Page 104 of Lessons in Heartbreak

There was no shying away from this.

No shying away from him and how fucking hard this was.

When I looked up, he looked like Griffin again. There was no lingering sadness, no unspoken thing, just a cocky curl to his delicious lips. With his mussed, golden-brown hair and the endless expanse ofskin on display, he looked like sin incarnate. Temptation that I’d never move past. Never get over.

“Thank you,” I told him again, carefully setting my hand on his bare chest as I swallowed against a dry throat. “I don’t think you understand how much this meant to me.”

“Anything for you, birdy.” He curled his fingers around mine and squeezed. Griffin’s smile softened into something more genuine, and my pheromone-drenched brain captured it like a photograph. I wanted to frame it. Paint it. Put it somewhere as a permanent reminder that I was the one who made him smile like that.

After a thick beat of silence, he let go of my hand, and I cleared my throat. “Well, if I find myself watching football this fall, I know who to text if I have any questions.”

Griffin’s eyes bounced between mine. “I hope you do.” Then he held up a hand. “Oh, hang on.”

With a rueful grin that made my chest clench, Griffin quickly reached down to grab his boxer briefs and tugged them up his legs, then tossed the sheet aside before he jogged around to the other side of the room. For the record, I did not stare at his ass when this was happening. Not really. When I dragged my eyes up from ... certain areas, I felt my stomach flutter.

There, on the large solid-wood dresser, was a small stack of books.

He stared down at them in his hands for a second, his back expanding on a deep breath before he walked toward me again. His crooked smile was almost my undoing as he extended the library books in my direction.

“Read them all,” he said proudly. “Does this mean I’m smart like you now?”

I exhaled quietly, too small to be considered a laugh. “Which was your favorite?”

The thick line of Griffin’s throat worked on a swallow, his eyes intent on mine. “The one you recommended. The World War Two book.”

My lips tilted in a pleased smile. “Really?”

He nodded. “Really. The legacy we leave behind is important.” His brow furrowed slightly. “You left one hell of a stamp on me, birdy. I hope you know that.”

“You did too,” I whispered.

For a moment, I worried that my body would reject my brain’s command to leave. Simply refuse. I worried that the chemicals still coursing through my blood would protest anything except crawling back into bed with him and letting the day pass without any thought of the repercussions.

We still have things to learn!those chemicals screamed.We haven’t felt sweet and slow. We haven’t experienced what his skin is like in the shower. Or how it feels to be on top of him.

We should have started sooner,I thought with a quick spike of my pulse.If we’d started right away, we would have had two weeks to enjoy each other’s company.

That was the thing, though, wasn’t it? It would be so easy to create a list a mile long of all the ways I still wanted Griffin. It would never end. Not unless I was the one to end it before anything soured. Or worse.

With one last smile in his direction, my feet moved. So did my legs. And with the distinct knowledge that I’d lied deeply to myself to believe that I could get through this unscathed, I walked out of the room, then out of the house and into my car, with a numb sort of disconnect I’d never felt before. Not even after my surgery, when my whole body felt like it belonged to someone else.

With that thought, in the safety of my quiet car, I sank my head into my hands and cried.

Chapter Twenty-FiveRuby

Bruiser was judging me. I was sure of it.

“Quit looking at me like that,” I told him. His ears perked up when I ate another small mouthful of ice cream. “Yeah right, like I’m sharing with you. It’s just a TV show, Bruiser. Millions of people watch this every day, all right? Concerned citizens who want to know the goings-on in the professional sports world.”

He set his head down on his paws and groaned dramatically.

The commercial break ended, and I unmuted the TV. “If you’ve been living under a rock, welcome to the shock of the week coming out of the NFL. Griffin King—all pro-defensive end—signed a two-year, thirty-two-million-dollar deal in Denver.” The commentator raised her eyebrows, looking knowingly at her cohost. “There were rumblings of this, of course. He was seen in Colorado before he signed his contract, but no one seemed to take that as a sure thing, did they?”

The other suit at the desk shook his head. “No. I talked to multiple sources who did not see this coming before Griffin signed his contract. Besides the eye-popping number on that bottom line—which brings him very close to being the highest-paid defensive end in league history—there are lots of rumblings throughout the league that Griffinreally did take this deal to avoid going up against big brother a couple times a year in a divisional matchup.”

His cohost smiled. “Can you imagine what holidays are like at the King house? I hope someone brings a referee to Christmas dinner.”

“If I were to place a bet, I think I’d still put my money on Ice Man.”

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