegiate line and the NFL concepts, and she deserves to see people besides herself actually wearing it, and part of it is because I want to see her face when she does.
I try not to think of that reason too hard.
The campus is blindingly bright with the slanted late-morning sun, the cold biting through my jacket. Students mingle on the sidewalk in clusters, backpacks bouncing, coffee cups in hand, a handful of eyes watching as I round the Aston Martin to offer her a hand getting out.
Carly gratefully accepts and immediately goes a little still when I pull her upright, the faux fur on her jacket blowing in the breeze, her leggings and tight, V-neck long sleeve definitely not enough for the weather.
“What?” I ask.
She turns in a slow circle, taking it all in — the stadium in the distance, the students, the bookstore windows, the black-and-gold everywhere. “This is weird.”
“Why?”
Her mouth quirks at the corner. “Good weird. I haven’t been back here since graduation.” She gestures vaguely between me and the athletic complex. “And I’m here with you, of all people.”
We walk across campus toward the bookstore, and I keep her close more out of habit than intention, hand brushing the small of her back once when a group of guys barrels past too fast. She glances up at me. I pretend I don’t notice.
Inside the campus store, she stops dead.
Right there by the front display are three mannequins in pieces from the line she designed when she first got hired.
Clean black training pullovers, fitted quarter-zips, the women’s cut leggings with the gold side panel I’d seen in the notes that she’d fought for, even the cropped crew she swore would sell if we stopped underestimating female fans.
It did.
It sold out twice.
“Oh my God,” she breathes.
I lean a hip against a display table and watch her instead of the clothes. “Recognize anything?”
Her eyes widen. “It’s all still here. I designed these two and a half years ago.”
“They kept selling.” I shrug. "So we kept producing. Your line outperforms in every single campus we supply."
“That’s... crazy.”
She says it absently, already moving closer, fingertips hovering over the sleeve of one of the pullovers like she can’t quite believe it’s real.
Then she spots two girls near the register wearing the cropped crew and actually laughs.
It’s not the careful version I’m used to, not the polite little chuckle at a bad joke at work, not the one she usually uses around me.
It’s bright and disbelieving, her hands coming up to cover her mouth like she wants to hide it and she can’t.
Something warm and dangerous blooms in my chest as I watch her.
I like making her happy.
That’s a problem. I know it the moment the thought hits me.
But the bigger problem is that she’s beautiful when she forgets to guard herself, when she gets so excited that her whole body reacts, and I want to keep seeing that.
She turns to me, eyes shining. “They’re actually wearing it.”
I huff a laugh. “That is generally how clothing works, yeah.”
Her hand swipes out, smacking me gently in the chest. “You know what I mean.”
It takes far too much effort not to grab her hand and keep it there.
After the store, I take her down to the field where a few players are already filtering in.
Her designs litter the field — hoodies, quarterzips, training shorts over leggings, branded beanies.
A receiver jogs past in one of the longsleeve compression tops from her line and Carly physically lights up again.
“Okay,” she says, half to herself. “This is insane.”
By the time Maddox joins us near the sideline, Carly’s still taking everything in with the kind of wonder that makes me want to keep surprising her just to watch her react.
Maddox claps me on the shoulder, then grins at her. “So this is the famous designer and nanny I keep hearing about.”
Carly laughs and offers her hand. “That sounds more impressive than it is.”
Maddox shakes it. “Gray’s been bitching about work shit but only ever has positive things to say about you, so I’d say you’re doing pretty well.”
“I never bitch,” I grunt, rolling my eyes.
“You do," he grins. “Constantly.”
Practice starts. It should be simple, should be standard, the kind of thing Maddox and I are good at. But it’s not.
Carly stands with us near the sideline in her coat and sneakers, hair moving in the wind, asking smart questions about fabrics and player preferences and what parts of their attire tends to break fastest during games or practice. She’s genuinely interested, which the guys clock immediately.
And because they’re nineteen to twenty-two and apparently share one collective brain cell, they also clock that she’s hot.
I catch it in pieces at first. Lingering looks, elbows nudged into ribs, one of the defensive backs nearly missing his turn in a route drill because he’s too busy looking toward the sideline.
“Eyes on the field, Brant,” I bark.
He jerks and gets moving.
Maddox shoots me a look but says nothing.
Good.
A few minutes later, Carly laughs at something one of the equipment managers says, and two wide receivers glance over at the sound like fucking meerkats.
My jaw aches from how much it’s making me grind my teeth.
This is ridiculous. She’s just standing there, being friendly, being herself. It’s not her fault half the male population seems to react like she’s fucking naked in front of them, but I don’t enjoy it.
I enjoy it even less when one of the younger guys jogs past, his eyes locked on her. “Damn,” he says, quiet but not nearly quiet enough.
“Back on the line,” I snap.
He startles. “Yes, sir.”
Carly glances at me, brows pinching faintly, but I’m already blowing the whistle and sending them into the next set.
Maddox moves in closer. “You good?”
“Fine.”
He watches me for one long second. “Right.”
I ignore him.
The real problem starts near the end of practice.
We break for water, and Carly, being Carly, wanders a little closer when a couple of players ask her about the gear. She starts answering, smiling, clearly thrilled they care enough to ask.
I’m halfway across the field when I hear one of them say, “Did you design what you’re wearing, too? I’ve seen that shirt online, but it had the CU logo.”
She grins. “Yeah. I get to keep the prototypes.”
“Damn,” another one says. “You always come out and personally model it, or is today special?”
A couple of them snicker.
She doesn’t seem to catch the angle right away. Of course she doesn’t. She’s too busy being excited that people want to talk to her about her designs.
“Break’s over,” I interrupt before she can respond.
The group disperses instantly.
One of them lingers half a beat too long, all college swagger and stupidity. “Sorry, man. Didn’t realize you were hitting that.”
The silence hangs, and I swear to god I can feel my eye twitching.
“Jesus Christ,” Maddox mutters somewhere behind me.
I take one step toward the kid. “Go to the cones,” I say.
He blinks. “What?”
“Suicides. Now. Ten sets. More if you open your mouth again.”
His face drains. “Shit, I was just—”
“Fifteen.”
He goes. Fast.
Carly is quiet beside me.
I drag a hand over my mouth and stare out at the field, trying to get my temper back under control before I do something even dumber.
“This was probably a mistake,” I mutter. When I feel her gaze on me and look, she’s watching me with that unreadable expression she gets when she’s thinking harder than she wants me to know.
“What was?” she asks.
“Bringing you.”
Her brows pull together. “Because some college guys acted like college guys?”
“Yeah.”
“You know I can handle comments from twenty-year-olds, right?”
“I know.”
She huffs a breath. “Do you? You seemed annoyed about it.”
My tongue presses to my molars, my brain trying to keep the words that claw up my throat down. I don’t want to admit I didn’t like it, don’t want to admit that it made me angry in ways I’m all too familiar with.
Cold air moves between us, her hair lifting lightly in the wind. She’s looking at me like she wants an answer I’m not interested in giving.
The smart move is to say yes, I’m aware that she’s capable of dealing with comments. The smart move is to keep walking. The smart move is one I stopped being good at the moment she stepped foot in my home.
“I didn’t like it,” I rasp, admitting defeat to myself.
The way she watches me, like she’s trying to figure out a riddle, is almost unnerving. “Why?”
I should lie. “Plenty of reasons.”
“That’s not an answer,” she scoffs.
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
She takes a step toward me, and I stiffen. “Why are you being weird?”
I laugh once, short and humorless. “I’m being weird?”
“Yeah, you are.” She crosses her arms over her chest, looking up at me like she expects me to give some kind of meaningful explanation. “You’ve been in a mood since we got on the field, and now I’m somehow the problem.”
“I didn’t say you were the problem.”
“You’re sure as hell acting like it.”
My jaw clenches, aching worse. “I said I didn’t like it. That’s it.”
“And I asked why.”
I look away for half a second, out toward the field, then back at her. “Drop it, Carly.”
Her eyes flash. “No.”
Of course she won’t. Of course she pushes me, looks at me like I owe her honesty when I can barely stand being inside my own head with it. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“You do.”
I turn to her fully, my hand flexing, frustration bleeding in more than it should. “Stop,” I warn, taking a step toward her. “Just fucking stop.”
“No—”
I glance past her first, toward Maddox. His back is to us, attention on the drill at the far end of the field. The team is preoccupied. The kid is still running suicides.
I close the distance in half a second, grab her jaw, and press my mouth to hers with every bit of irritation pouring into the stupid, thoughtless, angry gesture. It’s not gentle, not romantic, not anything I want it to be, and it’s over before I let it morph into anything else.
But I’m fed up with the players looking at her, fed up with myself for caring, fed up with this constant push and pull with her that fucks with my brain every time she’s within arm’s reach.
I tell myself I pull away because I’ve come to my senses, but I know damn well that I pull away because I don’t want them seeing.
She freezes under my hand, her breath fogging between us. But then she pulls back and out of my grip, her eyes going wide as saucers.
The field keeps moving around us, a whistle blowing, someone bleating about being tired.
But she’s staring at me like I’ve just lost my goddamn mind. It’s probably warranted.
Her voice is low when it comes. “What the hell was that?”
I open my mouth, but nothing actually useful comes to mind. It’s all just a cacophony in my own head of I fucked up, I crossed the line again, I lost my temper, I shouldn’t have done that.
Behind her, Maddox barks at somebody to move their ass.
She scoffs in irritation, her gaze shifting to the field briefly, but it looks like she’s somewhere entirely different in her head. “You’re doing a real good job keeping this professional.”