Page 81 of Broken Saint

“Is it? What would you have done if you knew? Would you have been the man she needed? The man she wanted? Or would you have continued to be a pussy and run away?”

My mouth opens and closes a handful of times as I try to discover the answer to that question. But even now, I can’t predict what I would have done. I know what I should have done.But I never have been very good at making the right decisions. Especially when it comes to Ella.

“Exactly. She did what she thought was best at the time,” Luca says.

“None of that really matters anymore. Seems to me that what you do right now is more important. She’s fucking miserable in Texas, just in case she never told you,” Kane points out.

“She told me.” Not that she really needed to. I could see the shadows darkening her eyes from the first moment I looked into them. “Her fiancé was a prick who didn’t treat her right. She’s…she’s not Ella from MKU. I mean, she’s still there. I saw glimpses of her. But the past few years, they’ve really done a number on her.”

“All the more reason she should be convinced to stay here, don’t you think?” Luca says, turning his speed back up.

I fall silent as he focuses on his workout.

“He’s got a point. I know her mom is in Texas, but her family is here.Youare here,” Kane says, pinning me with a look.

But before I figure out a response to his suggestion, he’s also upped his speed, leaving me to flounder over decisions I never wanted to be in a position to make.

Keep women at arm’s length and it’ll always be easy to walk away when you’re done with them.

It worked. It always fucking worked.

Apart from Ella.

None of us talk much as we each do our usual routine around the gym. I try to go as hard as I usually would, but I can’t lie, being up half the night fucking Ella is making everything harder than I expected.

I guess it just goes to prove how shitty the sex I’ve been having recently has been. The only place I’ve been putting in full performances is here, in this very gym or out on the field.

Everything else in my life is half-assed during the season. Hell, it’s not much better in the off-season.

Football is my life. It’s everything.

The only other thing that’s ever really taken up space in my brain has been her.

“So, Ella’s at our place giving Letty the dirty details you seem to be failing to give us. What are you going to do about it?” Kane asks when we walk back into the locker room two hours later.

Lifting my damp shirt that’s draped over my shoulder, I wipe my sweaty face before flopping down on the bench in front of my locker.

“What do you think I should do?”

When I glance up, both Luca and Kane have shit-eating grins on their faces.

“Don’t think it matters what we think. It’s what you think that counts.”

With a sigh, I look down at my feet, trying to get what I want and my deepest fears to stop warring inside me. The problem is, I’m not sure if it’s possible.

“I think…I think she deserves someone who can give her everything. Happiness, laughter, screaming orgasms, a life, a future, stability, a family. Everything.”

“Agreed,” Kane says.

“So?” Luca prompts. Although he knows me well enough to predict what I’m going to say.

He’s the only one, aside from Dad and West, who knows the darkness I keep hidden in an impenetrable lock box inside me.

He knows my fears, and he knows exactly why I’m so scared. It isn’t stopping him from pushing me, though.

“Why don’t you show her that you can be that?”

Rubbing the back of my neck, I stare at him.

---