Chapter 15 Lacey #3
Her boss and his birth mother. It would be funny and ironic, except right then? It wasn’t either of those things.
“I get that,” he said. “I do. I’m not asking you to quit your job.”
Lacey let out a shaky breath. “It doesn’t feel like that.”
He blinked, and for the first time, his disappointment sharpened into something more vulnerable. “I don’t want to do that.”
“I don’t see any other way,” she said, and looked down at how her fingers were twisting together.
That was the thing, wasn’t it?
He wasn’t asking her to choose Jacksonville over Destin. He was asking her to choose him as the center of her orbit. To adjust her life around the gravity of his.
And he was so easy to orbit, she could happily say yes.
Roman was bright, generous, funny and warm and attentive and steady. Roman made her feel wanted in a way she hadn’t realized she needed until she had it.
But he was also…Roman Matteo—an NFL player. A man with a schedule that had other people’s signatures on it. He had a career that didn’t pause for “venue walkthrough that ran long.” He lived a life where time was money and performance was everything, and there were always other people lined up.
It had been easy to forget that this summer, in this “off-season,” as he so casually called it.
But life was about to start up again and it would be “the season” and that mattered. A lot.
“Roman,” she said carefully, “we haven’t known each other that long.”
His nodded, as if he’d expected her to say that and had been holding himself back from saying it first.
“And you’re asking a lot of me,” she continued, voice tight.
“Not because you mean to. Not because you’re trying to…
control anything. But because what you’re offering is big.
It’s like…a whole life. A whole—” She stopped, because the word sitting between them was enormous and ridiculous and terrifying.
Commitment.
“I am asking a lot,” he agreed quietly. “And I know that. I know I’m…coming in hot.” His gaze held hers. “But that’s because when I’m with you, it feels right. I don’t want to pretend to be cool about it.”
Lacey felt tears prick, sudden and unwanted.
“I’m not cool about it,” she whispered.
He smiled faintly at that, but then his expression sobered again.
“I’m not proposing,” he said quickly, almost like he had to make sure she knew that. “I’m not saying forever like it’s a ring. I’m not trying to scare you.”
“You are scaring me,” Lacey said, half-laughing through the tightness in her throat.
Roman leaned back, letting out a breath. “Okay. Fair.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, then looked at her with honest frustration—not at her, but at the situation.
“I just…” He hesitated. “I think about how fun it could be. You in Jacksonville. Not just visiting. Not just squeezing in between weekends and events and games. Like—living. Doing normal stuff. Grocery shopping. Cooking terrible meals together. You making me watch some reality show and going to Home Depot to buy something mundane and domestic.”
Lacey’s lips trembled into a smile in spite of herself. “You’d be mobbed in Home Depot.”
He choked a laugh. “You severely overestimate my importance to the team. Another reason you should live with me in Jacksonville—to disabuse you of this notion that I’m famous or popular. Second-string all the way, baby. Tradeable, too.”
She winced at that.
“Hey, it’s a package deal of my reality.”
Lacey’s heart squeezed because she wanted the whole package with him, but at what price?
Yes, his career was big and rare. Being Tessa’s right hand wasn’t the same as being a second-string receiver for an NFL team. But, still. It was her life, and she’d just started building it.
“I’m not saying you need to move tomorrow,” he said. “Or even this month. I’m asking…can you imagine it?”
“I can,” Lacey said quickly. “That’s the problem. I can imagine it. And it’s…beautiful.”
“Then why do you look like you’re about to cry?”
“Because I don’t know what happens to me in that version,” she said, the truth spilling out before she could polish it. “I don’t know who I am in Jacksonville. I don’t know where my life fits. I don’t know if I become…a girlfriend waiting around for your schedule, lost in the background.”
Roman’s eyebrows lifted, and he looked genuinely pained by the thought.
“No,” he said firmly. “No. Lace, I don’t want you to be lost.”
She stared at him.
“I don’t,” he repeated, voice steady. “If you ever felt like you had to make yourself smaller to fit into my life, then I don’t deserve you in it.”
The words hit with a thud in her chest, sounding heroic in the quietest way. Lacey blinked hard.
“So, what do we do?” she asked.
Roman held her gaze. “I’m going to run over to Jax tonight so I can make the team meeting in the morning. I’ll come back. We have a few days before I have to check in for training. I’d rather not cram everything into one day like a test.”
Lacey let out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, I’m sorry again.”
“It’s okay,” he assured her, and sounded like he really meant it. “I’m willing to wait. Lace, I’m willing to do hard things. I just need to know you’re in this with me. Because my feelings for you are only going to get stronger—and your role in your job is only going to get bigger.”
The room went quiet again and Lacey’s chest felt tight, her emotions tangled—love and guilt and longing and hope braided together.
She stood, restless, walking a few steps toward the kitchen island and then back.
“I am in it,” she said, turning to him. “I love you. That’s not— Roman, that’s not the question.”
His eyes softened at the word “love,” like it still startled him every time.
“Then what is the question?” he asked.
“I guess it’s…can I live two lives at once?”
“Nobody can,” he replied without a second of hesitation. “So, no.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then Roman stood, too, closing the distance between them, brushing her cheek with the back of his fingers. Tender. Careful.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered honestly. “But I will be. I think I need some…space.”
He nodded, accepting that.
When she left his house a little later, walking to her car with her heart aching but also strangely full, she knew one thing with sharp clarity—there was only one person who could help her untangle this.
Only one person who could tell her how to be brave without being reckless.
And it wasn’t Tessa.