Romancing the Running Back (22 page)

She wouldn’t do this alone.

*   *   *

“That’s ridiculous.” Cassie slammed her hand flat on the table. Anya jolted, then glanced around the room. The rest of Cassie’s coworkers were all tuned in to their headphones, and nobody moved an inch at the sharp sound. “Don’t you dare pull out of my wedding over something this stupid.”

“I’m not.” Trying to aim for calm, Anya gave her friend a reassuring smile. “I would never do that. You couldn’t kick me out of this wedding with a pair of steel-toed boots. I’m your maid of honor, no questions about it. But I just think, with everything that’s going on—”

“I repeat again, that’s ridiculous.” With a stubborn expression on her face, Cassie crossed her arms, ready to set her foot down. “You can’t abandon me now. I need you. I’ll completely ruin this wedding without you.”

Anya took in her friend’s outfit today—a chunky open sweater thrown over a graphic tee featuring the infinite number
pi
in a spiral shaped like an actual pie, over jeans—and shook her head. “You’ve got your own style. Plus, I think it’s time to bring in the big guns. We both know the reason you wouldn’t hire a professional is because you were wanting Josiah and me to spend so much time together. Well, we did, and here we are. Mission accomplished. So hire the pro. He or she will get the job done.”

“I want you,” Cassie said, her resolve cracking around the edges. “Don’t move. Don’t leave.”

“I’m not moving. Leaving . . .” She let out a heavy sigh. Her entire body felt weighted down. “I’ve made mistakes, Cass. Ones that feel big. Feel stupid, obvious, blatant. What’s wrong with me that I can’t stop making them?”

“Josiah isn’t a mistake.”

“No. He’s definitely not. I love him.” She held a hand over her heart and felt it beat just a little faster in response to his name, felt it hurt just a little. “I love him so much. But isn’t part of loving someone knowing what’s good for them, and helping give it to them?”

“He’s not a four-year-old that you’re keeping from playing in the street. He can watch himself.”

“Maybe I need to do this for me,” she said quietly. Cassie didn’t have an answer for that. “It doesn’t really matter. This is what feels right. I have to do what feels right. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a conscience?”

Cassie grabbed her arm in a firm grip. “Running away isn’t going to solve things. You ran away from Atlanta, and Chad didn’t disappear. He’s still there.”

“He is. But . . . no. That’s not right.” Anya smiled sadly. “I started running away from Atlanta. But I ended up running toward something. You, to start with. This place, these people, Cynthia . . .” Her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath. “Josiah. That crazy eco-loving nutball who uses an app to track his carbon footprint.” She let her forehead fall to the cool tabletop. Simon was right. She had nobody to be angry at but herself. “I’ll figure it out.”

Cassie looked worried, but like a true friend, knew pushing now would only lead to a breakdown. So she nodded and removed her hand. “I’m thinking pizza today. The greasier and cheesier, the better.”

“I’ll cosign that.”

Josiah wanted nothing more than to be done with the road. The entire rest of the team was riding the high from their upset win against New England, heading straight to Atlanta for their next road game against the Falcons.

Meanwhile, he just wanted to be home with Anya, sharing the good news.

He’d contacted an attorney via his agent, whom his agent promised would probably make the guy want to cry just talking with him. Hadn’t been that far off, Josiah thought with a smile as he tossed his bag onto the spare bed in his Atlanta hotel room. The guy had a temper, but a cool one that froze you with white-hot pain rather than blazed. He was curt, professional but not altogether polite. And he’d promised Anya’s divorce would be final before Christmas.

Results. That’s what Josiah wanted to hear.

And he’d freaking
tell
Anya about it, except she went dark. She’d warned him, saying she had a lot of things on her mind, a lot of irons in the fire, and had to concentrate on getting stuff ready for the winter formals she was going to work with.

He could respect that. Hell, he didn’t have to talk to her every day. He wasn’t one of those needy guys who had to talk to his woman every night. She’d sent him a congratulations text after the game, what more did he want?

Everything. He knew it then as he sank down onto the bed and let his ball cap fall forward over his face. He wanted everything. He loved her. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to hear her voice every night and who gave two fucks if it made him needy or not. He wanted her to travel with him when she could, spend every night in his bed, and greet him when he came home from practice. He wanted her smiling face to be the first thing he saw every morning, and he wanted to complain that she spent too long in the shower because it took four times longer to wash her hair than it did his.

He wanted it all. Forever.

His phone rang and he wondered for a half second if his intense longing had created a mental pathway to hers and she was calling him. But it was Cassie’s number he saw on the screen, not Anya’s.

“Hey, girl. Your fiancé know you’re calling another man late at night?”

“Josiah.”

The word came out shaky, and he could tell she was upset by the way she was breathing. “What’s wrong? Do you need Trey? Should I get him?”

“No, no.” She coughed, and he clenched his fist with impotent rage. “It’s not me. It’s Anya.”

Rage bled out, and his body filled with ice-cold fear. “What?” he rasped. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s gone.”

That hadn’t been in his list of top ten things that could have happened to Anya. “What?” he repeated. “She’s gone? What does that mean?”

“I mean, I came over to borrow a shirt, and she’s not here. Her car’s gone, half her clothes are gone, her suitcase is gone . . .”

“Suitcase. Only one.” That had to mean something.

Cassie chuckled, though it sounded a bit tight. “You really do know her well. Yes, it appears she only took one suitcase. She didn’t leave with everything. Just . . . some stuff. I don’t know where she went, though.”

For a moment, his heart recovered, and started to soar. Maybe she’d decided to meet him here as a surprise. Maybe she would come here, and he could have her meet with her new attorney, and things could get back to normal. The new normal.

“But she left a note. Two, actually.”

The image he’d started to build burst. “Could have led with that, Cass.”

“Sorry. The first was for me, since she knew I was coming to get the shirt. It has another month’s rent check for my dad, plus a few words on wedding stuff. Nothing major, nothing to explain where she was.”

He fought back the panic. “And the other?”

“Sealed in an envelope. It has your name written on it. I haven’t opened it. Do you . . . do you want me to wait until you get home?”

He had two options . . . wait, or find out now what his gorgeous blonde was up to. “Open it, take a picture, send it to me. Please,” he added when he realized his voice had taken on a sharp edge. “Sorry to put you in the middle, Cassie.”

“I put myself in the middle when I threw you two together for wedding planning. I’m not sorry,” she added defiantly. “But I also didn’t know it could get so messy. So here I am, in the middle. I’ll live.”

“You’re worth a million,” he told her, then hung up so she could take the photo and send it to him. Twenty seconds later, his phone beeped. She’d taken it in two parts, so she could zoom in to make it easier to read Anya’s looping, scrawling handwriting.

Josiah,

If you’re reading this, then that means Cassie passed it on to you. Don’t panic. I’m not running away. I’ve learned the hard way that running accomplishes nothing. But these last few days have shown me my past errors cannot be brushed under the rug and forgotten like I’d hoped. I have to start making the right choice the first time, even if it’s hard. Chance to Dance is too important to me to give up. A life free from my ex is too important. My future . . . it’s just all too important to me. I need some time to get things settled. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I understand if you want to write this—me—off as a mistake and move on. I won’t like it, but I’ll understand. And I won’t hold it against you. I can’t ask you to wait for me while I right some wrongs. That’s unfair. So just know this isn’t my way of leaving you. But only you know what you really need, and if it’s not me, I accept that.

Anya

P.S. This is recycled paper, so don’t yell at me for killing a tree.

He huffed out a quiet laugh at the last sentence, then tossed his phone down on the bed beside him.

She wasn’t running away, but she left. What kind of a riddle was that? Scrubbing his hands over his face, he tried to think of what she was accomplishing. What did it mean she was going to right some wrongs? Wrongs by whose standards?

His phone rang again, and again it was Cassie.

“Did you read it?” she demanded.

“Yeah, Cass, I read it.”

“I did, too. I couldn’t help it. Get her back. Get her back right now, Josiah Walker.”

“Cassie.” His heart clenched, and he wanted to roll over onto his side to make it stop. It was too close to the fetal position for him to actually do it. Felt too much like weakness, when he had to be strong. “I don’t know where she went. Could she have come home to Atlanta?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. She basically cut all ties with her apartment, her stuff . . . she loves her parents, but they really aren’t the
come home to heal
sort. Right a wrong . . . I don’t know. She was fine, I thought, and then she came to see me at work for lunch and she was really upset. Then she poofed.”

“Text me her parents’ address, both sets, and anywhere else you think she might have gone to in Atlanta. While I’m here, I’ll do some investigating.”

“Curfew,” Cassie reminded him. “You can’t just run off everywhere looking for Anya when you don’t even know where she is. You’ll get fined, potentially benched.”

“Who cares? Text me the addresses, Cassie. And check in at the dress store. Cynthia might know more. Do what you can, please. Let me know if you find anything.” He hung up without waiting for a reply. He texted Stephen and Trey, asking them to come to his room, then grabbed his laptop and started doing research.

*   *   *

The next night, Stephen sank down onto the chair at dinner, setting his plate beside Trey’s. “Well, I just got it handed to me by my D-coach. You guys?”

Trey nodded. “It wasn’t pretty.”

Josiah hadn’t cared at all as Coach Jordan and his offensive coach had both ripped him up one side and down the other for taking an unauthorized
joyride
—as they’d called it—in the middle of the night with Trey and Stephen. It had been worth it, every second of the yelling. And every penny of the fine he was going to be paying out in retribution. His friends bitched, but he knew they felt the same way. He’d have gone with them had the tables been turned.

Josiah poked at his chicken, his appetite gone. He hadn’t found her. As far as he could tell, Anya was not in the state of
Georgia at all. He’d met her mother, father, and stepmother—which had been awkward without her there, but satisfying as they’d seemed pleased to meet him face-to-face. Decent people who had no clue where she was, but were thrilled to know he was helping her escape Chad’s clutches for good.

He’d met up with her new attorney, who had been good enough to go with him to meet with Chad’s attorney as well at an unorthodox hour, given his time limits. Anya had been ready to sign over anything and everything she’d ever owned in order to escape her husband, but thanks to their new lawyer’s help, that was no longer even on the table. She’d be leaving with exactly what she came into the marriage with, just as she’d wanted from the start. Josiah had left the midnight meeting feeling confident their attorney would get the job done by Christmas, possibly sooner.

The real kicker, though, had been finding who had been leaking information about Anya’s marriage to the press. As it turned out, Chad had been sleeping with a paralegal in his attorney’s office. She’d gotten it into her fool head that Chad actually gave a damn about her, and believed the lie that Anya was out for blood in the divorce, making it hard for
him
to be free to date other women. Thinking she’d been helping, she’d started leaking information to speed up the process. And now, she was out of a job.

But the most satisfying moment had been meeting Chad. The spineless weasel Tiny Dick himself. He hadn’t looked Josiah in the eye when he’d shaken hands. Hadn’t said more than two words the whole time during the meeting with the attorneys. Had barely moved, in fact. Josiah knew the type. He fed on his own power trips, feeling pleased and self-assured when he was the smartest, most dominant one in the room. Being stuck in the conference room with a shark attorney and three oversized Bobcats had put him at a severe disadvantage. He’d caved like a cheap suitcase, agreeing without much pushing to the demands met. His lawyer looked relieved to have done with it. Though he’d been racking up the attorney fees, it had been at the expense of dealing with the spineless weasel Tiny Dick. Now everyone was free.

Except Josiah.

He couldn’t consider himself free when he didn’t have the one person who made him feel whole, complete, weightless. How could he move on? Why would she even begin to consider suggesting that?

Cassie couldn’t tell him where she’d gone. He sensed it was because she didn’t know, and not because she was holding out at the request of her best friend. But even so, he had a feeling Cassie could have figured it out with minimal pushing. She was choosing to stay in the dark. It irritated him, even as he understood her dilemma.

“Yo. Josiah.” Trey nudged at his shoulder. “Are you asleep? The coaches are glaring at us. Look alive, man.”

He blinked. “What?”

Stephen sighed. Trey scowled. “We were fine going along with your trip last night. And don’t get me wrong, having a tiny part in being able to get Anya free from that jackass is seriously satisfying.”

Stephen merely cracked his knuckles in response. It had been all Josiah and Trey could do to keep their friend from coming out swinging after having met the ex.

“But you’ve gotta concentrate on the game, man. It’s not going to get any better if you go out there with your head
screwed up and drop the ball . . . literally.”

Trey was right. But how did he keep his head on straight when his heart wasn’t in it?