Page 198 of Just One More Thing

“It’s the best I’ve got.”

I shake my head and start tugging at my shoulder pads. “I’m heading to the shower. Y’all do whatever you need to do that doesn’t involve getting arrested or interviewed.”

“That really limits my options,” Wayne says.

“Ryan, can you keep an eye out for Hank’s nanny?”

“You got it.”

I get one shoulder pad unclipped before Wayne stops me again.

“Wait.” He studies my face, and there’s no performance in it. No volume. Just Wayne, underneath all the nonsense.

“You okay?” he asks.

I know what he means.

I glance down at the game ball in my hand. Then toward the field where Mo is waiting for me.

I think of her saying I love you with tears in her eyes and no hesitation left in her anywhere.

“Yeah,” I say, and it comes easy. “Yeah. I’m better than okay.”

Wayne nods once like that answer mattered to him more than he planned to let on.

Then, because he can’t hold a real emotion in his hands for more than three seconds, he points at me and says, “Great. Now hurry up and shower. We’ve got a jet plane waiting.”

A roll of athletic tape flies in the air, heading straight toward his forehead. He grabs it out of the air and shouts, “Jealousy is ugly, gentlemen.”

I hand Ryan the game ball long enough to yank off my gear and start toward the showers.

Behind me, Wayne yells, “Make it quick, Wheeler. Love is waiting, and also I’m starving.”

I don’t bother turning around.

I’m grinning too hard.

CHAPTER 45

JAKE

The flight from Tampa is just over an hour. Long enough for Wayne to eat everything the cabin had to offer, try to start a card game nobody agreed to, and fall asleep mid-sentence with a pretzel in his hand.

Ryan is out cold across from me with Hank curled against his leg. Bethany has her headphones in and her eyes closed, though I’m fairly sure she’s not sleeping because every time Wayne snores, she opens one eye like a woman deciding whether tonight is the night.

Mo is beside me. Her head is on my shoulder. Her fingers are loosely threaded through mine, holding on even in sleep, and I haven’t moved my arm in forty minutes because I’d rather lose circulation than wake her.

I look out the window at nothing. Just black sky and the faint glow of coast below.

We’re going home.

Bethany insisted on driving the van from the airport. Wayne took one look at it in the rental lot and said, “If the van’s rockin’, don’t come knockin’.”

“For fuck’s sake, Wayne,” Bethany hollered.

“See, Bethany gets it.”

“That’s not what I mea—forget it,” she said.