Page 105 of Lessons in Heartbreak

She made a disbelieving noise. “I don’t know. Did you see him signing that contract? He was not the outgoing jokester we’re used to seeing in Griffin. That looks like a man on a mission if I’ve ever seen one.”

With melting ice cream dripping off my spoon, I stared wide-eyed at the following clip of Griffin sitting at a sprawling desk with the Denver logo directly behind him. His arms flexed as he signed his contract, and the journalist was right. When he looked up into the camera afterward, there was a fierce determination in his eyes.

My chest fluttered when his lips tilted in a subdued, slightly crooked smile as he shook the team owner’s hand. He was wearing a Denver shirt, and briefly, I wondered when he’d taken care of all this. The sight of his stubbled, hard jaw was jarring, and when I got an X-rated memory of him wiping his mouth against my thigh, I had to set the bowl of ice cream down lest I spill it all over the couch.

Bruiser whined at the bowl’s proximity to his nose. I rolled my eyes. “Oh, fine, go ahead.”

Like a masochist, I watched the rest of the segment as they worked their way through a highlight reel of Griffin’s years in New York.

It would get better, right?

There would come a day when the sight of his sweaty arms and the tightly leashed violence he was capable of on the field wouldn’t trigger a tsunami of dangerous butterflies. I swear, they showed him sacking a quarterback, scooping up the ball, and running it into the end zone, and I almost had a little orgasm.

I speared my hands through my hair, then fumbled with the remote to punch the power button.

“Enough,” I hissed.

And I did pretty well staying away fromSportsCenterafter that. Sort of.

Any time Lauren saw me checking the sports section of the newspaper over the next week, I decided that I could retire early if I got a dollar for every concerned look she sent my way. When she tried to ask me if I needed to talk anything out, I realized just what a phenomenal coping mechanism denial is.

“Nope,” I said forcefully. “I’m just fine.”

“Yeah, you look it,” she mused, setting her chin on her hand while I stamped due dates onto cards with a mighty vengeance. Thebamechoed through the library. A woman perusing the romance section gave me a concerned look. “You know, we don’t actually use those cards for anything anymore. Everything’s digital.”

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

I fixed her with a glare. “I’m aware.”

She smiled sweetly. “Feeling the need to get a little angry energy out?”

“Nope.”

Bam.

“It’s completely natural to feel an emotional connection to someone when you have great physical chemistry with them.”

“I know, Lauren. It’s just ... the stupid chemicals in my brain, and they’ll pass.”Bam.“I can get the same high from cuddling a puppy.”

She tilted her head. “Mmm, I don’t think you can.” Then she patted my arm. “When you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be here.”

My eyes burned for a moment, and I watched her walk off, my shoulders slumping. With a groan, I ditched the stamp and walked back into my office. The walls were bare where I’d pulled the framed renders of the butterfly garden and sculpture walk down. That made my eyes burn too.

It was hard to feel like my life was too quiet again. Too empty. Because it wasn’t empty, but at the moment, it felt like it. Eventually, I’d have to watch machinery dig through the dirt and cut down trees, and things would change again. The feeling of loss always came in waves, and it was important not to fight the ebb and flow.

Wanting that land to become something important—and seeing it become something else—sure felt like another one of my failures this week. Something I had thought I was capable of achieving, a fingerprint I could leave behind.

You left one hell of a stamp on me, birdy.

My stomach pinched, just like it did whenever I thought of him, and I took a deep breath, whirling toward my desk.

I sat down and opened my laptop, eyes snagging briefly on the bench facing the weeping willow tree. No more conversations there, for anyone. Not big ones or little ones, or life-changing ones, like the one I’d had with Griffin. There was a heaviness in my chest, and I set my hand there, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths.

For so many years, feeling pressure there had caused a sharp spike of anxiety, wondering what was wrong, wondering if something invisible was happening that they wouldn’t be able to fix. I’d count my pulse and catalog my symptoms and send a note to my doctor making sure I didn’t need to go in.

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