14. Colton

Colton had many hats when it came to Lucia, and the moment she’d asked him to show her Charleston, he’d donned his tour guide cap. He’d noticed all week the way she’d run out of their sessions as soon as they were over, likely as confused as he was about where they stood. It was nice that she’d chosen him to take her out into the city. Now that she’d met Jenna and Leigh, he knew she could’ve asked them, but she’d chosen him. There was something in that gesture that made him feel special and wanted. Something in it that eased the tense feeling in his chest that was normally reserved for losses. And he was thrilled to show her the city he loved to call home.

He knew it had been wrong, knew he never should have gone up to her floor to see her after that win. He had been high off of it, and he’d known the only reason he was getting back to his game was because of her. She was probably the smartest person he’d ever met, and he was slowly beginning to regard their sessions as sacred. Required, if he wanted another championship win. He wondered if she might actually know more about football than him, and the thought made him grin. Really, he’d gone up to convince her to celebrate with the team.

But the moment he’d seen her with her hair down, her eyebrows knitted together as she glared at her laptop screen, all of that had left him. Reason itself had gone out the window, taking a swan dive from those tall, glass walls of her office. And sure, it had been wrong, but it’d been the best fucking kiss of his life. He’d almost come undone at just her touch, something he hadn’t even known was possible.

Colton decided to take her to his favorite restaurant in all of Charleston—Saltwater Cowboys. Rudy had brought him there his first year with the Sabertooths, and it’d quickly become his favorite spot to be at sunset on a free day, rare as they were.

He placed his hand on the small of her back and led her to a spot outside, pulling his baseball cap lower. Luckily, it was so busy that nobody seemed to notice them, and if they did, it was because of Lucia, not him. The woman knew how to drive a man right out of his mind.

“Colton,” she breathed out, her eyes wide as she surveyed everything around them. “This is beautiful.” She sat in the chair he pulled out for her, her smile reward enough.

“Rudy brought me here years ago, and since then, I come every chance I get.”

Her eyes scanned the horizon, watching the sky sink from blues to pinks and oranges.

“This might be the best sunset I’ve ever seen.”

“Wow, that’s saying something since you lived in LA for years.”

She scoffed, “Yeah, right. If you got far enough away from the smog to see the sky, even at the beaches, they didn’t look like this.”

He didn’t know if he agreed with that, but he was a little biased. He’d lived most of his life near LA and had grown up enjoying most of the California sunsets from football fields.

“Have you had time to go to the beaches here?”

She shook her head, a small frown on her face. “No, not with the season.”

He vowed to take her to the beach at least once before they broke up in January. He wanted her to love Charleston as much as he’d come to over the previous years. Sure, he was an LA boy at heart, but if Charleston let him, he’d be happy to grow old here.

He could tell she had more to say, so he waited.

“Maybe once we get into offseason. If I’m still with the team by then.” She mumbled the last sentence.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged but didn’t respond immediately. He watched the sun’s slow descent. When their waiter arrived, they ordered, and Colton looked back at her.

“I don’t know. They signed me for the season, you know? There are no guarantees past that.”

“But look at us! Look at my numbers compared to preseason. How could they not want you to stay?” He caught the blush that crept over her cheeks.

“Oh, well, I don’t know. I can’t take all the credit there.”

Colton called bullshit. He didn’t think there was a single thing that factored into his performance more than her help. Not even the extra days his dad wanted him at the gym had made the impact on his game that she had.

“I know we lost again, and I know that was on me.” There was that feeling in his chest again as he remembered going down three, four, five times. Remembered his head hitting the turf, the ball that he normally tucked so well during a sack coming out of his hands and giving their opponents the ball at the ten-yard line in the last seconds of a tied game. It’d haunted him in his dreams the night before.

She seemed to sense where his head was, her hand coming to rest on his across the table. “Colton, we’ve talked about this. This is a team game, nothing is ever completely your fault. That fumble was rough, but it was a tied game because defense struggled. And your o-line still needs work.”

He tried to smile but wasn’t really feeling it. “Maybe you should be working with them too.”

“Eh, I specialize in quarterbacks.” And wasn’t he thankful for that.

“Where did you grow up?” he asked, shifting the conversation from him and his failures.

“Philly, actually. Very different from here or LA.”

“Would you go back?”

She looked past him, and he knew she was looking at the little fishing boats that bobbed in the water behind him. “I barely visit, and that’s mainly to see my dad. I don’t really see myself ever living there again.”

He didn’t want to pry, noting the expression on her face and remembering what she’d told him about her mom leaving when she was younger. “You an Eagles fan, then?” He narrowed his eyes, trying to hide the playful smile that threatened the corners of his mouth.

She grinned wickedly. “All this time you’ve been worried about me taking your secrets back to the Vipers, you didn’t even think about the field day I’ll have with the Eagles, my true team.”

“I knew you were the villain in my story, Moretti.”

She laughed. “That’s okay, I always knew you were mine.”

“Really?”

Her eyes flicked back to his, the light in them dimming a bit. “No.” She twirled her ring around her middle finger like he’d noticed she always did when she got anxious. “That spot is reserved for Max Clark.”

Colton grimaced, hating to even hear her say his name. Even if he’d never had an issue with Clark before meeting Lucia, Max would be on Colton’s shit list just for what he had—and continued to—put her through.

“Is he still bothering you?”

She lifted one of her shoulders half-heartedly. “Here and there. He gets especially mad on game days if he watches, ‘cause it seems the camera likes to focus on our kiss. Which, if you think about it, is crazy because that’s usually game day for him too. And if the media or anybody posts about us online, he’ll say something. It’s a lot of the same shit, I kind of just ignore it. Seems like he only cares about me when he’s reminded that I’m with someone else.”

Colton went rigid at that. He’d hoped Clark would’ve just left her alone after a few weeks, but the fact that he’d publicly ruined her life and then continued to terrorize her made Colton see many shades of red. If they both made it to the divisional championship during playoffs, he was going to rip Clark’s head off.

“Still waiting on his redemption arc?”

She glared at him. “There’s no need to be a dick.” He held up his hands defensively. “But yes, I’m still holding out a little stupid hope that he’ll apologize.” She paused, eyes finding her hands. “Because if he never does then it makes me wonder why I was ever with him. Was he this terrible the whole time? Can I even trust my judgment in men? Of people in general?”

That admission, that vulnerability, had wiped away any anger he’d been feeling. She looked so sad, he wanted to reach across the table and hold her to him, but he reined in the urge. He needed to stop giving in to the feelings he got when he was around her, especially ones that made him want to kiss her silly. Kiss her until she moaned like she had in her office, until she moved against him like a woman who needed to be sated.

Right. Those were the inappropriate thoughts he was not supposed to be having. He was, thankfully, pulled from the mental image of her against him by her question.

“So, who’s your favorite sibling?” She leaned forward conspiratorially, and he knew she was trying to move past the admission she’d made.

He laughed. “You have to promise not to tell, but definitely Maya. No doubt about it.”

“Aw, poor Landon. He probably spent his whole life overshadowed by you, and now he can’t even be your favorite?”

He rolled his eyes. “Landon is one of the best tight ends in the league right now, nobody’s overshadowing him.”

“Colton, if I know anything about you, it’s that you were probably always the best at everything growing up. You just seem like that kind of asshole.” She laughed at his expression. “It’s true. Come on, tell me I’m right.”

“I will do no such thing. I was a very nice child, I’ll have you know.”

“I find that hard to believe based on who you’ve become.”

“You, Moretti, are a scourge on my very being.”

She laughed melodically but didn’t respond.

He took the moment of silence to bring up what he’d been wanting to talk to her about for the past week: the upcoming dinner his siblings and father had every year in honor of their mother.

“Are you free this Saturday?”

“Oh, uh, I’m not sure. I assume I’ll just be going through film from Thursday’s game.”

He bit the bullet. “Well, my family and I have a get-together once a year, usually in November, to honor my mom. We try for her birthday, which is November seventh, but we’re all so busy that we just do the closest day that works for all of us. Which is this Saturday.”

He’d been holding off asking her for a couple of weeks so as not to scare her. He hadn’t even been sure he was going to ask her initially, but when he thought of having to face his father alone, even with his siblings, it made his skin itch, and he knew Lucia’s presence would help.

She blinked at him, wide-eyed. He continued, “Um, so, well, yeah. It’ll be at my dad’s house here in Charleston, and you can meet my family. Maya is especially excited to meet you. But only if you’re comfortable, I don’t want you to feel pressured to come.” He took her silence to mean she wasn’t interested. “I completely understand if you don’t want to, Lucia. It’s a huge thing, even if we were dating for real.”

For the second time, she reached across the table to place a hand on his, quieting him. “Of course I’ll be there, Colton. What are fake girlfriends for, if not for fending off their boyfriends’ fire-breathing-dragon fathers and supporting them through a tough time?”

He had no idea that the title held such all-encompassing duties, but he let out a relieved breath, a small weight lifting off his shoulders. He was never technically alone, since his siblings always came, but it would be the first time someone came to support him.

Colton’s heart was thudding in his chest. He didn’t know why his father had this effect on him. Every cell in his body was on high alert as he looked at the two-story, white, antebellum house. His father had spent an unnecessary amount of money on this place just so he could be close by for Colton’s games, despite having a massive house in Los Angeles that was rarely used.

He made a move toward the curved staircase that led to the front door, but a gentle hand stopped him. He’d been so caught up in dread that he’d almost forgotten Lucia was about to meet his family and was probably more nervous than he was.

He turned to her, trying to put a brave face on. “You ready?”

She nodded, worried eyes on him. “Are you okay?”

He tried to shrug, but it came out robotic and strange. Her eyebrows drew together more.

After a moment of staring at each other, Lucia reached up and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Hey. I’m only going to say this once because it feels weird to be nice to you, so listen closely.” She took a deep breath, like the next words would pain her. “You are more than football. You are more than a winning season, you are more than a Super Bowl-winning machine, okay? You would be important to plenty of people regardless of whether you win a million games, regardless of whether you leave the NFL right now. Your dad can shove his ‘constructive criticism’ up his ass.” She pulled her hands away to air quote with her fingers, then placed them back at her side.

He smiled gratefully at her, even as his heart rate picked up for an entirely new reason. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed to hear those words.

And a part of him wondered if she was one of those people who believed he was important regardless of whether he was in the NFL. But he didn’t have time to think about it too much as they turned and approached the belly of the beast.