Page 52 of Game Changer

Take a friggin’ breath.

Crap. What’s she thinking? I can’t tell from her face. I don’t think I ever realized how much you could tell from a person’s eyes ‘til they’re suddenly gone and I now feel blind!!

Please look at me…

His voice got quiet as he took a breath and looked at her, “I don’t know what you’re thinking…”

He trailed off and he could tell she was struggling. Tears continued to trickle slowly down her cheeks. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her until she stopped crying.

With her gaze fixed firmly out the window, she began softly, “You should have told me, AJ.”

“I know.”

“No, AJ. Youdon’tknow. You have no idea how it felt to be told that you were married by your teammate! How embarrassed and humiliated I feel. How stupid and naïve it made me feel. How deeply hurt and betrayed. Youliedto me. Relationships are built on trust, none more so than an online relationship. I trusted you. I trusted you and you lied to me. You should have told me!” she repeated, her voice getting increasingly more shrill.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated again, “I was afraid you wouldn’t understand…”

“That wasn’t your call to make, AJ. You should have given meallthe information and let me decide how to deal with it. Iknewsomething was off, and I couldn’t put my finger on what. I thought I was crazy. We’d talked about so much that I was absolutelysurethat you’d be honest with me no matter what. You thought I wouldn’t understand? Well, I guess I kind of don’t, she’s Canadian – it’s pretty friggin’ easy for her to get a visa for the U.S. without marrying you. But AJ, I love you! I’ve spent every minute since I found out that the woman whose underwear was drying on your radiator is actually yourwifeand who probably even walks around in her damn underwear, trying to hate you, trying to resign myself to us never talking again. Don’t you get it? I can’t. You’re a part of me now.”

They sat talking it out for hours. She cried. She yelled. He cried. They cried together. They hugged. They talked some more. She yelled at him for lying. She told him she wasn’t sure she could ever get over this, but she agreed to at least try. She offered him the opportunity to bare any more skeletons to her, here and now. When they’d laid everything out on the table and had cried themselves dry, he asked her if she wanted to grab dinner.

“You read my mind!” she told him, smiling.

“How does Olive Garden sound? I know you love their breadsticks.”

“AJ, we don’t have Olive Garden here.” She turned to face him. “Oh. You mean, go back?”

He nodded.

“If you want to, that is. I don’t mind staying here for a while. But if we stay, I need to go shopping, I didn’t bring anything with me. If you come back to the states, you don’t have to stay with me, you can go back to the hotel. Chelsea is worried about you, Ana feels terrible, even Jeremy feels bad. No one else knows you flew back here, but everyone ispissedat me, so it would totally be a fun trip for you!”

“Youdeserveto have everyone pissed at you, especially me,” she began. “We’ll stop for takeaway on the way home. I’ll tell my parents not to cook, we’ll eat with them so they can meet you properly, and then we can fly back, together, deal?”

“Sure, on one condition…”

Dude, you have some balls.

“Whoa there, mister. You really think you’re in a position to be making conditions?” she challenged as he started to back the car out of the lane.

“My condition is,” he continued undeterred. “No more running away. No matter how much you hate me, or how angry you are. No matter how badly you wanna kick my ass. You stay put. We talk. You throw stuff at me. We scream, we shout, we cry – but we try to work it outtogether. Ok?”

She nodded, chewing her lip.

“Promise?” he asked her sadly, his eyes still glistening with tears.

“I promise,” she answered firmly.

We don’t break those, remember that.

Chapter 15

AJ asked Lisa if they could go to London together on the way back to the States. It felt like the perfect opportunity to see the city – while also giving them one-to-one time together. They booked return flights to Alabama, via London, where they planned on spending a few days exploring, ‘just the two of them’ as back to back transatlantic flights would be just pure insanity. Or as ‘just the two of them’ as they could muster with Jeremy texting every five minutes. It was, as always, as though he was right there in the room with them at all times.

He’s so damn needy sometimes,AJ chuckled and shook his head.

Jeremy: How’s it going?

AJ: Ok, I think. Hard to tell. Her parents didn’t kill me when I turned up on their doorstep.

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