Sarah

  There’s no way that night isn’t living rent free in your head.

  Emmy

  What Sarah said. A man like that isn’t exactly forgettable.

  Fucking tell me about it.

  Curses to my excellent memory.

  And Cam’s excellent…everything.

  Me

  Fuck, fine, it was the hottest night of my life, and I will live with the memories of it forever, because it can never be repeated.

  Maya

  Why again?

  Before I can start typing out my list of all the reasons I can’t fuck Cam Lowry again, the door to the roof flies open, slamming against the brick wall so hard I jump, my head snapping around, only to see Cam himself walk out onto the patio.

  I hate that my first reaction is for my heart to kick up and butterflies to swarm my stomach at the way he looks in black athletic shorts and a Renegades T-shirt, his hair messy and his jaw shadowed with a day’s worth of stubble. Except I actually don’t hate it at all, and that’s a feeling I’m going to have to dissect later. Much, much later. Maybe never.

  My second reaction is to be annoyed that he appeared right in the middle of my moment of Mexican food and orange soda induced Zen, and that I’m going to have to use energy I don’t currently have after the longest day in history trying to resist the irresistible pull I feel towards him.

  And my third reaction, the one that overshadows the rest, is concern. Because the Cam standing ten feet away from me is not the Cam I know. This Cam freezes, glancing around the roof like he can’t quite figure out how he got there. His phone is gripped so tightly in one hand that his knuckles turn white, and he shoves his free hand into his hair, tugging hard at the wavy brown strands like he’s looking for something to ground himself.

  From where I sit, his face is in shadows, but what I can see is all hard angles, his jaw locked and his forehead furrowed, his eyebrows drawn together. His posture is ramrod straight, his shoulders a tight line. I can’t see his eyes, but everything in his body language is the exact opposite of the easy-going, cheerful football player who has somehow burrowed his way right into my chest.

  Something is very wrong.

  I wish I could say it’s the psychologist in me who reacts. The part of me who sees someone so obviously in crisis and knows I can help.

  But it’s not.

  Instead, it’s the woman in me. The one who remembers the way Cam touched me with that unique mixture of reverence and possession during the night I spent in his hotel room. Who gave me a bag of six different kinds of M&M’s because they’re my favorite. Who agreed to just be friends but also told me he thinks I might be everything. The one who goes to his son’s hockey games and is proud of his daughter when she gets the lead in the school play and plays football with the enthusiasm of a kid at recess even though he’s been in the NFL for thirteen years.

  It’s that woman who stands from her lounge chair, queso and orange soda forgotten, and walks across the roof to the man now pacing in a tight circle, free hand clenched at his side and eyes locked on his phone, like he’s willing it to ring.

  I reach him in a dozen strides he doesn’t notice. Placing a hand on his forearm, I squeeze lightly, watching as he comes to an abrupt halt, his head turning quickly and his eyes locking on mine. The obvious anguish on his face, the way his breaths come in quick pants, like he can’t get enough air, has my heart squeezing, the psychologist in me recognizing the signs of a panic attack at the same time the woman in me wants to wrap up this sweet man and promise that nothing will ever hurt him again.

  “Maddy,” he says, his voice raw and tinged with fear, and I find myself missing the way he calls me Wildcat with that happy smirk in his voice even as this vulnerable side of the formidable football player I know has every part of me softening.

  “Hey, Cameron,” I say lightly, my eyes steady on his face, even as his dart around, unfocused and a little wild. But when I slide my other hand into his free one, lacing our fingers together, his breath comes stuttering out, his eyes snapping right to mine and holding, a morass of emotion swimming in the deep blue. “Focus on me, okay? You’re safe here with me. Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

  “I can’t breathe,” he manages, panic tinging his tone, his chest heaving as he tries to take a full breath.

  I take my hand off his arm and reach up to lay it on his cheek. His fingers flex in mine as he closes his eyes and leans into my touch, and even though it shouldn’t, warmth cascades through me at the way he takes this comfort from me. The way I want him to. “I know it feels like you can’t, but I promise you can. You’re having a panic attack, and that’s really scary, but you’re going to be okay. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”

  He opens his eyes and looks at me for a beat before he nods. The trust in his eyes practically undoes me as I tug him down onto the ground right where we stand, both of us sitting cross-legged so our knees touch. I try and unwind our hands, but his clamps down on mine, holding onto me like I’m his anchor in the storm. Laying my free hand over our joined ones, I wait until his eyes come back to mine.

  “We’re going to take some deep breaths, okay? Just do what I do.” I start to take deep, exaggerated breaths, and after a few seconds, he does the same, his breathing matching the cadence of mine. “That’s really good. Do you think you can tell me some of the things you see? Try three things.”

  “The pool,” he says quietly.

  I nod, holding his gaze. “It’s really pretty. What else?”

  “The stars. There are so many of them. It’s a really clear night here.” His voice breaks a little on the last word, and he closes his eyes again, taking a few shaky breaths.

  “It is. Can you find a third?”

  When he opens his eyes and looks at me, I feel the intensity of his gaze like a punch to the chest. “Your hair. I love the color. It makes me feel like I could see you anywhere. Pick you out in a crowd of a million. I like when I can see you.”

  His unfiltered truth has my heart thudding, as if it wants to jump out of my chest and right into his hands. Looking at him, the way his breathing is slowing, his face softening as his panic attack ebbs, I realize I wholeheartedly agree with that traitorous organ, and I have no idea what to do about that.

  “I used to hate it when I was little,” I say with a small smile, mainly to give him something to focus on other than his ebbing panic. “It made me stand out, and I never, ever wanted to stand out. But then when I was seven, I met my mom, and she had red hair and freckles just like me. That’s when I started to love it.”

  “You met your mom when you were seven?” I’m happy he’s calm enough to catch that, to ask the question.

  “I did. I spent my first seven years in and out of the foster system. My mom was one of my foster parents, and I lived with her temporarily until she adopted me right around my eighth birthday. She married my dad a few months later, and then he adopted me too.”

  “That must have been hard. To move around so much without a real home to go back to.”

  The statement is simple, but it packs a punch, and I have to stop myself from telling him exactly how hard. From showing him the scars I still carry from those early years of my life. Somehow, I know intuitively that he would treat that knowledge kindly. That he’s a safe place to lay my truths. “It was. It was really, really hard. I’m lucky to have been adopted by the best people in the world. To have a family like mine.”

  I look down at our joined hands to give myself a second for the emotion storming through me to pass. “They gave me the greatest home I could ever ask for, but it’s sometimes still hard to remember all the way back to when it wasn’t like that.” Looking back up, I find him studying me intently, his breathing back to normal but his eyes still full of whatever it was that caused his panic. “A truth for a truth, Cameron. What happened to cause your panic attack?”

  Cam sighs, lifting his phone and unlocking it. Whatever he sees on the screen has him sucking in a hard breath, his hand trembling lightly in mine, and when he drops the phone into his lap, I see it’s some kind of weather app, open to the radar. “It’s storming in Pittsburgh,” he says hoarsely.

  “It is. Is that a problem?”

  He closes his eyes, letting out a heavy breath. “I don’t like when it storms. I especially don’t like when it storms when I’m not home. When I can’t be there to make sure my family is safe.”

  He must see the questions in my eyes, so he keeps going, his voice quiet and a little forced, like it’s painful for him to get the words out. “My wife died the night Ethan was born. She had preeclampsia in the last seven weeks of her pregnancy, but it was mild enough that they managed it with extra monitoring and a bunch of other things, including inducing her at thirty-seven weeks. We had heard inductions can take forever, but Ethan was in a hurry to be born, so it was pretty quick, and god, it was so amazing. Riley was three, and all I could think about was how excited I was to call my mom and have her bring Riley to the hospital to meet her brother. I love being a dad,” he says softly. “Then and now. But all of a sudden, everything went wrong. Lainey started bleeding, really badly. I took Ethan from her so the doctors could work, but before I could even wrap my thoughts around what was happening, they were rushing her to surgery, and I was alone in the room with a new baby in my arms and no clue what was happening to my wife.”

  Cam closes his eyes, taking a long, slow breath. “They told me that, because of the preeclampsia, her uterus couldn’t contract properly after delivery. They tried so hard to save her, but she was bleeding too much, too fast, and they couldn’t stop it. She was gone twenty minutes after Ethan took his first breath. It was storming when they came out to tell me. It was raining hard, and the thunder was so loud it rattled the windows of our hospital room while the doctor told me my wife was gone. They did everything they could, she said. But they couldn’t save Lainey, and suddenly, I was a single father of a three-year-old and a baby who was only two hours old.” Cam blows out a breath, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. “Obviously, a thunderstorm didn’t kill Lainey. It was just really bad fucking luck. But for some reason…” He trails off, and when he opens his eyes, they take on a pleading look, like he’s begging me to understand him.

  And I do. My heart is shredded for him, for his kids, and for what they lost. But somehow, I know that, in this moment, what he needs is psychologist Maddy, so that’s what I give him.

  “It was storming when you lost your family. Your most important person. Your life became something different that night. Something scary and unexpected. Your brain made that connection, and now when it storms, your body reacts. It goes into fight or flight mode, because your brain is telling you that something terrible is about to happen to someone you love. It doesn’t matter that rationally you know better. Brains are mysterious and powerful, and once it wires itself, it takes a lot of work to undo the connection.”

  He gives me a small smile. “It’s been more than ten years. When I’m in town during a storm and I know where Riley and Ethan are, where my mom is, I’m mostly fine. But away games are harder. When they told us flights were cancelled because of the storms around Pittsburgh and we wouldn’t be able to get home tonight, I just…spiraled. Ethan has hockey practice, and Riley is at school for the play, and my mom is handling all the drop offs and pick-ups, so I couldn’t know for sure that they were safe. I didn’t want to call my mom or Riley because they don’t know about this part of me, and I don’t want to put it on them. Especially not on my kids. I paced my room for a while, staring at the weather radar, willing the rain to stop. And when it didn’t, my chest got tight and I couldn’t breathe. That’s when I came up here, hoping the air would help. It didn’t.” He studies me intently, his eyes dark and serious. “But you did.”

  Now it’s my turn to smile a little. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You were here,” he says, and my stomach swoops at his gravely tone.

  He glances down at his phone, still open to the radar, at the dark red moving slowly right across the city of Pittsburgh, and shakes his head slowly. “Do you think…” He trails off. “Do you think maybe you could stay up here with me for a while? I hate being alone in a hotel room under the best of circumstances.” Huffing out a laugh, he looks up at me. “Lainey used to sit with me on video calls for hours when I was in hotels the night before games because after curfew, I would be bored out of my skull. It probably drove her insane, but she never showed it. She was good like that.”

  Cam talks about his wife with humor and so much affection, but there’s something else there too. A relief, almost, in giving me this piece of her. Of them. It makes me wonder if he ever talks about her like this—and if he doesn’t, whether he wants to.

  I don’t know if it’s the balmy Florida night or the quiet, empty roof, or just the man sitting right in front of me showing me a side of him that I’m struggling to find anything but irresistible, but the question is falling from my mouth before I can stop it.

  “Do you want to tell me more about her?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  CAM

  Do you want to tell me more about her?

  My heart clenches at Maddy’s question. The ease and curiosity in it. And I wonder how she knew. How she understood that giving her that little piece of Lainey had the dredges of my panic attack lifting, a kind of lightness taking its place.

  “It’s not weird?” I ask, hoping she says no, because sitting here with her on the dark roof, her hand still in mine and her green eyes fixed on me, I’m suddenly desperate to stay up here, talking to her, for as long as I can. And not just because it’s a distraction from the fact that I’m more than a thousand miles away from all the people I love most in the middle of a thunderstorm. People I haven’t heard from yet tonight. I shove away the little licks of panic that threaten to resurface.

  It’s also because I like to talk about Lainey, and it’s not something I do all that much anymore. Of course I talk to my kids about her, tell them stories and show them pictures to make sure they know their mom. Who she was. How she was. How much she loved them both. But time passes and life happens and all of a sudden, it’s been weeks since I thought about what Lainey was to me.

  But then the woman who’s dug herself straight into my heart asks me to talk about her, and it’s like she’s given me a gift I didn’t know to ask for. A space to talk about the woman I once loved. To remember that she was here and what we had was real, even if it couldn’t last.

  “Why would it be weird?”

  I huff out a laugh. “Because Lainey is my late wife and you and I spent a night together where I fucked you into the mattress and the shower wall and on a dresser and every other surface in that hotel room, flat and otherwise. It was the best night I’ve had in years, and I don’t think it’s a secret that I would really, really like a repeat.”

  Maddy mock gasps, her eyes widening as she presses her free hand to her chest. “You would?”

  I laugh, nudging her knee with mine. “Brat. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For distracting me from my existential angst over a thunderstorm.”

  “Don’t do that,” she says seriously. “Don’t minimize it. You feel it, so to you, it’s the realest thing in the world. If you ever want to find some coping mechanisms for the anxiety, one of the therapists on my team can help you with that, but don’t make it less than it is.”

  This is the opening I’ve been waiting for to ask her the question that’s been on my mind for two weeks, and I walk straight through it. “What if I wanted you to help me with it? The way you did tonight.”

  She shakes her head, red ponytail brushing her shoulders. “I helped you through a panic attack tonight. That’s way different than therapy that helps you find a way to manage your anxiety long term.”

  I smile, running my thumb along hers, loving the way she shivers and tries to hide it from me. “You do therapy. You know how to help me manage my anxiety long term. As a matter of fact, I’m almost positive you’ve had every player on the team on your couch over the last two weeks talking about how to manage all of their anxieties. All of them except one.”

  Maddy huffs out a laugh. “Noticed that, did you?”

  “Wildcat, I notice everything when it comes to you. Especially when fifty-two of my teammates get to talk to you and I don’t.” I wink at her. “I really, really like to talk to you.”

  “Tone it down there, Casanova,” she says dryly. “It’s unethical for me to treat you, and you know it. The optics are nuclear level bad. The niece of the Renegades’ general manager, head of psychology for the team, found to be having a close, personal relationship with one of the players?” She shakes her head. “The headlines practically write themselves, and I don’t want any part of that. For me or for Uncle Brian. Someone else from my staff will be sending you an email about your weekly mental health check-ins, and when you’re on their couch, you can talk to them about your anxiety. That’s what they’re there for.”

  I give her a sly grin. “If you’re not treating me, does that mean we can have that repeat?”

  Maddy rolls her eyes. “Have you always been this persistent, or is it special for me?”

  “Nah, persistence has always been my very best thing. It’s how I became a football player, how I got my wife to marry me when we were both barely old enough to drink at our wedding, and how I know that even if all we are for the time being is friends, eventually, I’ll have you back under me, moaning my name.”

  Maddy’s eyes darken, her throat working as she swallows, and her hand clenches in mine. This is not a woman who is unaffected by me—by what happened between us in that hotel room—and nothing could make me happier. She opens her mouth, and I think she’s going to say something about us, about what we are or aren’t or can or can’t be. When all she mutters is, “I need popcorn,” I bark out a laugh because god, this woman.