Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(8)

It had been the second concussion I’d suffered in two seasons. My behavior with past concussions had drifted toward erratic. It had scared her when I stumbled getting out of the tub, when I couldn’t remember missing my father’s birthday or two team meetings. Symptoms, all of them, none of which I gave any weight to. All of which had Aly laying down ultimatums I didn’t take seriously. The other issue…I hadn’t seen it, not until she was gone. The way I’d treated her, like she didn’t matter, like she was there only when I wanted her, that took longer to admit to myself I’d done. It was still hard to see how I’d been, how easily I had discounted her. Out of sight, out of mind.

“Do you want me to beg?” I’d asked, holding onto her before she could dress. “Because I will. I’ll beg.”

“I begged, cheri. I’ve been begging for years. It didn’t change anything.”

My refusal to consider an early retirement was the last straw. One I broke. One I expected. One that still surprised me when it came.

She’d been naked with me minutes before. My body still buzzed with the sensation of being inside her and then…she said she was leaving. She’d kissed me, something soft, something wet that reminded me of what she’d given up to be with me. How much she’d sacrificed of herself just to stay at my side while I cultivated a career for myself on the gridiron.

“This is you leaving me? Forever?”

“Baby,” she’d said, holding my face, touching my skin like she couldn’t keep herself from it. “We’re always.”

She’d forgotten.

Looking at her now, seeing the realization that I hadn’t forgotten her promise, that I’d depended on her to remember it to, and Aly’s entire expression transformed. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t angry. Aly simply fought whatever moved around in her head. She fought to come up with a valid excuse for everything she’d agreed to up on that stage.

Finally, when I guessed she couldn’t take my stare or the desperate way I gripped her, Aly looked away, exhaling like she wanted her breath clear.

“Ransom, we both said a lot of things we should have kept to ourselves.”

It was then my control broke and I grabbed her face, staring her down, hoping that she saw everything I felt in my gaze, all those half-hidden secrets that told her what I wanted.

“I meant every word I’ve ever said to you.”

And then I kissed her, slow, deep, so she’d remember me. Us. So she’d recall what we had been to each other. And then I did one of the hardest things I've even done in my life—I left her alone in that hallway with the sting of my kiss bruising her lips.





Paper cuts.

Deep

Slicing

Blood

And breath

Whisper ripping.



Only I see it.

The faint mark

Between the fingerprints

Etched in my skin.

Still it’s there

Small, seemingly insignificant.

Like a bruise



Only I can see,

Feel

Hurt

Running deep.

Hidden from the world.





Two




New Orleans is excess. It’s everywhere you go, as long as you go to the right places. The city holds within its breast the faint whiff of culture, history, exhaling it all along with the spice of decadence, debauchery so sweet, so enticing that even the bravest, the boldest can be tempted. It was something I’d known—that excess—since I’d been thrust into the Riley-Hale clan.

They lived a life completely foreign to what I’d known as a kid. Affluence and influence came with that hyphenated name. The excess that comes with fame and celebrity was a companion to the laughter, the love that has always existed under that lake house roof.

Ethan had shown me a different sort of excess—tenderness, ease, and a glimpse into a world Keira and Kona tended to steer clear of; one that included social standing and country clubs. Celebrity was one thing. New Orleans society was something altogether different. Even when Ransom and I moved to Miami, when the pomp and circumstance of being with an NFL player brought a decadence reminiscent of New Orleans, we’d still hadn’t subjected ourselves to the kind of wealth that Ethan had always known.

Like tonight, with his sister and her husband toasting us, under the watchful eyes of Ethan’s law partners and clients who shook his hand when we walked to our table, and the well-connected folk that nodded at him anytime they caught his eye. New Orleans excess was on display.

“To the happy couple,” Micah, Ethan’s brother-in-law said, clinking his glass to Ethan’s as we all returned the greeting.

My smile was so wide, so fake, and a small twitch worked across my cheek as I held it, hoping like hell no one, not Ethan or his sister Steph or her husband or any of the curious gazes watching us, could tell that I had never been so unsure of anything in my life.

“Let me see the ring again.” Steph pulled my hand across the table before I could even set my glass down. “Oh, Ethan, it’s just so lovely.”

It was. All of it: the ring, the wine, the beautiful lawyer who wanted to give me everything, anything, the one who swore he didn’t expect a thing from me. Just my love. My loyalty.

The soft jazz music from a quartet playing out on the courtyard filtered into the large restaurant, past the bar and right toward us at the table fitted with white linen and elegant, silver flatware. Ethan took his sister’s compliment, relaxed against the burgundy leather back of his chair as she held the ring up to the chandelier light. She guessed it was Tiffany’s. She guessed the carat size. All the while, Ethan nodded and kept his hand on the back of my neck, absently stroking his thumbnail against the baby hairs that had fallen from my clip.