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“Shut your sexy mouth up and open my damn gift,” I tell her.
Glaring at me with a grin, she obeys, ripping the paper and then the box open. I’ll be leaving the concierge three Benjamins for this. I’m sure he had to bend over backward to do this for me overnight.
But watching Blair’s eyes, watching her lift the Atlanta Falcons football jersey with my number and my last name on it?
I’d pay millions to give her this.
She doesn’t know what it means to me for her to wear my jersey.
No woman ever has. Not a jersey given by me.
Blair hates football, and I kinda loved that about her too. She was more impressed by the books she’d catch me reading than the balls she never watched me throw. It made me feel special. Like I was way more than a quarterback to her. Like she sawallof me.
I was her favorite punching bag, and she was myfavorite target. The hurt we dished out felt much better than the love we had to deny.
“It’s my jersey,” I explain, swallowing down the damn strangle in my throat while I watch her put it on.
It’s so sexy on her, it’s perfect. It’s the same raven color as her hair. The same red accents, like her signature lipstick. The same white accents, too, like her milky skin.
Like Blair was destined to wear my jersey.
Fuck, I should’ve just shot myself in the foot because it’s even harder to leave now.
She’s so beautiful.
“I know it is,” she answers, gently lingering her fingers over my number on the front, surprising me. “I know Beau Bronson is always number four.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” she says. “And I know why you picked that number.”
This will hurt, like a moth to a flame it will, because I already know this will be another secret she knows about me. To others, I avoid the jokes, telling them a bullshit story that the number’s random. I only told the truth to Hawke, my brother, and my parents. But Itoldthem while Blair justknowsme.
“Forrest Gump,” she says. “It’s your favorite movie; you watch it every Tuesday night, and forty-four was his number when he played for Bama. And four is the only number an NFL quarterback is allowed to wear that’s close to it.”
I nod, feeling a weight on my chest like I never have before because I was right. She’s the flames I’d fly into, and I’d love the burn. We belong in ashes together.
Softly, I ask, “What other secrets do you keep safe about me, Blair?”
Tears suddenly well in her gorgeous eyes.We know the answer. She’s the only one I’ve told, and she smiles, fighting them.
“Don’t, Beau. Just take a picture and go.” She bites her trembling lip. “Please. Just go now. I know you have to.”
This is the moment I dreaded. The one I was a fucking fool to think wasn’t going to happen. I should’ve known the moment I turned around, and fate put Blair Monroe back in my life, that it’d kill me to walk away from her again.
But like the sexy little devilish angel that she is, she’s pushing me to leave. She’s making me do this. She’s making me choose myself and not her. That’s what she did with Reese, too.
Blair hid behind pranks and smackdowns because her sacrifice hurt;we hurt.
But I knew her secret too.
Blair Monroe has the biggest heart of all.
And I knew all along that she was in love with me because I fell for her the moment she opened the door to me, wearing those cute pajamas and glasses and holding a book while I held her troubled roommate passed out in my arms.
Blair never had a chance to be mine, and I don’t know how to tell her she always will be.
It fucking hurts like a dull knife stabbing my heart, but I take my phone from the side pocket of my backpack as she flops back on the bed and flips me off with a breathtaking smile. When I aim the lens at her, I see a tear escape down her cheek, and something burns behind my eyes. Her gorgeous legs and pussy are exposed to me while my jersey blankets the rest of her, and she lets me take it — one last picture and kiss before I go.
