Page 90 of Summer Affair
“Yay!” the kids shouted.
“Bullfrogs on three.” The kids huddled around her and put their hands in the middle. “One. Two. Three.”
“Bullfrogs!” The hands exploded upward and then the kids burst out off the sidelines and onto the field, their cleats eating up the grass.
“Not too hard that someone gets a booboo though,” she called out to them. “Winning isn’t everything,” she said, holding back tears. “It’s about being there for your teammate when they need you most. And sometimes we can forget that in the heat of the moment.”
“I was a bad teammate,” a low voice said from behind her.
Heart in her throat, Jillian slowly turned around to find Clay, his broad shoulders blocking the afternoon sun. He was in a backward baseball cap, a Bullfrogs coach T-shirt, and athletic shorts—looking big, badass, and unbearably beautiful.
“What are you doing here?”
“Coming through on my promise.” He walked toward her, getting bigger and bigger until all she could see was him, and those beautiful blue eyes. Today they were soft and warm and a whole lot sad. “When you needed me the most, I switched teams, changed up the plan, and hurt you in the process.”
“I thought you left for Seattle. Darcy said you had a meeting.” A meeting that could determine the direction of his career. Yet there he was, in a middle-school field, with her.
“I did.” He cupped her hips. “But then I told my coach that I had an important meeting I couldn’t miss. A teammate who I couldn’t let down, so I came back.”
“Is that what I am? A teammate?” Because there were a lot of teammates in his world, and she wanted to know where she stood. If he still meant what he’d said the other morning in the kitchen.
“I hope you’ll be a hell of a lot more, but I want to hear from you what you want,” he whispered. “And I hope to hell you want me because I have spent every moment since you walked out of the kitchen thinking about you. About us.”
If there was one thing Jillian had learned over the past few months, it was to be honest. With oneself and with the people one loved. Even when it means exposing herself emotionally.
“Me too,” she whispered. While her head was warning not to get too far ahead of herself, her heart was telling her that there might be a chance after all. “The minute I walked out of the kitchen I missed you. Then I got home, and I was sitting there in that space I wanted and I realized that it’s lonely. That for most of my adult life I’ve been alone. Single parent, single girl, spending every single night after Sammy goes to sleep alone, but I’ve never felt as lonely as I have these past few days.”
“That’s on me and I’m so sorry,” he said. “I blew it. You told me from the get-go what you needed, and I wanted it so bad to be me.”
“I want it to be you too,” she admitted. “But I don’t believe in marriage, and you deserve to be with someone who wants to get married and have babies and all the things people in love do.”
He cupped her face and turned it until she met his gaze, his clear and unguarded gaze. “The only thing people in love have to do is love.”
An emotion close to hope clogged her throat. “What if it gets too hard and you change your mind? Or we can’t make it work? What if I’m not enough?”
“You’ll always be enough. No matter how this goes, you will always be the most amazing woman I’ve ever met and that will never change.”
“How this goes?” It was like an arrow through her heart. On the one hand, he said he loved her. On the other, he was waging the outcome on some unknown factor. “How do you want this to go?”
Because she wanted this to end with him telling her he loved her with no conditions, and her telling him she loved him more than her fears. Because there wasn’t room for fears when it came to true love.
“I want to beg you for a second chance. Where I promise to see you and hear you and put you first,” he said. “Up until now, my entire world has been about work. I felt I owed it to my dad for the time he invested in my career, to my brothers for all the sacrifices they made to get me here.”
She wanted to cry for the pain shown in the deepest blue eyes she’d ever seen. “And what about you? What about all you’ve sacrificed to get where you’re at? What about all that you’d sacrifice to be with me?”
He was quiet for a moment, and her stomach bottomed out. “None of those thing matter to me. The only thing that matters is you and Sammy. Which is what I told my coach.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told my coach that this would be my last year in the NFL.”
Her heart stopped. “You what? No, Clay, you can’t give up your career for me.”
“I’m not giving up. I’m opening up my life for more. All the mores that I’ve had to miss over the years. My busted knee was the best thing that even happened to me because it led me to you. To a life that’s full and filled with love.”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your career to have love.”
“I refuse to sacrifice my chance at happiness for a career.” She started to argue and he ran the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “My time on the field is coming to an end, I knew this. But this summer made me really question what I want. And what I want to be is with you. I want to go to bed next to you and wake up in the morning with you in my arms. And I want all the things that happen in between.”
