18. No Return Flight #3
“I don’t want the NFL. I just want you, and our baby, and whatever quiet life you’re willing to let me earn.
“The buyout penalties took almost everything I had, Piper. I’m not asking to walk back into your bedroom like nothing happened.” I kept my hands down, even though every part of me wanted to reach for her. “I’ll start wherever you need me to start. I’m done playing games. I’m yours.”
Piper studied me without answering. The breeze pushed loose strands of hair across her face, but she left them there this time, her eyes fixed on mine.
“And if I tell you this takes months?”
“Then it takes months.”
Her eyes searched my face. “And if I don’t trust you tomorrow just because I trust you for five minutes today?”
“Then I earn tomorrow separately.”
Something changed in her expression, small enough that I refused to name it. I had spent too much of our marriage deciding what Piper meant before she had a chance to tell me herself.
“You say that now,” she said. “But you’ve always been good at saying the right thing when you think you’re about to lose something.”
“I know.”
“You promised me on draft night that the league would never touch what we had.”
“I remember.”
“You promised privacy, and then you let privacy turn into hiding.”
There was nothing useful I could say to soften that. “I did.”
Her gaze dropped toward the dirt between us. “You let Reid make me feel like a liability in my own marriage.”
“I did that too.”
The words tasted worse each time, but I wasn’t going to reshape them into excuses. Reid had manipulated me, Sloane had crossed lines, and the machine had rewarded every bad decision I made. None of that changed who kept choosing the machine.
Piper looked back up. “I need you to understand something, Nolan. Burning your career down doesn’t erase what happened.”
“I know it doesn’t.”
“And losing your money doesn’t buy forgiveness.”
“I know.”
The marina carried on around us. Water moved beneath the docks, an engine turned over somewhere beyond the bait shack, and the forgotten tackle still covered the deck behind her. I let those ordinary sounds fill the space instead of rushing to fill it myself.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me because I lost anything,” I said.
“I walked away because I finally understood what I should have understood years ago. You were never supposed to compete with football. You were never supposed to compete with Reid. You were my wife, and I treated protecting the brand like it mattered more than protecting our marriage.”
Piper blinked and looked away toward the water.
“I can’t undo McGinnis’s,” I continued. “I can’t give you back the anniversary dinner. I can’t give you those four months when you were here carrying our baby and I was stupid enough to think giving you space was the responsible choice.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I can only stop being that man.”
The sentence left me with nothing else to hide behind. I stayed where I was and waited for whatever came next.
Piper didn’t answer at first. She stood in front of me while the humidity soaked through my shirt and the sun baked the exposed stretch of driveway behind us.
I had given speeches to packed stadiums with less fear than I felt standing there, waiting for one woman to decide whether I belonged anywhere near her life.
Then she stepped closer.
I didn’t move.
Her hand came up and caught the front of my shirt near the collar. For one awful moment, I thought she might shove me backward and tell me to leave after all.
Instead, she pulled.
I went with her.
Piper folded herself against me, and I let out a sound before I could stop it. I wrapped my arms around her with care, one hand spreading across her back while the other settled lower, leaving room for the curve of her stomach between us.
She was real.
The familiar scent of her shampoo mixed with salt air and marina fuel, and I pressed my face into her hair without trying to pull her closer than she had already chosen to come. Her arms tightened around me.
“You’re an absolute idiot, Nolan Callahan,” she said against my shirt. “But you are finally my idiot again.”
I closed my eyes and held her.
“I’m so sorry it took me this long to prove it.” My voice came rough against her hair. “I promise I’ll never make you feel invisible again.”
“You’d better not.”
“I won’t.”
Piper stayed against me for another moment before leaning back enough to look at my face. Her hands remained on my shirt, and the fact that she hadn’t stepped away mattered more than anything I could have said.
“You’re burning up in this heat,” she said. “Pick up your bag and come inside the AC so I can get you some water.”
A laugh caught me off guard. “That’s my grand welcome home?”
“You’re lucky you’re getting water.”
“I’ll take it.”
Her mouth curved, and this time she didn’t hide it.
We let each other go without rushing. Piper turned toward the bait shack while I walked back to the duffel I had left in the dirt, lifted it by the strap, and settled it over my shoulder.
She waited at the edge of the yard until I caught up.
I followed my wife home.