Page 39 of Offside and Off-Limits
Asher’s chest rises and falls before he looks back up at us. “The thing is I was diagnosed with OCD a while back. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. With the move across country to this new town and new team, I guess it’s flared back up, and I’ve been trying to get on top of it. Cade noticed and we got to talking. Then he found this group and suggested I come along.”
Cade beams at him like a proud father. Which is so weird, not to mention utterly unsettling. I had this guy pegged as a total lightweight who loved to flirt. A playboy with as much depth as a puddle after a summer shower.
Not someone who encourages a teammate to attend a support group to help him with his OCD.
“Good for you,” Bernice says, and there’s a general agreement within the group. “Quite a few top athletes have OCD, Asher. Royce White, Simone Biles, David Beckham, Rafael Nadal, to name a few.”
“See? That’s whatIsaid,” Cade adds.
“Lennox said you guys would get it.” Asher’s features relax, and I slide my eyes to Cade to see him watching his teammate with a mixture of pride and kindness in his eyes.
Huh.
“We do get it, and we’re here for you. Isn’t that right, everyone?” Bernice says, and we all echo, “Right.”
Asher’s features relax, transforming him back to the guy I know once more, the guy who led his teammates in the TikTok dance with such certainty, such confidence. Who knew this other side of him lurked beneath, a side that needs routines and orderliness, without which, anxiety takes hold.
“That’s great to hear,” Asher says. “Cade said these groups are awesome and have really helped him.”
Wait, what?
I swivel around to gawk at Cade. Not only is he perceptive and supportive of Asher, but he also attends support groups?
Why?
Cade clears his throat. “I find it super useful to get tips on things like self-care and energy management for my mom. She has lupus,” Cade explains.
Cade’s mom has lupus? And he attends support meetings so he can help her and learn how to cope?
My jaw has officially hit the floor.
“And what about you, Cade?” Bernice asks, her voice soft. “What do you find useful in groups like ours?”
She’s a smart one, that Bernice. Always able to read the subtext, to follow the trail left unwittingly behind, and this is one trail I’m fascinated to hear.
Cade pauses for a beat. “I guess it does a bunch of stuff for me. It reminds me that my mom isn’t alone in her suffering, which is comforting, you know? I guess there’s something in it for me, too, in that I feel…less alone, I guess.”
I still. This new side to him doesn’t fit with everything I know about this man and his flirty, carefree, womanizing ways. Could a guy who cares that deeply for his mom, goes out of hisway to learn strategies to help her, shows kindness and understanding toward a teammate, also be a total party boy who doesn’t appear to think deeply aboutanything?
I watch him as he continues to talk, my mind scrambling to make sense of these two incongruous versions of him. He speaks with love in his voice about his mom, how hard he found it to move across the country away from her, how he hopes to bring her here if he signs with the team for another season.
As I listen, the only conclusion I can draw is that perhaps I’ve misjudged him.
And if I have misjudged him and his depth is less like a puddle and more like an ocean, could I be in some serious trouble here?
His gaze sweeps to mine and my breath catches, the sincerity in his eyes plain to see. Cade Lennox has depths I never suspected, and I may very well be in more trouble than I ever imagined.
CHAPTER 9
CADE
I’ve litthe fire and flicked on a few of the lamps in the living room when Clara’s car pulls into my driveway for our agreed time to film my “player talent.”
I’d noticed Asher’s rituals before practice, the way he always has to tap things a certain time, the way he does things in a certain order. I had a teammate in college who was exactly the same, and he’d told me that big life changes always made his symptoms that much worse.
I figured the amount of change Asher had been through in leaving his last team and moving to Maple Fallshad probably gotten into his head. And you know what? Although I didn’t plan it, in going to the support group tonight—heck, I didn’t evenknowClara had a chronic condition, let alone the fact she attends a weekly support group here in town—it had a certain serendipity to it.
Not that I’d ever tell the guys that. The idea of a romantic serendipity is waaaay too rom-com-y.
