If It's Only Love (Boys of Jackson Harbor 6)

“You probably haven’t fit since then,” I say, squinting at him through the dark and smiling. I grab the battery-operated lantern from the wall and click it on. It’s not much, but it’s enough to cast a warm glow around us—enough so I can see his face. “You hardly fit now.”

He glances up at the ceiling, way too close to his head, even seated. “Eh, there’s plenty of room.” He nods to the two beers beside me. “Is one of those for me?”

“If you want.” I open them both and hand one to him.

His sigh fills the space a beat before his sadness. “This is the first time since I was drafted that I’ve had more than a single drink during the season.”

“Your body is a multimillion-dollar temple.”

“This temple is all I have. Without this, I don’t have shit.” His words are slightly slurred, and I wonder how many he’s had. I know he was drinking while talking to my brothers. I had a few too. I’m tempted to get sloppy drunk, but Mom’s here and she wouldn’t like that.

“You always thought you were nothing without football,” I say. “I never believed that.”

He gives a small smile and sighs. “Thanks.” He traces the lip of his beer with his index finger, and I can tell he’s trying to work up to say something important. Something I probably don’t really want to talk about right now. “Mom’s sorry she couldn’t come. She wanted to be here.”

I smile. I can handle talking about Ms. Connor. Easton may have grown up without a dad around, but his mom did everything in her power to make up for it. “How is she?”

“Busy. Happy. Finally pursuing her passions instead of just trying to get by.”

“Art, right?”

He nods. “She’s obsessed with watercolors. She’s really talented and doesn’t give herself enough credit.” He lifts those sad eyes to me. “A lot like you, I guess.”

He’s so close to me up here, but with our legs stretched out between us, he feels so far away, so I roll to my knees and scoot across the plywood floor to sit beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “I love the way you take care of her—the way you didn’t question it when you joined the league. You just did it.” When I tilt my face up to look at him, I catch him studying me, his gaze glued to my mouth. “You’re a good son. I bet you’re a good dad too.”

He blinks away. “We need to talk about what happened in Chicago.”

“I’d rather not right now,” I whisper, focusing on the frogs in the distance, the cicadas singing in the trees.

“I need to.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and kisses the top of my head. “I want to be a good dad more than I want anything. I’ll never be like your dad—I travel too fucking much, for one—but I want to try to be as close to that as I can manage. Everything I know about being a good father came from him.”

I take a deep breath before rising to my knees and turning to straddle him. His eyes go wide and his jaw slackens, and for a moment, the look of wonder in his eyes is worth all the years of longing—of wanting and feeling like he was so far beyond my reach.

He grips my hips and slides his rough thumbs under my shirt, rubbing absent circles there. His eyes are glassy and his cheeks are flushed. “Shay, I’m serious. I need to explain.”

I shake my head and bring my mouth to his. I know this is complicated. I’m in grad school; he’s in the NFL. I’m just an average girl, and he has models knocking down his door. And never mind how my family will react . . . I brush my lips over his. “Not tonight,” I say. His mouth is soft against mine, but his hands tighten at my waist. “I know we have things to figure out, but we can do that another time.” I tug his bottom lip between my teeth.

He groans, then shoves me away—and not gently. “Shit. I’m sorry. We can’t.”

I scramble to the opposite wall, my pride stinging.

“Fuck. So sorry, Shay.” He rubs at his mouth with the back of his hand, and he might as well have slapped me. Is he rubbing away my kiss? “Shit, shit, shit.”

My own apology sits on my tongue, but I trap it there. When he said we needed to talk, he didn’t mean figuring out the details of us—he meant he needed to explain that there isn’t going to be an us. I’m such an idiot. Why did I expect anything else?

I draw my knees into my chest and close my eyes.

“Shay,” he whispers. “God, I screwed this all up.”

“Don’t.”

“You’re fucking amazing. And if things were different . . .”