Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Savannah
July
When I get to the front door, I knock twice and ring the bell for good measure. I should have asked Brayden to mail me a key. I can’t hear anyone walking around inside. It’s possible he forgot I was coming by the house.
So I knock. And wait. And knock. And wait. Text an impatient I’m outside that gets marked delivered but not read.
“Brayden—” I call, in a tone that’s vastly more what the fuck than newlywed dopily in love. I’ll work on my tone just as soon as I can get out of this damn heat.
Finally, after a solid five minutes, I try the door.
The knob turns. It swings open. I resist the urge to yell in frustration, too grateful for the coolness of air conditioning in my face. Once I get inside and unpacked, the first thing I’m doing is ordering one of those little portable misting fans.
I prop open the door with my foot and haul in one suitcase and then the other.
From the outside, the house looked like a tacky McMansion, with the windows all different from one another.
Inside it looks…blank. No pictures on the walls.
No decorations besides the furniture, which is mostly white and metal.
Light bounces off the walls, making my head throb.
“Brayden?” I call. No answer. He might be asleep. Or passed out. Better an absent roommate than the man who put a lock around my neck and breathed hot over my skin.
Fine. If he doesn’t want to pick me up at the airport or haul my luggage, then he can’t be mad if I get myself up to…
whatever bedroom I’m going to be sleeping in.
Not his. I do a quick spin around the first floor: Living room with a cream-colored couch.
Dining room with a glass and chrome table.
Kitchen that, from the look of it, has never seen a meal.
I return to the foyer and examine the high staircase that leads up the second floor.
That must be where the bedrooms are. My suitcases aren’t that heavy.
I made it all the way from California: I can make it up a few more stairs.
I pick up the bag, lug it up one riser. Oof as I suck in a breath. Ouch as it bangs against my shin. Stop. Breathe. Repeat. Oof, ouch, oof, ouch, until I’m halfway up the stairs and completely out of breath.
I go to the gym regularly, mostly for cardio and Pilates, but I don’t lift anything as heavy as this suitcase on a regular basis. That’s what bellhops are for. So much can be solved by a cash tip or looking helpless next to the nearest man.
No, I’m not helpless. I can do this. I got this far. I breathe in and prepare to get my suitcase up to the landing, when Brayden emerges from the upstairs hallway…in a towel.
His hair drips onto the wide beam of his shoulders.
His face and chest are still flushed from steam.
The towel circling his waist is tucked hastily, like it might come loose at any moment.
If I focus on those details, I won’t stare at the rest of him—not the cut of his waist or the broad muscles of his chest or those little divots above his hips.
Or I won’t stare at him…much. “I, uh, was ringing the bell,” I say, ripping my gaze from his chest to his face.
“I was in the shower.”
“Yeah, I got that.” You could have let me know the front door was unlocked. Helping him improve his image didn’t mean getting treated like a doormat for two years. “The team sent a car to the airport.” I let that sink in for a second, then add, “For your new teammate. He gave me a ride.”
A muscle in Brayden’s jaw spasms. “Huh.” Then he grasps the towel in one hand and marches down the stairs, picks my suitcase up one-handed, and doesn’t wait for me to follow.
Upstairs, the house looks no more lived in than the first floor. Undecorated walls, carpet that smells brand new. “Did you just move in?” I ask.
“Been here all season.”
Meaning…he must like the house this way. Baseball players travel all the time. Maybe he just hasn’t had the chance to do much with the place.
I follow him down the hallway, past what was clearly his room, the open door revealing an unmade bed with deep blue sheets.
For a minute, I get a flash of what he might look like against those, his eyes in the dark, hooded and blazing.
Quickly, I replace that thought with a more realistic one: Brayden, with however many women have seen him on those sheets.
The door after that is shut. Brayden drops my suitcase in front of it, then ducks into his room, pulling the door shut behind him. Is that it…? But he emerges a second later in a T-shirt and a loose set of gray joggers.
He opens the door next to his room. A guest bedroom from the look of it—new furniture all in a matching set. Clean beige carpeting, dark curtains over the windows. It’s perfect. Except there’s a door installed along one wall that must lead into...
Brayden’s room. So this isn’t next to his. It connects. Just one thin door between us. I eye the handle—it has one of those little push-button locks that I never quite trust.
“People will notice we’re in separate bedrooms,” I say.
“You want to sleep with me?”
“Absolutely not.” I glance around. I can make this work. Maybe. Probably. Possibly. My head gives a throb. “The bed’s nice.”
Brayden shrugs. “Decorator.”
Right. Of course. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who spends time pondering headboards. “Did the decorator not care about decorating the walls?”
That gets his frown, like he hasn’t noticed that a house should be more than just a place to pass out. “You good to go from here?”
“What time will your parents be here?” I ask.
His expression goes blank. “Whenever they get here.” And then he walks out and shuts out the door behind him.
I study the walls around me. This is where I live now.
I’ve traveled all over with my dad—flying private to various business meetings.
Winters in Aspen, spring in Paris, summers wherever I could point on a map and tell him I wanted to go.
But somehow, in all that traveling, I’ve never felt farther from home.
Two hours later, I’m unpacked, showered, re-made-up.
When I look in the bathroom mirror, the person there looks almost like a professional baseball player’s wife.
I have no idea what, if anything, Brayden has told his parents about me.
“Hi, I’m Savannah, your new daughter-in-law! ” I practice saying. “Surprise!”
I pull out my phone, type a text to Victoria. How do I survive meeting my fake husband’s very real parents? Erase that. Retype a message.
Me: How do I impress someone’s parents?
Victoria: Be smart and cultured and beautiful. So be yourself (kiss emoji). How’s Atlanta?
Me: It’s…
Hot and full of hot ballplayers. One of whom is a doorway away from me—too close. The other of whom is probably moving into a hotel room or new rental—too far.
Me: Exciting
Which it is, judging by the nervous beat of my heart in my chest. Victoria is always there for me, except right now she’s on the other side of the country, with three boyfriends and a successful adult content channel that takes up most of her time.
For the first time it really hits me that I’m not just far from home: I’m completely alone.
I want to text someone else: other friends, Cherri. Asher. No, we just met. We aren’t friends. He’s Brayden’s teammate and I’m Brayden’s wife. I shouldn’t, but that doesn’t stop me from pulling up his number.
Hey, it’s Savannah. No, that sounds weird. Fake casual.
Is Atlanta always this hot? No, I’m not going to text about the weather.
I got in the house. Which makes it sound like an ordeal, which it was.
Finally, I erase all of those and lock my phone. Asher is probably busy, and besides, he’s definitely not thinking about me.
“You can do this,” I say to the mirror, even if the woman in it still looks skeptical.
But this isn’t any different from watching my father negotiate a business deal.
I roll my shoulders a few times. Take a tube of lipstick and scrawl You got this in the corner of the mirror.
Corny, sure, but it makes me feel a little better.
I do got this—or at least I can probably pretend for an hour or so.
So I tap my knuckles against the mirror and armor myself with a smile, then descend the stairs to where voices are already rising from the living room.
In the intervening few hours, Brayden changed too, out of his joggers and into a collared shirt and pants still creased from a dry cleaners’ iron.
His hair is slicked neatly. He’s holding a glass of brown liquor.
The only indication anything is amiss is the slight peek of white at his knuckles and the silence in the room like I’ve interrupted an argument.
He smiles when he sees me—not the sharp Brayden grin but something lovesick bordering on dopey. At least he’s a good actor. “You look nice,” he says.
“I could say the same to you.” I turn to the older couple standing near him. “Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth, it’s so nice to meet you. Brayden’s told me so much about you.” Which is true, not in words so much as the line of tension he gets around his mouth every time he mentions his family.
Whatever I expected, they appear…normal.
His father—Brad, according to Wikipedia—is an older version of Brayden and Blake, with blond hair daubed gray at his temples and the look of a former athlete who now spends a lot of his time sitting down.
What Brayden might look like in thirty years.
Not that you’ll be around to see that. Like his son, he’s holding a glass with several fingers of liquor—meaning either he pours with a heavier hand, or Brayden is already deep into his drink.
Brad doesn’t introduce himself. In fact, he barely looks at me.