Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
ISA
The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas blurred into one long stretch of exams, sweat, deadlines, and denial.
Midterms became finals.
Finals became papers.
Papers became late nights in the library with my laptop open, coffee gone cold beside me, and Drew’s hand on my thigh under the table like he had any right to touch me that casually.
Training got harder too.
Light footwork turned into controlled drills. Controlled drills turned into short indoor sessions. My hamstring still complained if I pushed too fast, but it wasn’t screaming anymore. It was healing. I was healing.
Which should have made everything simpler.
It didn’t.
Because the better my leg got, the less time I had to live in Drew’s house like it was some private little world where the rules bent around us.
I wasn’t spending three nights a week on his couch anymore while he fed me Thai noodles and pretended oiling my hamstring wasn’t foreplay.
He wasn’t waiting outside rehab every day with coffee and that stupid, too-hot grin.
We weren’t falling asleep tangled up during Christmas movies as often, because I had exams and he had film and practice and scouts and conference noise and a body that could be one hard hit away from becoming a headline.
But somehow, even with less time, he got harder to shake.
He was in everything now.
In the hoodie I stole and kept folded at the end of my bed.
In the coffee order I stopped pretending he didn’t know.
In the way I checked my phone after training, not for my mother, not for campus gossip, not even for soccer updates.
For him.
Drew: Eat protein.
Me: Bossy.
Drew: Beautiful.
Me: That did not answer the accusation.
Drew: It distracted you though.
It always did.
That was the problem.
Yeah, distracted me from the fact that New Year’s Eve was ten days away.
Ten days to midnight.
A clean break.
My brilliant, practical, emotionally mature plan had started to feel less like control and more like a countdown to an execution I had scheduled myself.
I told myself this was still fake.
I told myself we were just good at pretending.
I told myself wanting him did not mean loving him.
Which was technically true.
Probably.
Maybe.
I knew one thing for certain—I wanted Drew Travers so badly I was starting to resent him for being honorable.
That was new.
Men had pushed me before. Men had wanted to take. Men had looked at me like my body was a locked door and their ego was the key.
Drew did not.
Drew kissed me like he wanted to ruin my common sense, touched me like he had memorized every place I went soft, made me shake apart in his arms more than once, then stopped before the final line every single time.
Not because he didn’t want me.
That was the worst part.
I knew he wanted me.
I had felt exactly how much he wanted me pressed against my hip, my thigh, my stomach, while his breath went rough and his hands gripped like he was fighting a war against himself.
But he kept holding back.
Waiting.
Like he wanted something from me before he took all of me.
Not my body.
My heart.
Which was completely unfair, because apparently my body was reckless and ready to sign over property rights, while my heart had hired lawyers and refused all comment.
I had almost handed that heart to Tristan Vale after a few pretty looks and some late-night walks.
That was the part that made me feel stupid now.
I had been willing to bleed for almost.
But Drew?
Drew was real.
And maybe that was why I was terrified.
For the first time in my life, there was a man worthy of breaking my heart.
Not a fantasy. Not a prince. Not an idea my mother approved of because it made sense on paper.
Drew Travers.
Loud. Bossy. Ridiculous. Tender in ways he tried to hide behind arrogance. A man who cooked a grocery-store Thanksgiving with me in his father’s cold Miami kitchen and looked at me over mashed potatoes like I had given him back something he thought was dead.
Now we were at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport with Christmas music playing overhead, my suitcase rolling behind me, Drew walking beside me in a black hoodie, gray sweats, and a backward cap like he had personally declared war on every father in Texas.
He looked too good.
It was offensive.
Airport fluorescent lighting should have humbled him. It humbled everyone. It made models look tired and toddlers look haunted.
Drew Travers looked like he belonged in an ad for expensive luggage and poor choices.
His hand brushed mine as we walked toward baggage claim.
I took it before I could think better of it.
He looked down at our linked fingers.
Then at me.
His mouth curved.
“Miss me?”
“You were sitting beside me for three hours.”
“Didn’t answer the question.”
“I missed personal space.”
“Liar.”
I rolled my eyes, but my grip tightened.
He felt it.
Of course he did.
He lifted our joined hands and kissed my knuckles right there between baggage carousel five and a man in a Cowboys jersey arguing with a rental car app.
My stomach flipped.
“Drew.”
“What?”
“You cannot charm my entire state before we even leave the airport.”
“I can absolutely charm Texas.”
“You are not prepared.”
“Baby, I survived Richard Montgomery at Thanksgiving. Your mother doesn’t scare me.”
I laughed once.
Wrong sound.
Too sharp.
His smile faded.
I hated that he caught it.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Texas.”
I looked toward the carousel where bags had started dropping with violent thuds. “My mother is not Richard.”
“No,” he said. “She’s yours. That makes it worse.”
I turned back to him.
Sometimes Drew said things so simply it irritated me.
“She’s going to make a big deal,” I said.
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m hot?”
“Because you’re impossible.”
“Also hot.”
“And because she knows who Richard Montgomery is.”
His jaw shifted.
There it was.
That tiny flash.
Drew still hated the Montgomery name touching anything between us.
At Thanksgiving, I had seen what it did to him. The way his father used the name like a leash. The way Everett and Beckett wore it like armor. The way Drew carried Travers like it was the last piece of his mother no one could take from him.
My mother would not understand that.
My mother would see Montgomery and start counting.
Family money.
Business connections.
Miami hedge fund dynasty.
Stanford football body.
Possible NFL upside.
Potential husband material if she could ignore the football and focus on the fortune.
The word bagging floated through my mind in her voice before she even said it.
As in: ‘Well, baby, if you were going to rebound, at least you bagged a Montgomery.’
My stomach went cold.
Drew stepped closer. “Hey.”
“I’m fine.”
“No athlete says that and means anything but catastrophic denial.”
“You’re recycling material.”
“Good material holds.” His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist. “Talk to me.”
“I just don’t want her to turn you into a prize.”
His face softened.
Then, because he was Drew, his mouth tilted. “I mean, I am one.”
“Drew.”
“What? You’ve seen me shirtless.”
“You are exhausting.”
“And yet.”
“And yet what?”
He leaned down, voice dropping near my ear. “You love me.”
The world stopped.
Not the airport.
The airport kept moving. Suitcases crashed onto the belt. A child cried near the rental car signs. Someone paged a passenger over the intercom. Christmas music floated above us, cheerful and oblivious.
But I stopped.
So did Drew.
I felt the realization hit him through his hand before it reached his face.
He straightened, his expression flickering once.
There.
Gone.
Then he shrugged like the word hadn’t just landed between us like a grenade.
“You know,” he said. “Fake-love me. Public relations. Very convincing performance. Five stars.”
My heart was beating too hard.
Too high.
Too loud.
I forced my mouth to move. “You’re so full of yourself.”
“Part of the appeal.”
“Debatable.”
“You keep debating with your mouth and agreeing with your hands.”
I looked down.
My fingers were still locked around his.
I pulled away.
He let me.
That hurt more than if he’d held on.
A black suitcase slammed onto the carousel in front of us. Drew grabbed it one-handed. Mine came next. He grabbed that too before I could reach it.
“I can get my own bag.”
“I know.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“I know that too.”
The pickup area smelled like exhaust, airport concrete, and cold Texas air. Not real cold, not northern cold, but sharp enough to make me tuck my hands into the sleeves of my sweater.
A black Suburban idled at the curb. My family did not send drivers in suits like Drew’s father.
My family sent men named Wade in cowboy hats.
The driver stepped out wearing pressed jeans, boots, a starched white shirt, and a black felt cowboy hat. He had a silver mustache and the kind of sun-lined face that looked like it had opinions about weather and brisket.
“Miss Calloway,” he said, tipping the hat. “Good to have you home.”
“Hi, Wade.”
His eyes moved to Drew.
Drew extended a hand without missing a beat. “Drew Travers Montgomery.”
“Wade Harlan.” Wade shook his hand, looked him up and down, and gave one approving nod. “You play ball?”
Drew grinned. “Little bit.”
I closed my eyes.
Wade chuckled. “Figured.”
Drew leaned toward me as Wade loaded the bags. “I like him.”
“You like anyone who looks at you like you could bench-press farm equipment.”
“Can I?”
“Sadly, probably.”
He winked.
The Suburban was warm inside and smelled faintly like leather, peppermint, and whatever cologne older Texas men used when they refused to admit they owned cologne.
Drew slid in beside me, taking up entirely too much space, his knee brushing mine. Wade pulled away from the curb, and the airport lights started falling behind us.
Dallas spread out beyond the windows in ribbons of highway, glass office towers, dark neighborhoods, Christmas lights wrapped around trees that were trying very hard to look festive without snow.
I pressed my fingers together in my lap.
Drew noticed.
Again.
Always.
“Baby,” he said softly, “you look beautiful.”
I swallowed.
“My mother cares less about beautiful than useful.”
“Then she’s got bad priorities.”
I glanced at him.
He was looking at me, not joking now.
“Drew.”
“What?”
“She is going to love you.”
“Good.”
“That is not necessarily good.”
“It is if you love me.”
There it was again.
The word.
He said it lighter this time, but not lightly enough.
His eyes flicked away first.
Then back.
“You know what I mean,” he added.
I did.
That was the problem.
I knew what he meant.
I also knew what he did not say.
He did not say fake.
He did not say pretend.
He did not say until New Year’s Eve.
He looked out the window for a second, jaw tense, like he was mad at himself for letting the word slip twice in one day.
I should have saved us both.
I should have made a joke.
Instead, I stared at his profile in the passing highway lights and felt something in me ache.
Drew had never been careful in the obvious ways.
He was too loud. Too physical. Too honest. Too much.
But with my heart, he had been careful.
So careful it made me want to scream.
He was waiting for me to hand it over.
He wanted the part of me I had almost wasted on Tristan.
And I could not understand why giving it to the wrong man had felt romantic, but giving it to the right one felt like standing on the edge of a cliff with no guarantee there was water below.
Maybe because Tristan never had the power to ruin me completely.
He could humiliate me. He could disappoint me. He could make me feel chosen and unchosen in the same breath. But some part of me had always known I loved the possibility of him more than the truth.
Drew was truth.
Messy, hot, infuriating truth.
Drew could break my heart because he had already found it.
I just hadn’t admitted it yet.
The Suburban turned off the highway and into the wide, manicured sprawl of my hometown. Big houses behind stone walls. Gated communities dressed in Christmas lights. Wreaths on black doors. Fountains bubbling in circular drives. Texas wealth was different from Miami wealth.
Miami money gleamed.
Texas money announced itself from the road.
Drew looked out the window, amused. “Subtle.”
“Don’t start.”
“Baby, your neighborhood has more columns than a courthouse.”
“Your father has a dock and wine with a retirement plan.”
“Fair.”
Wade chuckled from the front seat.
I wanted to crawl into the leather.
Drew stretched an arm along the back of the seat, fingers brushing my shoulder but not pulling me in. Giving me the choice.
Always giving me the choice.
I leaned into him.
Just a little.
His arm settled around me instantly.
He bent and pressed his mouth to my hair.
“You’re okay,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“You’re not about to be fed to a debutante firing squad alone.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be charming.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He smiled against my temple.
Then said, quietly, “They’re going to love me.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re the one I care about.”
My throat tightened.
I stared out at the Christmas lights blurring past the window.
“Drew.”
“I know.” His hand moved lightly over my shoulder. “Too much.”
I hated that he pulled back emotionally before I could.
“No,” I said, then stopped because I did not know how to finish.
No, it wasn’t too much. I was scared out of my mind because New Year’s Eve was ten days away and I had built the door myself and now I didn’t know how to keep him from walking through it.
Drew waited.
I said nothing.
Eventually, his arm tightened once around me, then relaxed. The houses got bigger. The lights brighter. The lawns more perfect. My mother’s world came into view one manicured yard at a time.
And sitting beside me was Drew Travers Montgomery.
Drew, who had cooked Thanksgiving with me in a stolen pocket of happiness.
Drew, whose body I wanted so badly I had started dreaming about finishing what he refused to start until I stopped lying.
Drew, who had said love twice before baggage claim and then pretended he hadn’t.
Drew, who might be the first man I had ever known who was worth risking everything for.
I slipped my hand into his. His fingers closed around mine immediately. The Suburban slowed in front of my parents’ house.
Wreath on the door.
Candles in every window.
My mother’s silhouette visible beyond the glass, already waiting.
Already watching.
Drew looked at the house, then at me.
His grin came back.
A little cocky.
A little soft.
A little dangerous.
“Showtime, Texas.”
I wanted to laugh.
I wanted to cry.
I wanted to drag him back to the airport, shove him into a family bathroom, and finally make him stop being so noble.
Instead, I lifted my chin, smoothed my face into the version of myself my mother understood, and opened the door.
“Try not to let my mother adopt you before dessert.”
Drew stepped out after me, all height and shoulders and impossible confidence under the Texas Christmas lights.
“No promises,” he drawled.