Page 116 of Hitting the Goal Line
“Why would you follow me?” she asks, her voice breaking a bit.
So many fucking reasons, I think to myself.
There are so many fucking reasons why I would follow her and I want to tell her, because I’m finally done with holding back and not telling this woman how I’ve been feeling for yearsbut doing it in front of a police station with a complete stranger waiting for us, isn’t ideal.
If I’m finally going to tell Sophia that she is my fucking heart and world, I’m going to do it somewhere private at least.
“There’s a lot of reasons, Soph, and I will tell you every single one of them when we to the house. I promise.” I continue to hold out my hand to her, even though I want to go back to her and whisper every single one of my reasons in her ear.
She needs to hear them, no matter how she may feel in return. Though, I may have an idea how she may feel, more so after she left our apartment a few days ago.
After a second, Sophia gives me a nod and slides her hand into mine.
The second that we are in the car, we get enveloped in the music that the driver has on.
As much as I want to appreciate him for having good rock music on, the day has finally caught up to me. And by the way that Sophia leans her head against my shoulder, not letting go of my hand, I’m sure it has finally caught up to her too.
The car ride is silent. Both Sophia and I dozing off the whole drive. It’s not until the driver is pulling the car to the gated house, thirty minutes later, that we both wake up fully.
We are slow to get out of the car, but as soon as we make it passed the gate, up the short driveway and into the house, all signs of tiredness are out the door.
Both our stomach stomachs growl at the same time and I can’t help but to look over at Sophia and give her a small smile.
With everything that had been going on, I didn’t even remember that I haven’t eaten a single thing all day. I woke up this morning with my first thought being Sophia, I didn’t even think about food.
“Let’s eat something and freshen up and then we can talk,” I tell Soph, nodding toward where the kitchen is.
She doesn’t say anything, she just gives me a small smile, and a nod of agreement and stars walking over to the kitchen.
We’ve both have been here plenty of times to know our way around.
The second that we step foot in the kitchen, we start raiding the pantry and the fridge for anything that we can eat. In the days that I’ve been here, I’ve mostly eaten through all the pasta and chicken that my brother and Lennie had. But as much as I want to keep up with my diet, pasta sounds like a shit meal right about now.
“Tomato soup and grilled cheese?” I ask Sophia, holding up a can of soup that I found in the pantry.
You would think that a football player that is worth a more than a few million and has a personal chef come in and cook him meal two times a week, would eat fresh tomato soup, not from a can. But it works in our favor today.
Sophia gives me a nod and we move through the kitchen, as if it were our own and start making our food.
It doesn’t take long, and before we know it, we are sitting at the small dining table that overlooks the hill the house sits on.
We eat in comfortable silence, something that we’ve been used to since we were kids, and when we’re done, we head upstairs to wash the day away.
I lead her to the guest room that I took over, but the second that we cross the threshold, that comfortable silence that we were in downstairs starts to feel a bit awkward.
Where do we go from here?
“Think Selena would be okay if I raid her closet, so that I can shower?” Sophia asks, fidgeting with her fingers and biting down on her bottom lip. Both signs that she is nervous.
She’s freaking out about the answers I still owe her.
I give her a nod. “I’m sure she would be fine with it.” I send a smile in her direction to calm her down a bit. “I saw some clothes in one of the other rooms. Let’s go find you something.”
As she looks for something to wear, I send out a quick message over to Christian and ask if he can help with picking up Hunter’s SUV and Sophia’s stuff from the hotel tomorrow. Thankfully, he says yes, so that is taken care of.
The SUV is quickly forgotten, though, when I decided to go through all the missed calls and text messages that I’ve been avoiding since I turned my phone back on. So many names stare back at me on the screen, from everyone from my brother, Isaac, and my father to my publicist and my agent, which tells me that the news of my arrest has made it out. There is one name that stands out, though, one name that has me letting out a frustrated sigh, and that is the name Grayson Lane.
If the owner of the team is calling me, that means that shit isn’t going to be pretty when I get back to Chicago. I hate to think this, but my time in Chicago may be done and over.
