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Besides, she’d never been with any other guys. She should sow her wild oats, see what else was out there. God help her if she got shackled to him first thing out of the gate. If he cared about her, he’d do the right thing and step back to give her the room to explore.
He gripped the back of his neck and fought back the bile in his throat. Whatever was best for Jill, he would do. Bottom line.
“The timing sucks,” he told Hank flatly. “You could’ve told me about the Yorn rumors before I heard them from my teammates. I’m not feeling like you or Bannion have a lot of confidence in me.”
“Of course that isn’t true. But it might be time for a refresher. Get down here tomorrow and show us what Bryan Townsend’s made of, then we’ll all talk.”
What Bryan Townsend’s made of. He was beginning to wonder himself.
Football was his life. He didn’t know how to do anything else. He’d sacrificed his family and friends for the game. If he turned his back on it now, he’d have nothing. He sure as fuck didn’t deserve Jill, and that was even if she was down for more than some hot sex with a notorious football player. He truly didn’t think she was about that. They went back way too far and had shared too mu
ch. But how could he be sure? Even his own sister didn’t believe in him.
Football wouldn’t lie to him or leave him or make him doubt his worth. He knew the rules there, and he played by them.
“Thanks for setting this up, Hank. I’ll call you tomorrow morning when I have a plan,” he said and clicked off.
All it took was the rustle of sheets behind him for him to realize he’d been overheard. “Good news about football?”
The eagerness in her tone helped mitigate the Mylanta moment going on in his gut. Slightly. “I don’t know if it’s bad or good yet. There’s…progression on that front.”
“They need you there before Vic’s wedding.”
No point in lying to her or dragging this out. “Yes.”
“Are you going to go?”
Not do you want to go? Or is there any other option than to leave now? Or hell, even an I don’t want you to leave yet. Just a bald question asked with no inflection at all.
Suddenly, he felt so tired. “What choice do I have?”
“You owe me one more date,” she said stiffly.
Ignoring the temptation to grip his knee again, he fisted the bedding instead. That was how she helped him make a decision he didn’t want to make? By putting his ridiculous agreement between them again? He never should’ve limited their dates. Never should’ve limited anything between them.
“Owe?” he repeated evenly.
“Yes, owe.” She sat up, drawing the sheet tight over his groin. Just her voice and movement caused his shaft to wake. “You don’t want to prove your sister right.”
He jerked to his feet and pivoted to face her. The bone-deep ache in his injured knee seemed only fitting. “Christ, Jill, you’re no better than she is if you think I need to be shamed into fulfilling agreements I shouldn’t have made in the first place.” You obviously don’t think any more of me than she does, either.
Her face remained impassive. “Just pointing out that what you do matters to people. To your sister, for one.”
“Oh yeah? Is that why she was so insistent about painting me as an unreliable jackass earlier this evening? Because I matter so much?” He leaned forward and braced his fists on the pillow beside Jill that still bore the indentation of his head. “What about you? Do I matter that much to you, too?”
For an instant, her expression crackled with something dangerously close to fury. Then her features smoothed out into that mask of indifference again. “You owe me another date.”
Jesus, she was better at twisting the knife than he would’ve given her credit for. “Then what?” he countered. “I erase my rep—with you at least—as a fickle, untrustworthy jerk because at least I’ve kept my word in this one small thing? Or is the fact that I set a limit on this arrangement in the first place the point entirely?”
Her chin trembled before she controlled it. “I understand that you need boundaries.”
The fissures inside him split open, swallowing everything on the solid ground around them. “I need fucking boundaries? If you’d say that to me after tonight, then I guess there’s nothing more to say.”
She grabbed the bedding and yanked it up to her chin, pissing him off even further. Her hiding herself from him after they’d shared—after they’d shared that—made him want to demand she never retreat behind any kind of wall again. Demands were all he had to fall back on, mainly because this was his fault. He’d put that doubt in her eyes. She didn’t believe in him, because he hadn’t given her enough reason to. A little over a week didn’t erase a decade’s knowledge of the kind of person he was.
And that right there was the crux of the matter. Agreeing to date and playing the respectability game didn’t change a damn thing. No one thought he could change. Maybe they were right.
He was a football player. That was his role, and he’d once filled it well. He could again, if he just focused on the area where he’d succeeded in the past. Unlike this one, where he never had.
