3. Waiting for Tomorrow #2
The screen dimmed from inactivity. I tapped it awake again.
His smile was still there.
That was the part I couldn’t explain away.
Reid could arrange photo shoots. Sloane could cross boundaries. A content team could demand whatever fake chemistry they thought would move merchandise. But nobody had forced Nolan to flash that easy smile. Nobody had made him sit there while she settled across his thigh.
Someone touched my arm.
“Honey? Are you okay?”
I startled and turned.
An older woman holding a tote bag stood beside me. The door of the sedan parked next to mine was open behind her. She had interrupted her own errand just to make sure I was all right.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Yes.”
She studied my face for a moment, then glanced toward the clinic entrance. “Sweetheart, you look like you’re about to faint right here against my bumper. Do you need me to run back inside and grab one of the nurses for you?”
For one ugly second, I wanted to tell her.
I wanted to point at the phone and explain that the smiling quarterback under the supermodel was my husband. That nobody online knew I existed. That inside my purse were the first photographs of his child, and he didn’t even know there was a child yet.
Instead, years of practice took over.
Strangers didn’t get the truth. Reporters didn’t get the truth. Sponsors didn’t get the truth. Reid had taught me, without ever meaning to, how to stand beside Nolan’s life and reveal nothing that might become useful to somebody else.
I locked the phone and lowered it.
“Thank you for asking, but I’m alright. I just received some unexpected news from home that I need to deal with.”
The woman searched my expression. “Are you sure you can drive?”
“I just need a minute in the car.”
“All right.” She stepped back toward her groceries. “Take that minute. There’s no prize for rushing.”
“Thank you.”
I opened the driver’s door and set my purse on the passenger seat. The envelope shifted inside, and I paused long enough to make sure it had stayed upright before placing my phone next to the bag.
The car had baked in the sun while I was in the clinic. The seat burned through my clothes, and the steering wheel was hot beneath my palms when I settled behind it.
Outside, the woman resumed loading her groceries.
Inside, nobody knew who I was.
That should have been familiar. For three years, privacy had been the bargain Nolan and I made together. I had accepted empty VIP seats, avoided cameras, and let the world believe whatever it wanted because I trusted that the life behind our front door belonged to us.
This was different.
He had let another woman occupy my place in public and expected me to understand the business logic afterward.
Still, I wasn’t going to decide the fate of my marriage from a social media photograph.
Nolan was going to look at me and explain why he had allowed it. He was going to tell me what happened in that room, without Reid translating it into campaign language and without Sloane turning it into engagement numbers.
Then, if he gave me one reason to believe him, I would take the envelope from my purse.
I pulled the door shut, set both hands on the steering wheel, and resolved that Nolan was going to explain this to my face.
The house had been silent long enough for the refrigerator hum to become irritating.
I stood at the kitchen counter with my purse beside me and my phone facedown near my elbow.
The envelope stayed inside the bag. I had checked it twice since getting home, not because anything could have happened to it, but because I needed to know those photographs were still there while I waited for Nolan to walk through the door.
He could still fix this.
That thought had followed me all the way home. He could look at the picture, understand why it hurt, apologize, and tell me what had happened without Reid standing between us. Then I could reach into my purse and give him the reason I had gone to the clinic in the first place.
The front door opened somewhere beyond the foyer.
Nolan’s footsteps carried down the hall before he appeared in the kitchen. He looked worn out, his shoulders slumped beneath a team sweatshirt, his hair still damp at the edges from practice. A bruise showed near one knee where his shorts ended, and the turf burn along his elbow was an angry red.
He tossed his keys onto the counter, then dropped the tablet with a plastic clatter that bounced through the empty room.
“God, I am so tired today.” Nolan rubbed a hand over his face. “Practice was brutal, and Reid had me running sponsor media hits for four hours straight.”
I waited for him to look at me.
He opened the refrigerator instead.
“Have you eaten yet?” he asked.
“No.”
“I can order something after I shower.” He took out a bottle of water and twisted the cap loose. “Or there’s probably something in the freezer. I don’t care what it is as long as I don’t have to sit through another brand dinner tonight.”
The purse sat beside my hand.
I almost reached for the envelope instead of the phone. I pictured Nolan forgetting Reid, forgetting practice, forgetting every stupid sponsor obligation the moment he saw the grainy little picture inside.
Then Sloane’s post flashed through my mind again.
“Don’t go upstairs yet.”
Nolan lowered the bottle. “What’s wrong?”
There it was.
Not panic. Not guilt. Just tired confusion.
I picked up my phone, unlocked it to the post I had left open, and turned it toward him.
“I need you to look at that.”
He glanced down at the phone.
He didn’t reach for it.
I slid it across the counter until it stopped near his tablet. The photograph filled the screen between us, Sloane pressed into his space, her face beside his, that easy smile preserved above the caption for anyone in the world to interpret however they wanted.
Nolan looked down again.
I watched his face instead of the phone.
“Explain it to me.”
He looked back at me. “Explain what?”
I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny about it.
“I need you to explain why your brand partner is practically sitting in your lap while the entire internet applauds your chemistry.”
His eyes dropped to the screen again.
“Piper—”
“No. Look at it.”
“I am looking at it.”
“Then tell me why she was between your knees in a private rehab room.”
Nolan picked up the phone this time and studied the image for another second, as though I had handed him a picture of a broken appliance instead of something that had kept me standing beside my car for far too long.
My purse remained closed on the counter.
He set the phone back down.
“That was after the game.”
“I know when it was.”
“The campaign team wanted content.”
“She is sitting on you.”
“She is not sitting on me.”
“Her hip is on your thigh, Nolan.”
He rubbed his forehead and glanced toward the hallway.
That tiny movement told me more than I wanted it to. He was already thinking about ending the conversation. Shower. Ice. Sleep. Anything except staying in the kitchen and understanding why his wife had been waiting for him with that photograph open.
I rested my palm against the counter.
“Did you tell her to move?”
He met my gaze.
For the first time since he walked in, he actually looked irritated.
“Are we really doing this right now?” he said. “It’s just a harmless photo from the media shoot that you’re blowing completely out of proportion.”
“Harmless to who?”
Nolan stared at me across the counter, his hand still flat near my phone. His irritation didn’t disappear. If anything, it settled into the familiar expression he wore when a reporter asked the same question twice.
“Piper, it was content. That’s all.”
“Content doesn’t usually require another woman sitting between your legs.”
“She wasn’t sitting between my legs.”
“You keep correcting the wording like that changes the picture.”
Nolan closed his eyes. “Because you’re making it sound like something happened when nothing happened.”
The phone remained between us, Sloane’s face frozen beside his. I wanted him to look at it and see exactly why I had spent the drive home rehearsing this conversation. Instead, he was debating technicalities.
“You’re prioritizing Reid’s crossover launch over my discomfort,” I said. “She is practically sitting in your lap, Nolan, and you look thrilled about it.”
“I was smiling for a camera.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It makes it a job.”
The answer came too easily. A job. As if that one word settled every question about where his boundaries ended and Reid’s campaign began.
“Did Reid tell you to let her do that?”
Nolan frowned. “What?”
“Did your father tell you that Sloane needed to climb into your lap for the campaign?”
“He tells me what the campaign needs. That’s why I pay him.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Because the question is ridiculous.” He gestured toward the phone. “Nobody climbed into my lap. She took a selfie after the game. The brand wanted something casual, and she posted it.”
“And you let her.”
“I didn’t think I needed to conduct a marriage summit over one photograph.”
The words sat there between us.
The envelope inside my purse might as well have belonged to another version of the evening, one where Nolan came home, listened to me, and remembered that I was his wife before he was Reid Callahan’s quarterback.
“You knew what people would think when they saw that.”
“No, I knew they would talk for a day and move on to the next headline.”
“Your father is selling you and Sloane as a couple.”
“He is selling a campaign.”
“Using your relationship with another woman.”
“There is no relationship.”
“Then why does everyone looking at that picture think there is?”
Nolan tightened his grip on his water bottle, then set it on the counter without drinking. “Because that is what celebrity marketing does, Piper. It creates buzz. The whole point is getting people to talk.”
“And I’m just supposed to sit at home and pretend it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you’re saying.”