Game For Love (Bad Boys of Football 3)

"Nothing much. Drinking from open containers. Talking back to police officers. His father was just like that when he was young. Too much energy and nowhere to put it. That's when his father started flying, real fast planes that could take all he could give."

Anna could feel herself softening toward Cole. No! Just because his grandmother couldn't help but see the good in him, didn't mean Anna had to keep seeing it, too. She'd come here to apologize to Eugenia for her lies, not let the woman convince her to make the marriage real.

She needed to get their focus back on the apology. "I really am sorry about letting you believe my relationship with Cole was something it isn't. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me one day."

"Oh, honey." Eugenia patted her hands again. "I appreciate you coming all this way for me, but I don't think you really want me to forgive you for falling in love with my grandson. I think you should forgive yourself first."

"How can I?" Anna whispered. "I've lied to everyone. Not just you, but my family, my friends, my colleagues."

"Cole made his mistakes. And now you've made yours."

Anna shook her head, not willing, not able to believe it could all be that easy.

"I know you're hurting, honey, and I know my grandson is the reason for that. But I've never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you. Like he's finally seen the sun, like he finally believes it can shine down on him."

Anna's heart almost stopped beating. "He needed to act like that so you would believe that he loved me."

"Oh no. My boy has never been able to get a lie past me. He loves you, honey. Funny thing about us Taylors--we're ornery about relationships. We do our best to act like we don't need anyone. But when we fall in love, that's it for us. Only once. But with every last piece of our hearts."

Anna didn't know what to say, not when the last thing she'd expected was for Cole's grandmother to sit here and talk to her about love. Blaming, yelling, hating--they were all easier than loving.

"If you could, would you take it all back? If I could clap my hands and send you back to Friday night and make sure that you never met my grandson, is that the path you would take?"

Anna opened her mouth to say yes, of course she would take back everything she'd done.

But the words just wouldn't come.

"Or," his grandmother said with such kindness, such understanding, "would you have loved him anyway?"

* * *

"I'll never forgive myself for what I did to you, Grandma." A flash of pain shot through him. "And to Anna." Cole's grandmother held his hand, so gently, as if he were the one in the hospital bed. "I took her innocence and broke it in two." "I'm angry with you, Cole. Anna's angry with you." His grandmother gestured to the stack of papers on her side table. "The entire world is angry with you. You've certainly got a lot of explaining and groveling to do. But anger fades."

"I don't care what the rest of the world thinks." And it was true, he never had. It was what had made him impenetrable. "I only care about you." His throat was almost too tight to say,

"And Anna."

"I still love you, honey. And the last time I saw someone as full of love as Anna, I was looking into your grandfather's eyes. Your father loved your mother like that, too. All the way.

Holding nothing back. No matter what."

"I made her lie for me."

"Cole." His name was a warning on his grandmother's lips. "Don't keep on with the lying. Don't keep getting yourself in trouble. Yes, you benefited from the lies. But so did she, otherwise she wouldn't have gone through with it."

But the fact that Anna had made her own choices didn't change the fact that he was ruining her life, that he'd gone and done it all in the span of one short week.

"I need to let her go she can have a normal life, marry a guy who's good enough for her."

A guy he would dream of killing with his bare hands each and every night.

"I know you think you've broken her heart. But little cracks, that's all there are in it right now. You want to really see it break, you go ahead and let a better man have her. I thought you were smarter than this, Cole." His grandmother hadn't talked to him like this since bailing him out of jail his freshman year at college. "Do you really not see that your entire future is Anna?

Are you really going to just up and throw it all away? You've fought before, honey. Fight again.

Fight like hell to fix what you've done wrong. And when you get back on the straight and narrow, don't ever look back. Only forward."

Word for word, it was what she'd said to him when he was nineteen. How could he have forgotten?

Playing football had been important, had given him a purpose, a reason to feel good about himself in the morning. Football had been more than just his livelihood, it had been his everything.

But he could play a thousand more games, could keep getting up in the morning, keep depositing those big checks into his bank account, and it wouldn't matter.

Not without Anna.

Because she was his everything.

And he was going to get her back. Somehow, some way, he was going to convince her she needed to be with him.

When someone knocked, Cole looked up expecting to see Anna, and was surprised to see the doctor with her.

Please, God, no. Not this, too.

When his grandmother had been railing at him, trying to knock some sense into his thick head, he'd almost forgotten she was sick. She looked and sounded just like the woman of fifteen years ago who'd twisted his ear and told him, "Don't f**k up again."

"Mr. Taylor, I thought I'd bring your wife back inside so that I could give the whole family the news at the same time." Cole could barely process the hint of a smile in the doctor's eyes. "Eugenia, you are a remarkable woman."

His grandmother shot him a triumphant glance. "I've always told my grandson that."

"And I've always known it." Cole's insides were so f**ked up by now that his words sounded like gravel scraping on the bottom of shoe.

"I'm sorry, this isn't fair of me to draw it out like this. It's just that it's so much fun, one of the highlights of my job, actually, to deliver such good news."

Cole almost shot up out of his seat to grab the doctor and shake the rest of it out of her, but a small sound from Anna distracted him, had him looking at her instead. She held one hand over her heart, the other wrapped tightly around his grandmother's hand.

"We'll have to do more blood work, but based on the tests we did last night, I think we're heading out of the woods. Hopefully for good."