Chapter Twenty-Six
A BAD JOKE
In all honesty, I had to admit that watching a game from the fifty-yard line was a lot more exciting than watching a televised game. Drooling over my guy and feeding off the crowd’s enthusiasm for him and his winning team that day also helped ignite my dormant football-fan status.
After the game, Jamie took Shayna home, and Flint escorted me to an area down from the locker rooms to wait for Cage to shower and make it through interviews.
“He was pissed that I didn’t visit him at training camp.” I twiddled my thumbs, feeling like an idiot leaning up against a concrete wall while players and press people ushered by in chaos.
Flint stood next to me, one leg bent, foot propped up on the wall behind us while he messed with his phone.
“He killed it at training camp. His coaches are ecstatic about the season. Did you see him today? Three TD passes, no interceptions, no sacks. Monaghan’s the real deal, something special that doesn’t come along every day.
He has the potential to be compared to the greats.
You giving him space is the best thing you can do for him. ”
He was incredible. I couldn’t deny it. The giving him space thing like I was some sort of bad influence stung a bit, but I’d learned arguing with Flint was futile at best.
“Jones, get your ass over here.”
Just the sound of his voice burned my nose and sent a rush of tears pooling in my eyes. It wasn’t until that very moment I fully realized how much I’d missed him over the previous three weeks.
I looked up. My smile owned my entire face as Cage walked toward me in a black suit, white shirt, and a violet, gray, and white tie. In his hand was a note card.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Screw Flint’s motto of control and looking just right for the media. Screw the photographers and reporters. I ran into his arms and my God they felt so good.
“I missed you,” I choked out.
Cage held me so tightly breathing became a challenge. I didn’t care.
“If only someone would have invited you to visit me at training camp.”
“Shut up.” I laughed and swatted my tears before too many cameras zoomed in on my emotional state.
“Stick, are you seriously crying?”
Cage loosened his hold on me, letting me slide to my feet.
“Miss me, Apollo?”
His smile faded. “How’s Shay?”
Cage furrowed his brow. I returned a tight grin.
“She’s fine.”
Flint, still perched against the wall, peeked up from his phone giving me a barely noticeable head shake.
“Was she sick?” Cage asked.
I looked at Everson.
“Yeah, but she’s fine now. Right?”
My response was delayed. I still couldn’t think about it without wanting to crawl into a corner and cry over what could have happened on my watch. “She’s great. Loved the game and can’t wait for you to get home.”
“I’ll call her. A few of us are going out for dinner. You guys in?”
My eyes shifted to Cage. “You can go … I don’t have to—”
“Some other wives will be there too,” Everson added.
“She’s not his wife.” Flint felt it necessary to state the obvious.
“Fact.” Everson rested his hand on Cage’s shoulder. “But she’s vying for that coveted spot.” He smirked at me. “After the Twins game she said she was going to marry you.”
I died, like a brutal town-square slaying. I couldn’t believe he said that.
Cage squinted a bit as my eyes remained the size of silver dollars.
“No worries. I told her you were married to the game for now.”
“Fucking right,” Flint added. “Super bowl MVP, buddy. If you keep playing like you did today … if you stay focused …” I didn’t have to look at Flint to know he was glaring at me. “Then I think we’ll be dancing in confetti come February.”
Cage nodded, his gaze still glued to me as I shriveled beneath it. “I think we’re going home, Banks. But thanks … next time. Come on, Lake.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the doors.
“Later.” Everson smirked at me like a sibling who just pinned the broken vase incident on the younger child and watched them get hauled off for punishment.
By the time we made it to his truck, my heart was lodged in my throat. “It was a joke.” I bit my lip and grimaced before he shut my door. It was a half-truth. Of course I wanted to marry Cage, but I didn’t mean it like a goal, like my intention was to chase him and trap him.
“It’s fine, Lake.” He smiled and shut my door.
On instinct, my mind shifted into overdrive trying to analyze his smile, the tone of his voice, even his gait as he moved around the front of the truck. Was he mad? Scared? Confused? Disappointed?
“You mad?” I didn’t even finish before I regretted asking the most clichéd couple’s question ever.
I was the youngest of five kids. I’d watched my parents and all my siblings and their spouses have the typical fights with the typical lines, and I swore I would never engage in that same behavior.
Learning not to judge was a very humbling lesson.
“I’m not mad.”
Great. Cage knew the typical answer. “I’m not mad” could mean “I’m not mad” or it could mean “I’m pissed, just not ready to talk about it.”
I begged myself to just not speak, to dig deep and find control. Silence held an invisible power. If I could let it be—let us be—then maybe everything would be okay. Emotions needed time to find words.
When we got to his house, I eased out of his truck and followed him inside.
He said nothing. I said nothing. He grabbed a sports drink from the refrigerator and guzzled it down with his back to me.
Cage looked breathtakingly handsome in his suit.
I wanted to tell him that. I wanted to tell him how much my hands ached to touch him.
I wanted to tear open my soul and beg him to just love me as a friend, as a lover, as absolutely any person he wanted me to be, as long as that me was with him. That’s all that mattered.
He was good at silence. Me? Not so much.
“I don’t want to marry you.” Lies. Why the lies?
I just couldn’t figure it out. The silence was killing me, and all I wanted was for it to stop.
Like a gun to my head, I did whatever it took to make it stop.
“In fact if you asked me to marry you, I’d say no, so …
really, just forget about it. I’m pretty sure I was still asleep when Everson knocked on my door. ”
Cage turned. God … he was so handsome, my heart struggled to keep up with my lungs or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever it was, he left me so breathless, captivated, and at the complete mercy of his next move, his next word, his next breath.
A faint smile tried to claim his lips as he exhaled what sounded like the hint of a laugh. “I played to impress you today.”
My lips parted as my body stiffened, eyes flitting side to side as if someone else was in the room, because the guy that Flint referred to as the future Super bowl MVP did not just say he played to impress me!?!
“It’s the only way I can do this. I can no longer love the game unless I can convince myself I’m playing it for you.
I used to play for my dad, but then I met you and…
” he set the plastic bottle on the counter and shrugged, still staring at it like his next words were written on the label “…I kinda like you—a lot. I like our story. I like falling in love with you every day. I like seeing all your emotions in your eyes—”
“They’re tears.” I rolled said teary eyes toward the ceiling and fought them off with rapid blinks. “I’m so sick of you making me cry.”
He laughed as he shrugged off his suit jacket, folding it then resting it on the back of the barstool before threading his fingers in my hair. “Just so you know, I heard every word you said. I promise I’ll never ask you to marry me. Okay?”
No. NO. NOOOO!!!
I’d have rather been the boy who got eaten by a wolf than the girl who never got proposed to by the man of her dreams. Lies. Damn the lies!
I cleared my throat, forcing myself to breathe as the horror show played out in front of me. Cage would never ask me to marry him. Fan-flipping-tastic. Why didn’t we just declare abstinence and agree on pen pal status so we wouldn’t even have to make time to see each other?
“Say something. You look like you just saw a ghost.” He smirked.
My eyes moved—up, down, side to side—but the rest of my body remained paralyzed. I could see how I must have looked spooked.
“No. I-I’m happy.” Don’t be contumacious, Lake.
Don’t let your stubbornness be the sword that slays your dreams. Too late.
“I can’t tell you how … uh … relieved I am to know that I can just enjoy our relationship without the looming fear of you doing something ridiculous like proposing to me and ruining everything.
” Fucking idiot. Whoever came up with that term had me in mind.
My picture belonged pasted in the dictionary next to it.
Cage brushed his lips against mine. “However…” he whispered “…I want kids someday.”
Gulp.
“Would you consider being my baby mama?”
My head snapped back. “Baby mama?”
He nodded.
My lips moved but no audible words were formed at first. “Y-you want me to have your babies?”
“Absolutely. Not like a dozen or anything, and not right away. Maybe two over the next eight to ten years.”
It was a joke, right? It had to be a joke, a classic calling of my bluff.
Contumacious.
Contumacious.
Contumacious.
I shrugged. What the hell are you doing, Lake!
“Sure. Absolutely. Why not start now?” I couldn’t say for sure if it was the adrenaline rush from his game, our weeks spent apart, or Shayna’s near-death experience, but reason—all common sense—vanished from the room.
The only thing that would prevent me from possibly being impregnated right there in the kitchen was Cage. Would he call mercy?
His eyes widened a fraction. “Now?”
“Sure. Carpe diem. It’s August. Nine months would give us a baby in May—still off season for you.”