Page 38 of Gridlocked on the Gridiron

She scoffed, “Yeah, right. If you got far enough away from the smog to see the sky, even at the beaches, they didn’t look like this.”

He didn’t know if he agreed with that, but he was a little biased. He’d lived most of his life near LA and had grown up enjoying most of the California sunsets from football fields.

“Have you had time to go to the beaches here?”

She shook her head, a small frown on her face. “No, not with the season.”

He vowed to take her to the beach at least once before they broke up in January. He wanted her to love Charleston as much as he’d come to over the previous years. Sure, he was an LA boy at heart, but if Charleston let him, he’d be happy to grow old here.

He could tell she had more to say, so he waited.

“Maybe once we get into offseason. If I’m still with the team by then.” She mumbled the last sentence.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged but didn’t respond immediately. He watched the sun’s slow descent. When their waiter arrived, they ordered, and Colton looked back at her.

“I don’t know. They signed me for the season, you know? There are no guarantees past that.”

“But look at us! Look at my numbers compared to preseason. How could they not want you to stay?” He caught the blush that crept over her cheeks.

“Oh, well, I don’t know. I can’t take all the credit there.”

Colton called bullshit. He didn’t think there was a single thing that factored into his performance more than her help. Not even the extra days his dad wanted him at the gym had made the impact on his game that she had.

“I know we lost again, and I know that was on me.” There was that feeling in his chest again as he remembered going down three, four, five times. Remembered his head hitting the turf, the ball that he normally tucked so well during a sack coming out of his hands and giving their opponents the ball at the ten-yard line in the last seconds of a tied game. It’d haunted him in his dreams the night before.

She seemed to sense where his head was, her hand coming to rest on his across the table. “Colton, we’ve talked about this. This is a team game, nothing is ever completely your fault. That fumble was rough, but it was a tied game because defense struggled. And your o-line still needs work.”

He tried to smile but wasn’t really feeling it. “Maybe you should be working with them too.”

“Eh, I specialize in quarterbacks.” And wasn’t he thankful for that.

“Where did you grow up?” he asked, shifting the conversation from him and his failures.

“Philly, actually. Very different from here or LA.”

“Would you go back?”

She looked past him, and he knew she was looking at the little fishing boats that bobbed in the water behind him. “I barely visit, and that’s mainly to see my dad. I don’t really see myself ever living there again.”

He didn’t want to pry, noting the expression on her face and remembering what she’d told him about her mom leaving when she was younger. “You an Eagles fan, then?” He narrowed his eyes, trying to hide the playful smile that threatened the corners of his mouth.

She grinned wickedly. “All this time you’ve been worried about me taking your secrets back to the Vipers, you didn’t even think about the field day I’ll have with the Eagles, my true team.”

“I knew you were the villain in my story, Moretti.”

She laughed. “That’s okay, I always knew you were mine.”

“Really?”

Her eyes flicked back to his, the light in them dimming a bit. “No.” She twirled her ring around her middle finger like he’d noticed she always did when she got anxious. “That spot is reserved for Max Clark.”

Colton grimaced, hating to even hear her say his name. Even if he’d never had an issue with Clark before meeting Lucia, Max would be on Colton’s shit list just for what he had—and continued to—put her through.

“Is he still bothering you?”

She lifted one of her shoulders half-heartedly. “Here and there. He gets especially mad on game days if he watches, ‘cause it seems the camera likes to focus on our kiss. Which, if you think about it, is crazy because that’s usually game day for him too. And if the media or anybody posts about us online, he’ll say something. It’s a lot of the same shit, I kind of just ignore it. Seems like he only cares about me when he’s reminded that I’m with someone else.”

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