Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Did I somehow just gain two tigers living in my house with Ari? Was this my life now?
I kind of loved it.
“I don’t worry about y’all. I worry about all those weirdos that like to stalk me,” I pointed out.
“Hire a bodyguard,” Ari suggested.
Now that wasn’t a half bad idea.
“You’ll listen to him every step of the way?” I asked.
She crossed her heart with her fingers then held up a pinky.
“If you have the bodyguard, you can go back to working at the circus,” Briley voiced.
I shot her a glare.
“I could…” Ari agreed, looking at me as if she needed me to say yes before she’d even consider it.
So that was how I let my girl go back to work while her crazy sister was still on the loose.
CHAPTER 22
I love hot dads.
-Text from Ari to Slone
SLONE
“How are we going to do this?” Ari asked me.
I’d thought about this a lot in the last few weeks.
Which I told her in the next breath.
“Yeah?” she asked. “So you have some ideas? Because I don’t. I don’t know how we’re going to do this.”
I pulled her in close.
We were lying in bed after a long week of me going back and forth from the house to sponsorship meetings, to games, then back.
There was a very, very high likelihood that we were looking at a playoff run, and possibly even a Super Bowl push come January/February.
So the sponsors were all in an uproar as they vied for my attention.
Needless to say, we were all tired.
And Briley, with her cast and her bad attitude, was one of the ones suffering.
Mostly because my team owner had all but told me that this back and forth, child traveling with the team thing, was over. Because she couldn’t give the same to the other players on the team.
Though I couldn’t fault my team members for wanting the same thing I had, I had it in my contract and told her so.
Which pissed Kay off even more.
And I had a very distinct feeling that she was trying to trade me and Titus now, just to save face with the team.
And if that happened…I was retiring.
I loved football. But I was tired of the back-and-forth game.
I was ready to be at home with my kid permanently.
Even if that home happened to move with the circus.
I explained my thoughts to Ari, and she sat up, her mouth open.
“You don’t want to play football anymore?” she shrieked.
I grinned and wrapped my hand around her arm, pulling her closer to me so that she was lying on my chest.
When she was close, I said, “I don’t care about football anymore. I haven’t for a while.”
Saying the words felt almost freeing.
“I have a little over a year left in my contract. If they trade me, I’ll take a pay out on my contract and retire. If they don’t trade me, we’ll keep trucking for a year…then I’ll retire once my contract is up.”
She was shaking her head. “But how do we make that work, Slone?”
I curled a stray hair around her ear and said, “How do you feel about keeping Briley with you when I’m out of town?”
Her eyes widened. “I would love that.”
“How do you feel about hiring a driver, and then him driving our motor home around everywhere you go for your shows? Then when we have time, we’ll go home and stay there when there’s a break. We’ll make this work, baby. I don’t care what we have to do. We will,” I emphasized.
She licked her lips. “I think I’d really like that.”
“What about making this official?” I asked.
“As in marriage official?” she asked, eyes as wide as saucers now.
My lips twitched. “Everyone already thinks we’re married, baby. What’s a little engagement?”
She blinked. “Engagements usually come with rings.”
I twisted, taking her with me, then leaned out of the bed to reach for my pants on the floor. I came back up with the ring box out of my pocket to her laughing and wheezing.
“You’re really heavy, Slone,” she teased.
I let her have a bit more of my weight before I lifted up off of her and went up onto my knees in the bed.
She looked at me with wide eyes as she stared at the velvet box.
I flipped it open, and she gasped. “Yes.”
“I didn’t ask you anything yet.”
“Yes,” she repeated.
Grinning wickedly, I slid the ring onto her finger.
And then took a tackle from the smallest woman on earth, who promptly fell asleep in my arms.
Sadly, she didn’t wake up until well past nine the next morning.
She had an apologetic look on her face when I blinked my own eyes open.
“I love the ring,” she whispered, then kissed my nose.
I pulled her into my arms and said, “Good. It’s the only one Briley and I could settle on. If you’d disliked it, we would’ve had to go with her first choice. And it looked like a ring from a dollar ring machine.”