“Who?”
“Who?” Scott mimics me.
Only one face flashes across my mind. The prettiest one I’ve ever seen. With vivid green eyes surrounded by a ring of brown and a smile that stops me in my tracks every time. The one who comes with a laugh that makes my heart beat a little faster.
The one who kept racing through my mind this morning during practice. The one who I had to shut out of my mind after missing a pass and getting hit by Card.
The one who is complete wishful thinking on my part.
She’s also the only woman I’ve warned the guys off of in the last month.
That realization is enough to give me heartburn.
“I’m serious. I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”
A few of the guys nudge each other, passing knowing looks. But most of the room still refuses to look at me.
“Grant?”
Only one man in the locker room calls me by my first name, and I spin toward the sound of team chaplain Hank Hardee’s voice. He’s standing in the hallway that leads toward the coaches’ offices.
“You want to talk about it?” Hank nods toward his office, but my feet have grown roots.
I’m not moving until someone tells me what on God’s green earth is going on here. Slamming my hands to my hips, I drop my pads and they clatter to the floor. “I want someone to tell me why you all are gossiping like a bunch of old ladies. And why I seem to be the hottest topic. And why you have the gall to be talking about Zoe Peebles.”
Card’s eyes flash, and I know I’ve hit on the truth. Something like molten lava burns low in my gut.
“Someone speak. Right now.” There’s a threat in my voice that has absolutely nothing to do with my name in their mouths and everything to do with the Hollywood starlet, who’s suffered way more than her fair share of gossip.
After a long silent beat, Card steps forward. Holding out his phone, he says only, “You haven’t heard?”
I fight back the urge to snatch the screen out of his hand and give him a slow nod instead as I pull the phone even with my face. The headline is hard to miss. It’s clearly on one of those tabloid websites and shouts: MEET ZOE PEEBLES’S REBOUND GUY.
How. Dare. They?
I don’t need to scroll down to know who they’ve assigned to the title. But apparently I’m a glutton for punishment because Iflick my finger up, and there it is. Picture-perfect evidence that I carried Zoe up the Incline. And down it. Laughing and joking along the way.
That lava in my gut is about to erupt, and the only thing that is keeping the beast-within on his leash is the fact that whoever took these pictures kept Kenna out of them. Or the editor cropped her out.
But right now I’m not willing to assume anyone on staff at this publication has that level of humanity.
“When did this come out?” I growl, louder than anticipated.
“This morning,” Scott says. When I meet his gaze, he quickly adds, “But we didn’t see it until just now. Right after practice.”
Right answer.
I suck on my front teeth, already plotting revenge on the lowlifes trying to tear Zoe down. It was one thing when she was a passing acquaintance. It’s completely another when she’s—
Oh, chicken on a biscuit.
Mine.She’s mine. And I don’t need some stupid headline to tell me that.
I’ve known it since that day she showed up at my house unannounced—all confidence and joy. I knew it when she immediately connected with Kenna and when I tucked her in on my couch and when she threw her first football—only one of us needs to be good at that.
And I knew it when I woke up this morning praying about her meeting with that director instead of for my own day.
“Grant, why don’t we talk?”
