Right as Raine (Aster Valley 1)

It was bullshit, of course. He just preferred sitting next to someone who wouldn’t pester him about his job, the team, stats, and insider information. When I was his seatmate, he had a buffer between him and the oftentimes rabid Rigger fandom. It didn’t hurt that I was so much smaller than he was and he wouldn’t have any issues fitting his giant shoulders and legs into the space between our seats. First-class seats were big, but not NFLer big.

She clicked on her keyboard and sighed, huffed, and scraped her upper lip with her bottom teeth before finally letting out an ah-ha noise. “Got it. Gimme just one… there. I’ll print these new boarding passes out for you and get your bags checked in.”

When Tiller tried handing over his credit card, she blushed again and pushed his hand away, her own hand lingering on his. I turned around so I could roll my eyes without being rude to her face. The businessman behind us in line caught my eye.

“Is that Tiller Raine?” he whispered.

I shook my head. “Bobby Simplethorn. You probably know him from that hemorrhoid commercial.”

The man looked at me in total confusion. “What?”

I sang a little jingle. “Nothing softens bottom thorns quite like Simplethorn… No? You don’t know it? Huh. Bobby here is the CEO. That miracle cream is his baby. I can introduce you if you want?”

The man winced. “Uh, no. That’s okay. Thanks, though.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

When I turned back to face the lady at the counter, I found both her and Tiller staring at me. Nessa turned to look at Tiller with a raised brow.

“No,” he said before she could ask. “The closest I’ve come to hemorrhoids is dealing with this pain in my ass.” He thumbed at me over his shoulder. “And now I’m regretting the seat change.”

Nessa looked confused, so I leaned forward and plucked the boarding passes out of her hand before she had a chance to change her mind. I’d already mentally ordered my first free drink and wasn’t about to give up the chance at an in-flight buzz courtesy of Tiller Raine’s largesse. Or, Nessa’s largesse as the case may have been.

“Thank you so much, Nessa. Have a wonderful day.”

I turned to head toward the TSA area when I heard Nessa call out, “Have a safe flight! You too, Mr. Raine. Good luck against the Jaguars on Sunday!”

There was a familiar beat of silence in which time seemed suspended. I’d often referred to this moment as similar in feel to putting on a pair of powerful, noise-canceling headphones. It was almost like the air around us formed a vacuum for a moment, sucking in and pressing against us before rushing out like the tide and grabbing up every fucking Rigger fan within a ten-mile radius.

Sure enough, after the beat of silence, it was mayhem. Fans came out of the woodwork, including airport employees, a nearby pilot, three families, and untold numbers of business men and women. Everyone was friendly and patient, but no one more so than Tiller Raine, who thrived in situations like this one.

He was a natural around his fans. You’d never know that they intimidated the hell out of him. He was always worried about disappointing them. One of the first things he’d said to me when I’d started accompanying him in public was to always treat the fans with respect no matter how they acted. At first, I thought it was the same old “the customer is always right” mentality everyone had in sales. Don’t piss off a season ticket holder. My father had said it in front of me tons of times over the years. It took me a little while to realize how different that was from Tiller’s motivation.

“Without them, I wouldn’t be living my dream,” he’d told me one night after I’d almost lost my temper at a fan who wouldn’t get out of Tiller’s face. We’d been at the grocery store late at night to satisfy someone’s frozen greek yogurt bar craving (hint, it wasn’t mine), and the man in line behind us had practically demanded an inside scoop on the upcoming game. Tiller had said it so calmly, and then he’d laughed when I’d gawped at him.

But once I’d calmed down, I’d realized he was right. And knowing how much he cared about his fans, his job, and the team had given me a newfound respect for him. Before that, I’d seen players come and go from the Riggers without seeming to care about much more than their team paycheck and endorsements. They mostly indulged fan’s requests for pictures, hugs, and autographs when asked, but I’d only ever met a couple of players before Tiller who’d truly embraced the fans as the reason for their success.

So I stood there in the airport terminal and held Tiller’s leather backpack while he laughed and chatted and signed autographs until a security guard came to escort us to the gate. Tiller thought it was generous VIP treatment, but I thought it was more likely TSA’s need to clear the area near the security checkpoint.