of us could come to our senses, I scooped her into my arms and carried her back to her bedroom. As usual, we only had one night, and I chose to bask in the happiness of her love.
We’d deal with the reality tomorrow.
“Well, that’s unexpected,” Bristol muttered the next morning, scrolling through her cell phone as I packed up the small overnight bag I’d brought with me. She was still in the soft, terry cloth robe she’d put on after the five-minute shower I’d planned had turned into twenty minutes of bliss, but now I was fully dressed.
“What is it?” I asked, zipping up the bag. This part—the part where I left her without knowing when I’d see her again—was brutal. There was a part of me that wished I’d just kept my mouth shut last night. What good was loving each other if this moment was inevitable every time we managed to steal some time together?
"We just got an offer from that editor at GQ to be a part of a massive spread.” A smile spread across her face. “It's an outdoor-themed spread for their August issue." Her brow furrowed.
“That’s amazing! Wait…is it not amazing?” I was missing something here.
“That means we would have to shoot it next month.” She nibbled on her lower lip, which I was beginning to understand as a sign of her thinking something through.
Wait. Next month?
My stomach sank. We’d just won in the first round, but with the Reaper’s positioning in playoffs, I wasn’t even sure I was going to get to see Bristol in the next month, let alone have time to shoot something, which meant she was going to have to hire it all out. “You’re going to take it, right?” The bed softly gave way as I sat on the edge beside her. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of models on your roster after fashion month or whatever it was called.”
“Fashion week,” she whispered, a smile ghosting her lips, but then it fell and took my heart right with it. “They want you. It's all athletes.” She shook her head and loosed a long, painful sigh.
“What do you mean?” There was zero way this entire photoshoot hinged on me participating. I wasn't the one who designed the clothes or manufactured them. I was just the one in the clothes.
“I mean, they want you.” She flipped her phone toward me so I could read the email.
It took all of three seconds for me to curse under my breath and hand her phone back to her. The spread was focusing on “athletes in the wild,” and they already had Lukas Vestergaard lined up. If I knew Lukas, and I did, considering we’d played together for years, he’d be modeling his own line, which was in direct competition to Bristol. “You don't happen to have any other pro athletes on your endorsement roster, do you?” I asked Bristol with a grimace. The last thing I wanted to do was let her down, but I couldn't commit to anything, not in the middle of playoffs.
"Hardly." She scoffed. “I spent all my endorsement budget on you. Turns out you’re not exactly cheap.” She bumped me with her shoulder.
“Shit.” I would give back every cent that contract had brought me if it meant she’d have someone else to fill in.
Some of the light drained out of her eyes as she read her way down the rest of the email. “They already have the shoot booked because someone fell through. The site, photographers…everything is right there.”
There weren’t even words to describe the frustration I saw brewing in those gorgeous eyes, and I couldn’t blame her or even help her. “There has to be someone else you can book, right? Any other athlete. When is the shoot?”
“The twentieth of May,” she said, her voice taking on a tone I’d never heard from her—defeat.
Fuck that. My girl hadn’t risked everything to miss out on something like this. “That’s great. That’s…” I swiped open my phone and scrolled through the calendar. “That’s right at the end of conference finals. Should be between game six and seven depending on whatever teams make it that far.”
“It’s between games?” She blinked.
I nodded, showing her my screen. “We have second-round these next couple of weeks, so you’ll have your pick of players from whatever teams get knocked out of the playoffs. Take back some of the money from my contract to pay them. Call it a fine or whatever works for your accounting department.”
“I wouldn’t