hotel—sleek and modern, with all the bells and whistles. But the ceiling was a plain, boring, flat plasterboard, and there was no backyard with a love seat and tire swing.
He watched ESPN, drank little bottles of booze, and ordered room service. The exact thing he’d gone to Credence to do before he’d been sidetracked from his pity party by a woman and a little boy. Mitch rang, left messages, and texted what felt like a thousand times, and Cole ignored all of them as he tried to clear his head and come to a decision about what he wanted.
Really wanted.
Unfortunately, the answer kept coming up the same every time—Jane.
It seemed a person didn’t need to be in the same abode as someone to still think about them all the time. When they were in your head and possibly other parts of your body he refused to dwell on, they went with you everywhere.
Staying in Denver, staying away from Jane, hadn’t freed up his headspace at all. The way she’d distanced herself that last day after Tad had turned up and her what’s to think about at the airport kept running around his head. The fact she had to ask that, the fact she couldn’t even think that maybe they could talk about a them as another option—exploring it, seeing where it went—told him she wasn’t as caught up in this thing as he was.
Because he was caught up in it. He didn’t know what it was, but he thought it was…something.
Jesus. Was he delusional? And when had his career taken a back seat to a woman? When had that happened? Professional career sportsmen were selfish pricks. They had to be. It had to be all about them because it required 100 percent effort to do what they did. Sure, he wasn’t ever going to be an elite athlete again, but that didn’t mean the rest of his career didn’t deserve that kind of focus.
Which kept bringing him back to the basic fact. He had to say yes to the job. What else was he going to do? Coach? After the clinic he’d run in Credence, he knew he couldn’t be that close to the game. Maybe with time and distance he could do something like that, but not now—probably not for some time. And at least sportscasting still kept him in rugby.
Kept him in the realm but not at the coalface. Gave him a degree of separation.
And it was a good package. He was being paid an obscene amount of money for way less work and zero chance of hurting himself again. Maybe permanently this time. It was win/win. A soft place to land with perks worthy of a movie star. The kind of package where free TGIF blow jobs could be thrown in with the deal and nobody batted an eyelid.
But…none of that really appealed. Neither did going back to Australia and never seeing Jane again. In fact, that felt like a boulder sitting in the pit of his stomach whenever he contemplated it.
Thank god for little bottles of booze…
…
On the third day, Cole was aimlessly flicking through the TV channels during a half-time break in the game he was watching when he saw a commercial for the historic Brown Palace Hotel. He’d been there a couple of times for different events when he lived in Denver and had forgotten about the glorious old building set on its triangular plot with its lovely red sandstone edifice and its soaring atrium.
It reminded him of Jane, and before he knew it, Cole was getting dressed and heading down to the lobby in the elevator and striding outside. According to Google, the Brown Palace was a four-minute walk, which probably meant a ten-minute walk for him, between the damn cane and his limp, but he hadn’t exercised in days, so it would do him good.
It took him eight minutes, but Cole felt every one of them. And not just because he was impatient to get where he was going—there was a stiffness to his leg and hip joint, and he cursed his stupidity at being so inactive. The hotel had a gym, and he’d hit it when he got back, because sitting around feeling sorry for himself while he contemplated his life was all well and good, but he couldn’t afford to be complacent.
Inactivity had physical consequences.
The liveried doorman opened the door, and within a minute he was being ushered to a table in the center of the lobby and ordering bourbon,