“You’re one of the footballer bros?” Millie asks.
Ford nods. “I am. Uh…how exactly do you know my brother?”
She glances at me. “You didn’t tell them?”
I shake my head, and I guess in doing so, she reads in my eyes that she should go ahead with whatever story she wants to concoct.
She laughs. “God, that issoArcher, isn’t it? I’m his girlfriend.”
“G-girl…girlfriend?” Ford stutters.
It’s as if the wind gets knocked out of me at that single word, but it’s also sort of like the wind gets knocked out of my brother, too. And possibly Tatum, who rises to a stand.
“It’s so good to see you,” she says, walking over to pull me into a hug.
I grunt out some non-reply as I give her a half-hearted hug, and my brother gives me a bro-style hug, too.
“Nice to meet you,” Tatum says to Millie, who replies in kind, and they hug each other in a very awkward and formal kind of hug with exactly zero warmth to it.
I’m sure she has a million questions—starting with how the hell did I manage to find a girlfriend, a question I don’t have the answer to since it’s a total lie.
But we’re here now, and I’m not going to fall on my face in front of my brother and my ex, and so I play along.
“I’m starving,” Millie says after the introductions, and she plops into one of the chairs at my table and grabs the single menu the hostess set down when she showed me here. I take a chair beside her, facing my brother and Tatum, because it feels like it would be rude not to.
“How long are you two here?” I ask Ford.
“Just a week,” Ford says. “I’ve got some team stuff next week, and Tatum has weddings every weekend from now through the summer, so it was the only week that worked. How about you?”
“We’re here through the end of the month,” Millie answers for me without looking up from the menu—without missing a beat—and making it sound like we planned a monthlong vacation together when that’s obviously not the case.
“Wow, an entire month,” Tatum says, and it strikes me that the whole reason I chose this resort was at her recommendation once upon a time. I never thought I’d run into her here just because she had once said she wanted to visit, and I also never cleared an entire month to vacation with her—all things I’m sure are running through her mind.
Let them run.
Let them figure their shit out. If they run into problems because they happened to choose the same resort I’m at out of all the resorts in the entire world…well, that’s on them.
CHAPTER 24: Millie Monroe
The Inside Scoop
When you’re fucking a pro baseball player who’s a brother to four NFL stars and your life’s work is being on social media…yeah, you totally look them up.
I saw Ford walk into the restaurant when I was waiting for my table because, in a twist that’s shocking to no one at all, I forgot to call ahead to reserve a table.
Ford had posted photos of his wedding to his Instagram, so I knew that was his wife. And I remembered Archer telling me that his brother married his ex, so, well, the sleuth that I am, I put two and two together and ran in after him when I saw him approach the hostess stand and immediately get taken back to a table.
I had to run interference. I don’t care if he’s mad at me for going back to work when I got back to my room. I care about him, and he was in need. So I steppedup.
I hope he’ll accept it as an apology.
I also can’t help but hope that he’ll play along with me for the duration of his brother’s stay, and he’ll manage to fall for me in that time. Or, you know…nothateme like it seems he does.
The last six days without him have been…well, boring. I’ve been confused about how he could just walk away so easily after the intimacy we shared. I’m here alone, and he was entertainment. He was someone to do these excursions with, even if we didn’t exactly get started on the right foot when he found out what I do for a living.
I’m back to walking, and even the bruising on my ankle is mostly healed now, with that gross, sickly yellowish tint all that’s remaining. It still hurts if I dotoomuch walking, but I was able to get up to his floor a few times when I got lucky enough to ride the elevator with someone who happened to have a key that could access the twenty-sixth floor.
He either wasn’t in his room, or he didn’t bother to answer the door when he saw it was me.
