Page 48 of The Marriage Playbook

“I have a guess.” The timing was too convenient for it to be anything but the deal she had arranged with the Lions. He was going to tell the press he had decided to take it. He didn’t need her there for that, of course. That was why he’d arranged this without her. But she wanted to be there. She cared enough about him to want to be a part of this moment. It would be his triumph, even though it was no longer a triumph for her.

She wanted to see the look on his face when he told the people who had doubted and discarded him that they had been wrong.

I really care about him. He really does mean so much to me. I wish this could have happened differently. But I can’t blame him for wanting to put a distance between the two of us now. Everything that went wrong is my fault. He played his role perfectly. I’m the one who let us down.

Still, she wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.

She dressed quickly in a cocktail dress and threw her hair into a simple updo. By the time she had finished pulling on her heels, the address to the hotel where the press conference was being held had materialized on her phone.

It was a nice hotel, in Liam’s part of town. Eight blocks from here. Cara didn’t have a car at his house, but she might be able to cover the distance in time if she hurried.

There was no more time to sit and think about it. Before she could second-guess herself, she was out the door.

After three blocks running in heels, she knew she’d made a mistake. She should have switched to sneakers for the journey over. Her feet ached, and she had already stumbled more than once. She’d come too far to go back, though. Glancing at her phone, she saw that she only had five minutes until the top of the hour. It was possible that things would delay a bit—press conferences often did—but she couldn’t afford to waste any time.

She reached down, pulled off her shoes, and broke into a run. She’d make it the rest of the way barefoot. She just couldn’t miss this.

Seven minutes later, she came to a halt outside the front door of the hotel. She pulled it open and sprinted across the soft carpet of the lobby, wondering if her bare feet had been noticed by anyone else. Nobody made an effort to stop her, so maybe not. Maybe she was getting away with it.

I just have to make it to the conference room.

The sign outside the elevator bank told her the room was on level two. Waiting for the elevator seemed unbearable, though, so she went to the stairs and took them two at a time. At the top, she found herself in a long hallway with a sign on the wall pointing her in the direction of the conference room.

She kept running.

Somehow, this press conference had taken on a whole new meaning in her mind. It felt as if, by getting there, she could set things right between herself and Liam. She could rewrite what had happened, make him see that she knew she’d made a mistake by not being there for him when he had needed her most.

Of course, he didn’t really want to see that. That much was obvious. How many chances had she given him to find her in the house and mend fences? She hadn’t made it difficult. And now, this press conference… She’d emailed him the offer from the Lions. If he’d had any interest in reconciliation with her, he would have taken that opportunity to seek it. He would have asked her to arrange the press conference rather than doing it himself.

The fact that he hadn’t confirmed what she knew. He was done with her. What happened today wasn’t going to change that fact.

She knew, and still she ran. Because she couldn’t help the feeling of hope that was blossoming within her. She couldn’t seem to keep it at bay.

The doors to the conference room were already closed, but Cara had no intention of letting that stop her. She pulled them open just wide enough to allow passage and slipped into the back of the room. There were a couple of seats still open and she slid into one of them, reaching down to ease her feet back into her shoes.

Liam was already standing at the front of the room, ready to address his audience.

Cara looked down at her phone. It was ten minutes past the start time. She’d made it just in time.

And no sooner had that though occurred to her than Liam took a step forward.

The crowd around her noticed too and immediately fell silent, waiting to hear what he had to say.

CHAPTER 24

LIAM

“Thank you for being here today, on such short notice,” Liam began.

His heart was pounding. It was strange to find himself so nervous in front of a crowd. He had spoken in public dozens of times, and it had never affected him. But then, he had never delivered an announcement that was anything like the one he planned to make today. This was going to change his life forever, and once he said it, there would be no turning back.

The room was full of press. Most of them were people he didn’t recognize, which made sense in a crowd this size. The place was packed. There were the familiar reporters, the ones for the big news outlets, and they had congregated at the front of the room and taken all the prime seating. But there were other faces here too. Bloggers and content creators, everyone who was looking for a scoop. Some of them were filming on their phones.

This was what I wanted. An audience. As many people as possible. And with all these cameras on me…there’s just no way she won’t see it. Unless she’s going out of her way not to watch, of course. Not for the first time, he questioned the decision to do this without Cara present. But the choice had been made, and there was nothing left to do but see it through to the end.

He cleared his throat. “The truth is, I’m grateful to all of you for making a little more time for me,” he said. “I’ve been in the news an awful lot lately, and you could be forgiven for being sick of the sight of my face.”

That got a laugh. Not a very big one—he had the sense that the crowd was still making up its mind about him. But a little laugh was better than nothing. He could work with it. Heartened, he pressed onward.