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“Then I’ll ask for a trade, and we could move someplace else, and I’ll get a new team.”
“So I should move? Screw that.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Ryan. I didn’t make a sex tape. I didn’t consent to that video. I’m the one who your friends laughed about and demeaned while they joked about my dick sucking abilities.” She angrily wiped the tears that streamed down her face. “It’s not okay.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve and shook her head. “And I can’t be with someone who thinks it is.”
“What the fuck? I never said it was okay. I talked to the coaching staff about him because I thought what he did was wrong, Peyton. How can you say I’d condone that?”
“That’s great, Ryan, but it doesn’t erase what you said before you knew I didn’t consent to being recorded.” She pushed her hair off her forehead and took a deep breath. “When you think about that video, you’re still embarrassed by it. Not for me, but for yourself and how it affected you. How it affects your relationship with the team. You wouldn’t be fighting your teammates to defend my honor, Ryan. You’d be fighting your teammates to defend yours.”
His eyes narrowed and he bristled at what she said. “How would I not be defending you?”
“How would it be defending me? You go off throwing punches at your teammates. Who’s standing beside me? Protecting me?” She raised her eyebrows in question. “No one.” She shook her head as she imagined how that scenario would play out. “And when team dynamics get destroyed over it, who gets blamed? Me.”
Swiping the tears streaming down her face, she smiled sadly. “I appreciate you coming by, Ryan, but it doesn’t change anything. Until you can realize that nothing about what happened is about you, there’s not much more to say.”
“How can you say this wasn’t about me? The whole reason Andy showed the fucking video was to hurt me.”
“Hurt you? When your teammates look at you, what do they see?”
“What do you mean?”
God, men could be so obtuse sometimes. “How did that video change the way they see you?”
He sat silently for several seconds, then finally spoke. “It didn’t.”
“Right. How did it change the way they’ll look at me?”
Ryan rubbed his hand over his mouth. When he looked at her, his eyes were red from holding back tears. Seeing the emotion he was trying to restrain caused more tears to flow down her face. Her chest pulled tight.
“Exactly,” she whispered. “That’s how it’s not about you, Ryan.” She sniffed. “I can’t be with someone who condones that kind of behavior.”
“I don’t condone it.”
“But you do, Ryan. Every man in your sport does when he turns the other way and ignores behaviors, so you don’t damage the team. I need someone who will stand by my side and put my team first. And unfortunately, with you, baseball will always be your number one team.”
She looked at him and her heart broke at the resigned look of sadness on his face. She could see from the emotion in his eyes that he knew she was right.
Sure, he might claim to care about her, but nothing was more important than the team and his teammates.
“I appreciate you coming by, Ryan, but nothing has changed.”
“I’m not letting you go without a fight, Peyton,” Ryan said.
Pain ripped through her chest. If only it were that simple. “I don’t know that this is a fight you can win.”
Ryan stood up and squatted down in front of her. “Haven’t you realized I always win, Pey?”
“I wish that were true but…” Unable to stop herself from touching him, she cupped the side of his face, then pulled back when he leaned toward her. “No, Ryan. That’s not going to help.”
His blue eyes filled with emotion as he stared at her, encouraging her to reconsider. “I think it would help a lot.”
“Ryan, I think we both know this isn’t a good idea. There are just too many obstacles in our way. You’re heading into a playoff run and my work is crazy busy with all this Hawks’ programming coming up. Assuming that doesn’t get pulled.”
“They aren’t pulling the program. I told you I won’t let that happen.”
She chewed her bottom lip. As much as she wanted to believe him, she wasn’t sure he had that kind of pull. “Look Ryan, it was fun while it lasted, but let’s be real. This was never going anywhere. We didn’t even really like each other.” Maybe she was being a coward and chickening out before she got even more hurt. But the school of hard knocks had taught her she needed to protect herself because nobody else would. “I think the cost of this relationship is outweighing the benefit.”
It was like a shutter slammed shut over his eyes. The warmth that she’d grown to expect when he looked at her was gone. Once again, she was looking at the cold, detached, judgmental ball player she’d first met. The same one who reappeared when he saw the video. “God forbid I stop being useful,” he growled. Ryan pushed to his feet and stormed toward the front door.
That wasn’t what she meant at all. But with time, he’d see she was right. Some things were just too hard. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop her from wanting to stop him. But that wouldn’t solve anything. Instead, she let him go.
