Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Savannah
He's home now. Early. Not drunk, seemingly. I sit up. I’m not wearing a bra, and I realize I’m just in a thin tank top. The same thing he saw me in last night, more or less, which feels different now, fully awake and mostly sober. “Hey,” I say as Brayden shuts the door.
“Sav, hey.” He kicks off his shoes, then comes into the living room, eyeing the couch and armchair before settling on the latter. “What’re you watching?” he asks after a minute.
I don’t even know. I glance at the screen. “Stable of Love.” A dating show with a wild conceit. Or would be wild if I wasn’t fake-married to a husband and fucking his teammate. Not fucking. Fucked, once, past tense. And not again. “I can change it.”
Brayden settles in the armchair, or settles for him, his hands positioned on his knees. “Nah, keep watching if you’re into it.”
I wasn’t really. But that’s impossible to explain given…
everything. So I watch the people on screen.
Everyone is beautiful and dramatic and very into sleeping with everyone else.
They’re doing some kind of challenge, but people keep sneaking off to hook up in various rooms of a sprawling ranch house.
Without my permission, my face starts heating again.
Brayden doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t said why he’s back.
Maybe he’s just tired, the way I am—and I didn’t have to play a baseball game today.
Five minutes into the show, he leans in and points to the woman on screen.
“Wasn’t she just fucking—” He cuts himself off, then corrects, “Sleeping with that other guy?”
My skin tightens. “Yeah.”
“Huh. Okay.”
What do you think about cheaters? I don’t want to know the answer to that. He gave me a necklace in the shape of a lock, a proposal in very specific terms. “This show is kinda messy.”
He relaxes back. “I wouldn’t have thought this would be your thing.”
I gulp down my surprise. “No?”
“Just, you know, I thought you’d be like, reading or something. I don’t really know. You seem too smart for this kinda stuff.”
My heart rate relaxes slightly. Being able to pass tests—not that I’ve been doing a lot of that lately—doesn’t make me smart. Look at last night. “Nope.”
For some reason, Brayden laughs. “Yeah, me neither.”
“Not into school?”
“Blake was always the scholar-athlete type. He made sure I got by, I guess.” He taps his palms on the tops of his knees as if he’s burning off energy. “Mostly, I just wanted to play, so I did what I had to so I could keep playing.”
The same reason he married me—to keep playing.
I turn my attention back to the show. The woman is now back with the first guy; she’s in one of those booth confessionals talking about how it was such a hard decision.
Anytime I watched something with a love triangle, I always thought, How hard could it be to pick? Now I know.
After a few minutes, Brayden shifts again, clearly bored or antsy or both. His hands spasm a few times like he wants to be holding something. “Are you thirsty?” he asks. “I was gonna get something from the kitchen.”
I hold up my water bottle. “I’m good.”
“Right.” He doesn’t move. “I’m gonna go out.”
Oh. “Okay.”
“For a run, I mean.”
It’s almost full dark outside and he’s going on a road trip tomorrow for a week. Clearly, whatever I have going on isn’t enough. I wonder if run is a euphemism for something else—another drink. Another woman. “Sure.”
“You’ll be here?” His forehead scrunches like he’s genuinely worried I might not still be in the house when he gets back.
“Yep. Baby and me will be right here.”
He flashes a smile so quick it comes and goes before I can really register it. Then he leaves to go beat out whatever’s bothering him against the Georgia asphalt.
A week later, I’m in the family room at the end of the game when a text from Brayden comes in.
Brayden: Want a ride home?
I frown at my phone. I have to hold it carefully, because Lexi’s son, Izzy, is sitting on my knee. Mostly, he’s been paying attention to what the other kids are doing—in this case, an elaborate game of slow-motion tag—and shouting, “Go fast!” which makes the other kids move even slower.
I haven’t really seen Brayden since he came home from his road trip. At first, I was grateful for the peace and quiet. Everything with him and Asher felt more manageable at a reasonable distance. But toward the end of it, the house felt a little too quiet.
Brayden came home late last night, stumbling through the hallway seemingly sober—their plane was delayed—before he dropped his duffel and face-planted in bed for twelve hours.
Is the season catching up with you? I didn’t ask him that. But I’d grabbed his bag, threw in his laundry, made sure there was food in the fridge. He was up and out—run then to the clubhouse—like usual this morning.
I stare down at the pile of papers sitting next to me. I should be reading. Not playing with Izzy. Not going out. But something’s up with Brayden if he’s changing up his habits like this. Maybe he suspects that you and Asher…. Only one way to find out.
Me: Sure, see you in a few
I make my way down to the clubhouse entrance, my ballpark pass displayed on the cute pink badge holder Lexi recommended. Other wives are waiting, some scrolling, some trying to manage kids, and I chat with a few of the other girls while players come out to collect them.
After a couple minutes of waiting, the door opens and out comes Asher.
Fuck. I shouldn’t be surprised. He plays here too. I just half-watched him play—he’s in centerfield now—a game for several hours. I knew he was in the building, but in the building and right in front of me are…very different.
Should I ignore him? I stare at my phone, pretending to scroll Instagram, but actually reading the methods section of a journal article. Or attempting to read. All the words shift and blur, and I’m about to give up when Asher comes right up to me.
“Hey,” I say, rather than what I want to—which is not here and maybe not anywhere.
“Hey.” He doesn’t look much different from when I last saw him, except he’s wearing a shirt, and his hair is wet from a post-game shower, and I can see the slight outline of his tattoo.
I thought only seeing it in pieces was bad—my eyes following the curlicues of ink wondering what the rest of it was. But it’s worse now that I’ve seen it in full and felt the skin underneath.
“I’m meeting Bray.” If I think hard enough about Brayden, I won’t think about anything else.
“Yeah, I figured.” Asher doesn’t move from where he’s stationed right in front of me. Are the other WAGs gonna notice that we’re talking? Even if we’re not exactly making spectacular conversation.
“How have you, uh, been?” I ask. “Since the road trip.”
“The road trip?” Asher’s mouth does that thing, that thing that makes me want to kiss him and now kind of makes me want to yell at him. “I’ve been fine.”
“Just asking ’cause I haven’t heard from the team since the road trip.” Because he hasn’t messaged me since that night. Maybe he’s a one-and-done kind of guy.
Asher quirks an eyebrow. “The team made it pretty clear how to get in touch with it, I thought.”
I pitch my voice low. “You haven’t texted.”
“You haven’t either, prin—" He doesn’t get the full word out when I hiss at him to stop.
“Bray’s gonna be here in a second.” I glance to the clubhouse door as if Brayden might materialize right there. Sweat begins forming in the lines of my palms.
Something in Asher’s face flickers. “Got it,” he says, too loud. A few of the WAGs dart glances our way. “See you around, Mrs. Forsyth.”
Please go, please go, please go. But no, he gets about twenty feet away, then positions himself against a hallway wall, shoves his hands in his pockets, and waits.
I shoot him a look. He shoots me one right back. I either want him gone or want him much, much closer, and I can’t have either. He might not be one and done but I have to be.
I don’t have time to dwell. Brayden comes out and walks over to where I’m standing. A wife would kiss him. I rise up on my toes. Over his shoulder, I can see Asher watching us. My glare intensifies as I kiss Brayden’s cheek.
“Sorry,” Brayden says.
“Sorry?”
“I didn’t shave.” His cheek is a little rough with dark blond stubble.
Not knowing what else to do, I kiss him again, slightly longer this time. “I don’t mind.”
His eyes slide shut momentarily. He has long eyelashes, blond at the tips and darker at the roots. Somehow, without me noticing, his hand has come to rest on my waist, then higher, tracing the letters on my back. “Nice jersey,” he says.
“Figured I should wear something with your name on it.”
From twenty feet away, Asher clears his throat. Brayden turns. His expression sharpens into a glare as he tightens his hand. “I like everyone knowing who you belong to,” he says, though everyone sounds like a very specific someone. “I wanted to ask something—”
Oh no. Not here. Not with everyone watching us. I put on my sweetest smile. “Really, what?”
Whatever it is, Brayden doesn’t ask immediately. He tightens his hand on my jersey again, fingers skimming just below Forsyth.
“Did you miss me while you were gone?” I tease, then immediately regret it. We’re not together like that. Asking it, even as a joke, feels mean.
“That’s what I wanted to ask you. Do you want to come on our next road trip?”
So he did miss me, and I’ve been… Unfaithful feels like the wrong word, but I don’t know another one.
I shouldn’t go with him. I have class. But he’s asking me—actually asking and not assuming or ordering—a tiny line forming between his eyebrows the longer I don’t respond.
“I could probably make that work,” I say.
Brayden smiles—a full, real smile that deepens the creases at the corners of his eyes. Maybe the first one he’s ever given me. Maybe the first one he’s done in a long time.
From behind Brayden, Asher throws me an indecipherable look, then peels himself off the hallway wall and stalks off.
Five days. We’re going on the road together. Five days, surrounded by his teammates and the other WAGs. Five days with Asher there, and the secret we both share. Five days…
So I swallow my nerves as Brayden threads his fingers through mine and leads me toward the car, my lock pendant tapping against my sternum as we walk.