I blink.
She yawns again, eyes already drifting shut. “He used to be grumpy a lot. He’s happier now.”
Those silly, simple words make something in my chest ache. That’s not something a four-year-old invents out of nowhere. That’s something she’snoticed.And kids are terrifyingly good at noticing the things adults think they’re hiding.
“Night, Carly,” she mumbles.
“Night.”
I wait until her breathing evens out before I slip from the room and pull the door mostly closed behind me.
Chapter 16
Grayson
There areat least six reasons why bringing Carly to the CU campus is a bad idea.Seven, if I count the fact that I’ve barely looked her in the eye since Tuesday night, and maybe eight,because I came twice last night just to the memory of hearing her weakly say my name like it was going to stop me.
Still, when Halsey actually takes Penelope for the day without canceling and Maddox texts that Coach Ramirez is off sick and he needs help having the Sunday team run drills at CU, I hear myself telling Carly to come with me before I fully think it through.Part of it is because she’s been busting her ass on the collegiate line and the NFL concepts, and she deserves to see people besides herself actually wearing it, and part of it is because I want to see her face when she does.
I try not to think of that reason too hard.
The campus is blindingly bright with the slanted late-morning sun, the cold biting through my jacket. Students mingle on the sidewalk in clusters, backpacks bouncing, coffee cups in hand, a handful of eyes watching as I round the Aston Martin to offer her a hand getting out.
Carly gratefully accepts and immediately goes a little still when I pull her upright, the faux fur on her jacket blowing in the breeze, her leggings and tight, V-neck long sleeve definitely not enough for the weather.
“What?” I ask.
She turns in a slow circle, taking it all in — the stadium in the distance, the students, the bookstore windows, the black-and-gold everywhere. “This is weird.”
“Why?”
Her mouth quirks at the corner. “Good weird. I haven’t been back here since graduation.” She gestures vaguely between me and the athletic complex. “And I’m here with you, of all people.”
We walk across campus toward the bookstore, and I keep her close more out of habit than intention, hand brushing the small of her back once when a group of guys barrels past too fast. She glances up at me. I pretend I don’t notice.
Inside the campus store, she stops dead.
Right there by the front display are three mannequins in pieces from the line she designed when she first got hired. Clean black training pullovers, fitted quarter-zips, the women’s cut leggings with the gold side panel I’d seen in the notes that she’d fought for, even the cropped crew she swore would sell if we stopped underestimating female fans.
It did.
It sold out twice.
“Oh my God,” she breathes.
I lean a hip against a display table and watch her instead of the clothes. “Recognize anything?”
Her eyes widen. “It’s all still here. I designed these two and a half years ago.”
“They kept selling.” I shrug. "So we kept producing. Your line outperforms in every single campus we supply."
“That’s... crazy.”
She says it absently, already moving closer, fingertips hovering over the sleeve of one of the pullovers like she can’t quite believe it’s real.
Then she spots two girls near the register wearing the cropped crew and actually laughs. It’s not the careful version I’m used to, not the polite little chuckle at a bad joke at work, not the one she usually uses around me. It’s bright and disbelieving, her hands coming up to cover her mouth like she wants to hide it and she can’t.
Something warm and dangerous blooms in my chest as I watch her.
