I fucking adore her.

  Without warning, my mind flips to the last time I adored someone like this. How that time felt like a revelation too. And it was. It was right. So, so right. And this feels right too, sitting here with Maddy, telling her my secrets, talking to her and saying Lainey’s name. It makes me feel like I can have this second chance while also honoring my first one, and that’s a heady thought I tuck away to dissect later.

  Maddy unwinds her hand from mine and stands, walking over to a lounge chair on the other side of the pool and grabbing a massive to-go cup and a bunch of other stuff before stalking back to me and dropping back onto the ground, setting down a bag of kettle corn, the remainder of the bag of M&M’s I gave her earlier, tortilla chips, and a huge container of queso.

  “Queso with all your usual snacks is an interesting combination.” I lean back on my hands and watch as she tears open the bag of popcorn and tosses a handful into her mouth.

  Maddy pins me with the cutest fucking glare I’ve ever seen. “Are you making fun of my snack choices which are, inarguably, the best snack choices of all time?”

  Sitting up straight, I hold up my hands. “I wouldn’t dare, because if I did, you wouldn’t share with me, and I’m fucking starving. I spiraled before my room service was delivered.” At the reminder of my spiral, I eye my phone and clench my fists to keep from picking it up. The storm is not going to have magically stopped, and calling my family is a bad idea. Even though the sharp edge of panic is gone thanks to Maddy’s company, if I call them and they’re still out in the bad weather, the panic will come roaring back, and I don’t want them to see that.

  “The queso is cold because I abandoned it when you burst out here, but it’s still awesome because, cheese.” Maddy slides the chips and queso towards me, and when I look up, the understanding in her eyes has a hot rush of something arrowing through me. It’s been a long, long time since someone could read me like this. I wonder briefly if it’s just because Maddy is a therapist and she’s trained for it, but something tells me that’s not it. The pull between us is too strong for it to be anything other than what it is.

  Inevitable.

  Shaking off that thought for the time being, I grab a chip and dunk it in the cheese, popping it into my mouth. “Fuck, that’s good,” I mumble.

  “Right?” Maddy asks, taking a chip of her own. “There’s nothing better than Mexican food. I think I could only eat Mexican food for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy. As long as there are M&M’s too. And kettle corn. And also orange soda. And waffles. I really, really like waffles. Oh! And grilled cheese. Anything with cheese really, especially if it’s melted.”

  She nods, satisfied with her list, and I laugh, grabbing her soda and taking a sip. “So, what you’re saying is that what you actually want is all your favorite things, at all times.”

  She shrugs, eating more popcorn. “I like what I like, and I have a lot of favorites. Also, I hate making decisions. I would prefer to just have everything than to have to choose one of anything.”

  “What are some of your other favorite things?”

  “I mean…” She gestures to the snacks sitting between us. “These are most of them.”

  I reach out and rub my thumb over her bare knee just to see her reaction, and I’m not disappointed when she inhales sharply. “What about your non-food favorites?”

  She gives me a wry smile. “We could be here for a while.”

  “I’ve got all night, Wildcat.”

  Her eyes flash at the nickname, and I grin at her because even though she tries to cover it up with a sip of soda, I see it and I love it. “I love Celine.”

  “Are you talking about the person or your car?”

  She throws her head back and laughs. “You remember that I named my car Celine?”

  I lean back on my hands again, unable to look away from her. It has nothing to do with the tiny cotton shorts she wears, or the way her ponytail brushes her bare shoulders, or the way the tops of her perfect tits are almost visible above the low neckline of her tank top.

  It’s her.

  The grin on her face when she tells me about her favorite things and the way she takes her snacks so seriously and her laugh that is my favorite song. The way her hand in mine had my heartrate slowing, the sound of her voice an antidote to the panic that threatened to take me under. I’m in deep, and sitting here on this rooftop with her, I realize I don’t want it to be any other way.

  Even if we can’t be more than what we are, I’d rather have a fraction of her than have everything with anyone else.

  “It’s awfully hard to forget the sight of a bright red Jeep screeching into the parking lot, ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ blasting out of the open windows. Besides, Riley was playing Celine Dion on her phone when we got home so she could see what all the fuss is about.” I put air quotes around those last words, and Maddy laughs. “Apparently you are extremely cool because you drive a red Jeep and you played hockey, and because you like Celine, Riley has decided Celine is acceptable.”

  “The thirteen-year-old stamp of approval. I dig it,” Maddy says with a grin.

  “You should be honored by your cool title,” I say, reaching for the bag of popcorn and digging in. “Pretty much every adult in Riley’s world is supremely uncool, and I’m at the front of the pack.”

  “I fucking love teenagers. Especially teenage girls. They’re so smart and funny and fascinating. It’s cool to see them figuring out how the world works and how to navigate that finite space between childhood and adulthood.”

  “Do you spend a lot of time around teenagers?”

  She shrugs, taking another sip of her drink. “When I was in grad school, I did an internship in a group home for teenage kids who hadn’t yet aged out of the foster system. And I spend a lot of time with Olivia and Brian’s kids, who are both teenagers now. Jake is a senior and is mostly too obsessed with sports and his friends to give me the time of day, but Zoe still thinks I’m a cool, older sister type, which is really special to me because I’ve had that same kind of relationship with Olivia since she moved to Pittsburgh to be closer to her brother when I was ten, and that’s always how I’ve felt about my mom’s three best friends who pretty much helped raise me.”

  The way she talks about her family has her face lighting up, and it makes me want to ask her a million more questions and meet every single one of the people who had a hand in making Maddy who she is.

  I want to know everything about her.

  “Riley has been talking about Zoe. I think they’re hitting it off.”

  Maddy grins at me. “That’s great! Zoe is a great kid. She’s a serious boundary pusher and is in the middle of a love affair with the color black, but I love that about her.”

  I give her a wry smile. “I’m familiar with that. At least, the boundary pushing part.”

  Her smile widens. “Riley giving you a run for your money?”

  Huffing out a laugh, I grab another handful of popcorn. “Raising a teenager is not for the weak, it turns out. The learning curve is steep. I’m trying to just go with it, though. Let her be whoever she needs to be. But it’s…harrowing. Lainey would have been so good at figuring it out. Sometimes I feel like I’m jumping from crisis to crisis, just trying to survive.”

  Maddy studies me, and for a second, it feels like she sees the whole of me. “Offer still stands, you know.”

  “What offer?”

  She tosses an M&M in the air and catches it in her mouth in a way that has me grinning at her. She’s so damn cute. “To tell me about Lainey.”

  My chest warms at the way her name sounds coming out of Maddy’s mouth, and it has the words spilling out before I can stop them.

  “She was a whirlwind,” I say with a laugh, thinking back to those early days. “I met her in an economics class early in our freshman year of college. She got to class five minutes late, dropped down onto the seat next to me, flashed me a grin, and asked if she could borrow a pen. I was eighteen and already overwhelmed trying to balance classes and football, but all of a sudden, nothing else mattered because Lainey wanted to go get pancakes at two a.m. at the diner off campus or sneak into the sports complex to stargaze on the tennis courts. We fell in love fast, and college was a blur of days and nights spent together, and football games where she would wear my jersey and scream her head off, and the absolute certainty that we were meant to be together forever. The kind of certainty you can only have when you’re eighteen and sure that your entire life is ahead of you.

  “She moved to Pittsburgh with me when I was drafted, and we got married and had Riley pretty quickly. Some people would say too quickly, but I’m happy we didn’t listen. Didn’t wait. Lainey was an amazing mom. It was almost like she knew she wouldn’t be around for long, so she poured so much love and fun into those three years with Riley. I loved her,” I say quietly, feeling the truth of it in my bones. “I loved her so damn much, and then she was gone, and I’ve tried to give all of that love to my kids. To be enough for them, even though they deserve both of us. Sorry,” I say, shaking my head, realizing that talking about how much I loved my late wife is not exactly the conversation to be having with the first woman since my wife that I’ve had big, important feelings for. “That was a lot.”

  When she lays a hand over mine I flip my hand over, lacing our fingers together. “Don’t apologize. Not for this. Never, ever for this.”

  “It’s not weird?” I ask the question again. “Talking about my wife?”

  She shakes her head, thoughtfully. “Not for me. She was your person for a long, long time. You should be able to talk about her anytime you want. She may be gone, but the two of you will always be tied together by your kids, and by the fact that you loved her, deeply and completely. Besides, she sounds cool as hell. I, too, enjoy two a.m. diner pancakes and stargazing. Although I used to do my college stargazing on the roof of the science building.” Maddy puts air quotes around the word stargazing and shoots me a wicked grin. “Stargazing, of course, being code for making out. And…other things.”

  “Who were you making out with?” I practically growl.

  Maddy bursts out laughing. “Simmer down, Cameron. You know you just got finished telling me about your whole entire wife, right?”

  I laugh, too. “Sorry, for a second I was a college guy again, and the girl I like told me she was making out with someone else.”

  “The girl you like, huh?” Maddy says with a smirk.

  It’s the smirk that does it, I think. Or maybe it’s just her and me and the warm breeze on our faces and the way she let me talk about Lainey and how I think she sees past just the football player or the single dad or the widower straight to my core. Whatever it is has me moving the snacks out of the way, scooting around so we sit side-by-side. Maddy sucks in a breath but doesn’t protest as I put a hand on her cheek, splaying my fingers over her jaw and turning her head so she’s looking at me, my body humming at her proximity.

  “The girl I like,” I say quietly, sweeping my thumb over her cheekbone, watching her green eyes grow hazy and dark. “I really like you, Wildcat. I’ve liked you since you opened your purse full of M&M’s and let me kiss you in a bar.”

  “We shouldn’t,” she says, her voice ragged. But despite the protest, she doesn’t move.

  “I know.” I lean in just a little closer, her vanilla and lavender scent surrounding me and her skin warm under my palm. “I know this is complicated as hell, and I know you have your reasons for wanting us to keep our distance. Your job is important to you, and it should be. It’s important to me too. But fuck, Maddy, I can’t get you out of my head. I’ve replayed our night together a million times. I think of you, even when I shouldn’t. When I dream, it’s you I see.”

  “God, Cameron.” Maddy’s voice is a plea. “You can’t say things like that.”

  “Why not?” I ask, my free hand taking hers, winding our fingers together.

  “Because it makes me want things I shouldn’t.”

  “What things?”

  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she opens them, there’s a kind of determination in her gaze that has my stomach swooping. “To kiss you.”

  I smile, running my thumb over her bottom lip. “So, kiss me, Wildcat. I’ve been waiting weeks to feel your lips on mine again.”

  She pauses for a beat, and then the space between us slowly disappears until her breath flutters over my face and my heart gallops in my chest. The world around us slowly fades away until it’s just her and me and this perfect slice of stolen time.

  The blaring from my phone has us jerking apart. Maddy exhales heavily as I grab my cell from the ground, panic lancing through me as the weather notifications come pouring in. Severe thunderstorm warning. Flash flood warning. Pittsburgh, PA.

  No missed calls from my family.

  My breath backs up in my lungs and my vision blurs as my brain serves me up a thousand worst case scenarios in a spiral that’s worse than the last. Worse, that is, until Maddy moves fast to wrap her soft arms around my waist from behind and holds tight. Until she lays her cheek on my back and rests her legs alongside mine, her flip-flop clad feet brushing the outside of my calves.

  “Breathe, Cameron. Breathe with me, okay?” she says softly, splaying one hand directly over my pounding heart.

  I feel her chest rise and fall against my back, and my own breath stutters out once, twice, three times, until it starts to match the cadence of hers. Leaving my phone on the ground, I cover her hands with mine, and as my brain starts to clear, I have the wild thought that nothing would ever be wrong again as long as I could have Maddy’s arms around me.

  “Good,” she murmurs, bending her hands back to weave our fingers together. “Just keep breathing. I know you’re scared, but you’re not alone. I promise you don’t have to be alone.”

  I close my eyes, taking another deep breath and letting her words soak in. The softness in them. The care. I’ve been dealing with these little panic attacks alone for a long time, and it’s a relief and a revelation to have her with me now. I focus on that, on her, until my ringtone shatters the stillness. Grabbing the phone, my breath whooshes out when I see it’s a video call from Riley. And when I swipe to answer and see she’s sitting in my living room at home, the relief that crashes through me is so strong it’s almost painful.

  “Hey, Ry,” I say, trying to make my voice more upbeat and less like I’ve spent much of the last three hours freaking the fuck out about weather.

  Riley’s hair is damp and her eyes are bright. “Oh my god, Dad, it was insane. It’s raining so hard that a ton of streets are flooded, so it took us forever to get home from play practice.”

  “We saw, like, ten trees that fell down on the way to pick up Riley after hockey!” Ethan’s head pops into the screen, his eyes so comically wide that I laugh, relieved as fuck to see my kids’ faces.

  “We’re fine,” I hear my mom call from the background. “Everything is under control.”

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Maddy says quietly, trying to scoot away from me.

  But the last thing I want is to be alone. I want her. Right here. Possibly forever, but at the very least, for now. So, I clamp my hand down on hers, making it clear that I don’t want her to move an inch, and when she doesn’t protest, instead sliding the hand on my chest back down to my waist, my heart does an achy roll, my fingers tightening on hers. I’m tall enough that the top of Maddy’s head isn’t visible behind me, and I angle the phone so my kids can’t see her arms around my waist as they regale me with stories about their days.

  And with my family on the phone, and Maddy pressed up against me, my free hand covering both of hers, my world rights itself, and right now, in this moment, everything is perfect.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MADDY

  “And this one?” I ask, pointing to a triple spiral tattoo on the very impressive right bicep of Drew Ellicott, the Renegades star wide receiver. A triple spiral I’ve seen before right on Cam’s ribs.

  While he was naked.

  Because I’ve seen Cam naked.

  That is a thing that happened, and it’s been even harder to forget since he opened up to me on the rooftop in Tampa last week. Since our almost kiss. The kiss that in my most introspective moments I wish hadn’t been interrupted the way it was by weather apps and kids and Cam’s second brush with a panic attack in as many hours.

  Seriously though, fuck introspection.

  Introspection is what made me dream that not only did we kiss on that roof, we did a lot more. Introspection had me reaching for my favorite purple vibrator in the middle of the night when I woke up all hot and bothered.

  We hate introspection.

  “It’s a triskelion, one of the ancient Celtic signs of brotherhood. Cam and I got them the day before we reported to rookie mini-camp after we were drafted. It was really stupid since it hurt so badly I could barely catch a ball, and no way could Cam do any kind of blocking.” Drew chuckles. “Our coach at the time was so pissed I seriously thought he was going to release us both on the spot.”

  Drew is sitting on my couch for his weekly mental health check-in, but when I caught sight of the tattoo I recognized on his arm, under the guise of getting to know him better, I started asking about all his tattoos so it wouldn’t be suspicious when I asked about that particular one. And now that I know he and Cam match, it’s not weird for me to bring Cam up.

  At this point, I’m basically a middle schooler passing notes to my friend to get her to ask the guy I like if he likes me too.

  So professional. Much psychology.

  I roll my eyes internally.

  I reach over and grab the to-go cup on my desk, soothing myself with the sugary goodness of my orange soda.

  “So, you guys have been friends for a long time?”

  “Since college,” Drew says. “We played together at Georgia and were both drafted here, so we’ve been teammates and best friends for almost twenty years. I was there when both of his kids were born and when Lainey died. His late wife.” A shadow of sadness crossing Drew’s face. “Anyway, we’ve been through some shit, and he’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother. To a real family that sticks.” That shadow deepens and makes me wonder who else Drew has in his life, but before I can ask, he makes a face and rolls his eyes. “Fuck, that all makes me sound old.”