Briggs (Carolina Reapers 7)

“Fashion week,” she whispered, a smile ghosting her lips, but then it fell and took my heart right with it. “They want you. It's all athletes.” She shook her head and loosed a long, painful sigh.

“What do you mean?” There was zero way this entire photoshoot hinged on me participating. I wasn't the one who designed the clothes or manufactured them. I was just the one in the clothes.

“I mean, they want you.” She flipped her phone toward me so I could read the email.

It took all of three seconds for me to curse under my breath and hand her phone back to her. The spread was focusing on “athletes in the wild,” and they already had Lukas Vestergaard lined up. If I knew Lukas, and I did, considering we’d played together for years, he’d be modeling his own line, which was in direct competition to Bristol. “You don't happen to have any other pro athletes on your endorsement roster, do you?” I asked Bristol with a grimace. The last thing I wanted to do was let her down, but I couldn't commit to anything, not in the middle of playoffs.

"Hardly." She scoffed. “I spent all my endorsement budget on you. Turns out you’re not exactly cheap.” She bumped me with her shoulder.

“Shit.” I would give back every cent that contract had brought me if it meant she’d have someone else to fill in.

Some of the light drained out of her eyes as she read her way down the rest of the email. “They already have the shoot booked because someone fell through. The site, photographers…everything is right there.”

There weren’t even words to describe the frustration I saw brewing in those gorgeous eyes, and I couldn’t blame her or even help her. “There has to be someone else you can book, right? Any other athlete. When is the shoot?”

“The twentieth of May,” she said, her voice taking on a tone I’d never heard from her—defeat.

Fuck that. My girl hadn’t risked everything to miss out on something like this. “That’s great. That’s…” I swiped open my phone and scrolled through the calendar. “That’s right at the end of conference finals. Should be between game six and seven depending on whatever teams make it that far.”

“It’s between games?” She blinked.

I nodded, showing her my screen. “We have second-round these next couple of weeks, so you’ll have your pick of players from whatever teams get knocked out of the playoffs. Take back some of the money from my contract to pay them. Call it a fine or whatever works for your accounting department.”

“I wouldn’t take anything from your contract, Cormac,” she said. “Between games,” she whispered. “And there’s not always a game six or seven, is there?” She rose up on her knees, and the cloth of her robe parted, thoroughly distracting me.

“Nope. It’s always best of seven. So, if you win the first four games, you don’t have to play the next three. Night before last, we won in game six for the first round, which was how I managed to sneak a night to get up here to see you.” I leaned in and brushed a kiss over her neck. Her skin was still damp from our shower, and she smelled incredible, all vanilla and sugar.

“So you could even have a few days off there?” There was a hopeful note in her voice that made my entire body go still. “Cormac?”

Dread seeped into every pore as I pulled back enough to look in her eyes. “Bristol, baby, please don't ask what I think you're going to.” My muscles tensed like I was bracing for impact.

She bit her lower lip and then took a deep breath. “Just hear me out.”

“Shit.” I shifted my weight, ready to stand, but she grabbed ahold of my hand, and I wasn’t about to rip myself out of her arms. Ever.

“You guys will definitely make it to conference finals,” she rushed, holding my gaze, her own going wide. “I’ve been following the brackets this year because—you know…you.” She opened up a browser on her phone and showed me a headline story. “Look, New York upset Pittsburgh last night, and the other New York team took out Montreal.”

“Duchess, I know what the brackets say,” I said slowly.

“They say that no matter what, at least half the games will be played here in New York!” There was so much hope in her eyes that I all I could do was grit my teeth and wait for her to finish. “That means that no matter what, you’d either be coming here for game seven or would have just been here for game six! And the shoot is just a couple of hours away in the Catskills. See?” She swiped through to show me a map.

“Yep, I know where that is, too.” It was more like a few hours away when traffic came into play. “Bristol…”