Chapter 17
Josie
I'll have a think about it.
I've replayed Declan's reply so many times over the past week it's basically tattooed on the inside of my skull at this point. Right next to Beachside vs. Portland Thunder, three weeks to go, and sell every seat.
At least one of those things has an actual deadline attached to it.
Shame the real answer I want is apparently still marinating in Declan Morrison's brain like a steak he refuses to take off the grill.
"You know," I say now, watching Declan wrestle a two-foot stack of posters along the boardwalk, "for a professional athlete, you're really struggling with the physical demands of paper."
"It's not the paper I'm struggling with." Declan glares at me over the top of the stack. A gull swoops down and nearly clips him on the back of his head. "It's the wind. And the staple gun you keep waving around like a weapon."
"It will be a weapon if you drop those! Watch what you're doing!"
I grab him by the shoulders, trying to steady a giant man before the stack tumbles on the boardwalk. Which, of course, is like trying to steady a boulder with enormous biceps.
Oh, the biceps.
"Fuck," Declan grunts, managing to collect himself as the bird flies away and he regains his balance. He looks down the boardwalk and sighs with a huff. "Are we nearly done? We've been at this for hours."
I shoot him a look, firing another staple into the nearby lamppost, pinning the corner of the poster flat.
He's right. This is taking a long time.
But the boardwalk is slowly coming to life with Bears colors, and when I look back to see the sun rising higher in the sky, I see the trail of advertising propaganda we've set out on every lamppost in Beachside.
Rose outdid herself on the design. That girl really earns her pay with everything she does just to get her father to notice her.
The Bears logo is blazing against a sunset-orange background, THE THUNDER ROLLS IN.
THE BEARS ROAR BACK. is set in letters big enough to read from a passing surfboard, and beneath it, the details of everything I've spent the last week bleeding for.
The rivalry game. The sellout crowd. And the party Colin signed off on for the night before it. A full boardwalk street party, complete with live music, food trucks, player meet-and-greets, and the carousel running free rides until midnight.
The whole works. The whole town.
If Beachside doesn't show up for this, I'll eat the staple gun.
"You could try looking happy about this, you know," I say, stepping back to admire my work. "You know… smile… radiate captain energy. Inspire the community or something."
"Well, if you'll excuse me, I'm still in the middle of the last task you gave me," he grumbles, shifting the stack to one arm.
"The 'stop coasting' one. That was supposed to be a whole season's worth of personal growth, and now you've got me doing manual labor on my only day off this week.
I came to this town specifically to avoid both of these things. "
"And how's that working out for you?"
He looks at me with that slow drag from my ponytail down to my sneakers and back up, lingering somewhere around my ass. It's absolutely not subtle and definitely not appropriate for a public boardwalk at eleven in the morning.
"Mixed results," he says.
"My eyes are up here, Captain."
"I'm aware."
God, this man. I turn back to my staple gun before I drag him behind the churro stand and remind him exactly how I got him to stop coasting in the first place.
We keep moving down the boardwalk, and I'll admit… Beachside is showing off today. The morning sun is gorgeous, and the ocean is sparkling. I can already smell the kettle corn and fresh waffle cones drifting from the stands that are just cranking up their awnings.
I'm one week into the biggest target I've ever set myself.
A week of this. A week of permit applications and vendor contracts and a budget meetings where I made Colin Holden sign off on the street party funding before he could escape to the golf course.
I literally had to stand in front of his office door with the paperwork like a hostage negotiator.
He signed. Mostly because I brought Goldie's cookies as leverage.
But through all of it, one question keeps circling my brain like a seagull over dropped fries.
What's the deal with us?
Declan and I haven't talked about it since the charity event. Not once.
He's been busy with practices, media obligations I forced on him, the family stuff he still won't fully explain. And I've been buried under promotions and sponsorship commitments.
We've had exactly one stolen hour in his Rover behind the arena and it was mostly spent with my mouth on parts of him that definitely weren't conducive to conversation.
Which was great. Genuinely. I give myself a ten out of ten for my blowjob technique.
But it also means I've still got no idea where we stand.
I glance at him now, his arms locked with effort as he holds the posters steady against the wind kicking up off the water. We're all alone, and we've got the focus of the job at hand to act as a cushion for the awkwardness I know this conversation will bring.
There isn't really a better time to bring it back up again.
So, I decide I'm done waiting for the perfect moment and go for it.
"So," I say, aiming for casual and absolutely not sticking the landing. "You thought anymore about... us?"
"No."
I staple another poster and wait, but apparently, that's it. That's the whole answer.
"Wow," I say. "Riveting reply. Truly a masterclass in communication."
"You asked a yes or no question. I answered."
I snatch the poster from him and slap it against the next post. "That's it? No follow-up? No elaboration? I've gotten longer responses from Biscuit."
"What can I say?" he rolls his shoulders and smirks into the wind. "Biscuit's a better communicator than me. I thought we'd established this."
"Declan."
He exhales, long and slow, and when I glance up at him, some of the grump has drained out of his face. What's left underneath is the thing I've learned to recognize as the tired, careful look of a man carrying more than he'll admit.
"I'm not sure yet," he says quietly. "That's the honest answer."
"Okay."
He drags a hand through his hair, pushing that stubborn front piece back into place.
"There's all this shit going on with my mom," he says.
"The divorce, the missed calls, Zoey and me trying to hold the whole thing together because apparently that's still our job, twenty years later.
Beck still doesn't know the truth, but I'm not sure what Zoey's told Mason.
And I don't—" He shakes his head and pauses, buying some time to think.
"I don't want to add another headline to your week.
You've got enough riding on this. I don't think we need to rush anything. "
I nod slowly, even though something in my chest deflates at the word rush.
"You've got something amazing going on here, Josie. The party, the game. I don't want to be the thing that blows it up. Not when you're counting on it, too."
And damn him, because that's actually sweet, and I came into this conversation prepared for classic withdrawal, not tenderness.
"Have you answered your dad's calls yet?" I ask.
He gives me a blank stare. "Have you called your mom?"
We stare at each other over the stack of posters.
Neither of us answers, because neither of us has to. The silence does it for us.
"We're really good at this," I say finally, grinning.
"Oh, world class."
"They should study us."
"They should put us on one of your posters." He gestures at the lamppost. "The Beachside Bears: Emotionally Unavailable Since Day One."
A laugh bursts out of me, and just like that, the tension between us breaks.
Declan grins down at me and bumps my shoulder with his. Which, given the size difference, nearly sends me into a trash can, but we somehow keep walking, stapling posters to every surface that'll hold one.
We move from the lamp posts to a shop window beside a community board that we cover from top to bottom too. The candy shop owner comes out and asks for two extras to put by the register, and as we hand them to him, a pack of teenagers stops to take photos of one.
I hear one of them say "dude, free carousel rides" with genuine excitement.
When they roll away on their skateboards, Declan looks at me and winks.
It's working. I can feel it, the buzz building all around town like the moment before a storm.
Maybe Declan is right? Maybe it is better to wait?
"Alright. A few more at the entrance to the pier, and it must be my shout for coffee at Goldie's," I say, smiling.
"About damn time," Declan grunts.
We're maybe fifty feet from the pier entrance when a guy with a camera strung around his neck peels off from the railing and beelines straight for us.
"Hey! Sorry—hey! You're Declan Morrison, right?"
Declan's whole body does that subtle shift I've watched him perfect since media training. Years of hard-earned muscle rolling into camera-ready stillness.
"Yeah. That's me."
"Awesome, awesome. Mind if I grab a quick photo? For the Ledger's weekend spread. The rivalry game's got the whole town buzzing."
"Sure." Declan sets the posters down, and I step aside, out of frame, doing my professional PR-manager fade into the background.
The photographer snaps two, three photos, then lowers the camera, chewing his lip like he's debating something.
"You know," he says, glancing between us with a little too much interest, "you two would look good together. In the photos, I mean. There's a nice... chemistry between you."
"Oh, no. I'm just doing my job," I say quickly, my smile stretched thin because there's something in the way he says it that snags my ear like a fishhook. "He's the superstar."
"Nonsense! Get in there!"
Declan's eyes cut to mine, one brow lifting like a question mark.