Page 33 of The Marriage Playbook

Cara felt, briefly, as if the air had been sucked out of the room.

“I’ve been asking myself that the whole time,” she confessed.

He looked at her. “Have you?”

“It’s hard to know,” she told him. “It’s hard to know what matters and what doesn’t, because what we’re doing here—the point of all of it—is creating an image. We want people to see you as a changed man. The fact that the press is reporting that means that it’s working. And that is a good thing, Liam, no matter what’s true and what isn’t. But…”

“But maybe I haven’t,” he said. “Maybe it’s all just part of the act, right?”

“Do you want it to be real?” she asked him quietly.

He looked down at the book in his hands and said nothing.

“Because I don’t think the Liam Sims I met when all this began gave a damn about what kind of man he was, or what people thought of him,” she said. “I think you wanted to get back to the team, whatever the cost might be. I think if someone had called you a changed man then, you might have rolled your eyes at them. And now it seems like those words might actually mean something to you.”

“I don’t know,” Liam admitted. “I wouldn’t have expected them to. I thought I was fine the way I was. But the team cast me off so easily. And when I was talking to those retired players the other day when we were in the box, the things they said…about how they always thought something like this would happen to me…” He trailed off for a moment. “I don’t want to be the kind of man everyone pushes away,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to be someone nobody wants in their life.”

He doesn’t want to be like his father. She didn’t say the words aloud, but she knew that she was right. That was his fear. She’d seen the anxiety on his face when she had picked him up from that bar. He had recognized something when the bartender had thrown him out. This was what it was.

He wanted to be back on the football team. But he also wanted to be someone he could take pride in. And maybe this new article was giving him the ability to believe that was possible.

She crossed the room and took the book carefully from his hands, setting it aside.

“It’s real,” she told him quietly. “I’ve been living with you long enough to understand what’s true and what’s an act. When I first men you, Liam, I could hardly stand you. I thought you were arrogant and insufferable.” She offered him a small smile. “And now, strange as it seems, you’re someone I might actually consider a friend. Even when all of this is over.”

As she said the word over, she felt an inexplicable pang in her heart.

And Liam’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes when he replied. “Well,” he said. “That’s a start, at least.”

CHAPTER 17

LIAM

“Ithought we should celebrate,” Cara said the following evening.

Everything had happened just as she had said it would. The article had run earlier that morning, and Liam had spent the first few hours of the day reading and rereading it. It felt so good to be praised, for once. It felt good to have someone suggest that he was more than just a great player, that he was also a worthwhile person. And even though the story of his marriage to Cara wasn’t the truth, he found that enough elements of the article did represent reality that he was able to take it to heart.

Everything he had said about how much he liked spending time with Cara was true. Everything he’d said about how much playing football meant to him was true. And when he looked at this article, when he saw in it a depiction of a decent and likeable guy, he was able to believe that he just might be that person.

Now Cara was holding up a bottle of champagne.

“Where did you get that?” he asked her.

“It was in your refrigerator. Is it okay if we open it?”

“Definitely.”

“You weren’t saving it for something?”

“Honestly, Cara, I didn’t even know it was there.”

She laughed. “Okay, fair enough,” she said.

“Want me to open it?”

“I can do it.” She was already twisting the cork. He probably should have known. She’d be caught dead before she let anyone do anything for her that she was capable of doing for herself.

Cara eased the cork out of the bottle, set the bottle down, and fetched two champagne flutes from the cabinet. “What are we celebrating?” Liam asked her. “The article?”