The last seconds on the clock ran down as New England’s quarterback took a knee on the forty-yard line. I stared at the scoreboard and watched with a heavy heart and regret gnawing at my chest. It felt like so much more than a shitty end to an otherwise spectacular season as I watched Winnie on the sideline from above. She was still beautiful, but all the light was gone from her eyes. Instead, anger lived there, laced toxically with the memories of us in every inch of stadiums across the country.
Two…One…
I watched from the Owner’s Box as our opponent ran out onto the field in celebration, rowdy and taunting, their chants nearly audible despite the distance and thick glass, and the Jumbotron blinded my eyes with confetti and congrats to New England.
Our season had officially come to a close, the evidence of a seventeen to thirteen loss in the divisional round play-offs stamped out on the scoreboard. Our guys had played good for the first two quarters, great even, but shit had sprayed violently from the churning fan after halftime. Three minutes into the third quarter, we’d been up by thirteen when Bailey had thrown an interception that led to a defensive touchdown for the opposition.
And unfortunately for us, that set the pace for the rest of the game.
One mistake trickled into another, penalties and turnovers and too many goddamn third and outs to count. We’d become our own worst enemy, playing head games with ourselves, and eventually, loss by self-detonation occurred.
Our guys walked slowly off the field with their heads down and their helmets hanging limply from their hands, disappointment visible in every step they took toward the tunnel, but my focus wasn’t on them.
I only had eyes for the victim of my own self-destruction, her blond hair and white shirt shining startlingly bright through the crowd of blue.
I had let my own demons fuck with my head. I’d been scared of the commitment and the speed with which I’d decided on it, Amelia’s words ringing soundly in my ears.
For the first few days this week, I’d done my best to blame it on Amelia, like she held responsibility for my downward spiral by simply voicing her own fears.
It was cowardly and petty and nothing more than an attempt to avoid the facts: the tragic end to my relationship with Winnie Winslow rested solely on my shoulders.
When she disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the tunnel, my mind and focus finally came back to the room around me.
The chatter was dismal, as expected, but I just didn’t have it in me to make small talk or to relive the mistakes of this horrible game. I needed to get the fuck out of there. I picked my jacket up from one of the black leather sofas resting against the wall of the suite and put it on, zipping it up to my chin. Halfway into January, the frigid temperatures had set in. A true fair-weather dweller, I always hated this time of year, but now, after everything I’d done to destroy my own life, the real cold lived inside of me. Deep in the depths of my empty soul, and I didn’t know how to vent it out.
I missed both of my girls more than I had ever missed anything in my life.
I missed Winnie’s texts. I missed her smile, her laugh, our inside jokes. I missed having her in my arms, both platonically and laid out beneath me as I made love to her. I missed everything about her—everything about us.
And I missed Lexi. Her football season was over just like this one, and after all the work we’d put in together, I had nothing to show for it. I didn’t get to see her smile at me at first sight, and I’d never hear her sweet voice as she scoured the world and people around her for knowledge.
And now, with the Mavericks’ season officially over, my opportunities to see Winnie at work would be few and far between until the summer months.
I had absolutely nothing tying me to them anymore.
I can’t do this.
Four bullshit words had ruined everything.
My office was drab and dreary for a Friday morning and smelled nothing like peaches and goddamn sunshine.
In fact, it smelled so bad in comparison, I’d almost gone out to get an air freshener. But I didn’t want to go out into the bustling crowd of Manhattan. There were too many people in a really small proximity to hate. I’d have wound up getting arrested or stabbed or worse.
I wasn’t really sure what was worse than a stabbing, but I was pretty sure it lived in Manhattan and it definitely resided post Winnie-breakup.
My office was eerily quiet, none of the hustle and bustle of the stadium, and notably less to look forward to. But as much as this place blew, the stadium wouldn’t have been any better.
After last week’s upset in the divisional game, most of the employees had crawled away to get in vacations and family time before serious preparation for next year began.
I had no family to have time with. I’d considered going to see my dad, but January in Wisconsin seemed even worse than heartbreak in New York.
So I was here. In my office. Doing a whole lot of nothing disguised as something.
I’d just finished reading an article in the New York Post about a blind hoarder in Brooklyn who’d been unknowingly living with the skeletal remains of her daughter for nearly thirty years. Apparently, she’d thought her daughter had simply moved out.
And still, when I thought of all the people who were the most unbelievably fucking ridiculously dumb in the world, my name came up number one on the list. Losing Winnie and Lexi was proof of that.
A knock on the door barely preceded its opening, and Kline and Thatch stepped in without invitation.
“Ah, see,” Thatch told Kline after nothing more than a quick glance in my direction. “The little bird’s nest has come back to Manhattan.”
“Shh,” Kline shushed him before stepping forward into the office and taking a seat in front of my desk. He rubbed at the leather of the armrests as he made himself disgustingly comfortable.
His hair was messy as though he’d visited his wife first.
I hated him for it.
“She’s busy working, you know,” I said in an effort to lash out, picking up a random stack of papers on my desk and slamming the stapler down on them.
“She wasn’t five minutes ago,” he countered without shame and no more than a glance in the direction of the angry stapler.
“Fucker,” I insulted.
“Nah,” Thatch said with a laugh. “Just a little foreplay.”
Kline laughed at that, but all I could do was glare.
We stared at each other, letting the testosterone fill the space until any movement from the outside world would make it explode.
“So?” Thatch questioned like an impatient bastard.
“So…what?” I asked, snatching the football-shaped stress ball off my desk and squeezing it to the point that the fake laces threatened to pop.
“How are you going to win Winnie back?” Kline asked, cutting right to the chase. I both loved and hated that he was so straightforward. Hated it because it was annoying, but faced with it or Thatch, I unabashedly loved Kline’s ability to cut to the chase.
“Win Winnie,” Thatch murmured. “I like that.”
I shook my head before I even started to speak. My mind was made up. “I’m not.”
Kline blinked and turned to Thatch, who reacted altogether less calmly.
“What the fuck does that mean?” he asked with both freakishly long arms held out in exasperation.
“They’re better off without me,” I told them, and they were. I was completely messed up and mixed up and just…fucked up. I was a fuck-up, that was for sure.
I’d gone over everything again and again in my mind, from the meeting to the way I’d handled everything afterward, and it all reeked of immaturity. Thirty-five goddamn years old and immature. But, out of everything, I hadn’t been able to forgive myself for not being man enough to ever tell her how I really felt. She deserved that—someone who not only loved her but told her he did. Repeatedly. They both fucking did.
“How the fucking fuck do you figure that?” Thatch yelled. Kline put a hand to his elbow and subtly shook his head.
All of Thatch’s anger had already snapped something inside of me, though, and I started to talk.
“I’m fucking unreliable, busy, always goddamn late. I’m not any of the things Win and Lex need.”
Thatch opened his mouth, but Kline again stopped him from speaking, and I gladly filled the silence.
“Lex is so fucking special. Smart and unique and goddamn perfect. Society doesn’t think so, but they’re wrong. But she doesn’t need me out there getting into fistfights with every fucking person who looks at her wrong, and Win doesn’t need that either. She works so hard and, God, she’s brilliant too, so it’s no wonder Lex is as smart as she is. Win needs to be able to come to work without dealing with some Neanderthal asshole. She needs to be able to relax for once in her goddamn life and know everything is taken care of.”
By the time I was done, I was breathing heavily, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 had smiles on their faces that would rival a lottery winner.
“What?” I asked with irritation highlighting my voice.
“Okay,” Kline said simply, and I blinked.
“No argument?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “You’re right.”
“I’m right?”
“Yep.”
What the fuck did he mean I was right? They weren’t going to try to convince me otherwise? I was that wrong for Winnie and Lex? So much so that my own friends weren’t even going to try to tell me I wasn’t.