“It’s okay. I get it. You didn’t know if you could trust me,” I told him.
Oliver rolled his eyes. “Fuck that noise. I’ve known I could trust you for weeks now. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?” I asked, moving back into the position I’d occupied before we’d … gotten distracted.
He followed suit. “I told you my dad runs a local diner, right?”
“Yeah. Paul’s Place. Wait, no. Paul’s Diner.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said, dropping his eyes and picking at a piece of invisible lint on his comforter. “And you know how I lost the money I’d earned from playing football.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe his bad luck.
“Mmm-hmm,” I murmured, recalling the night he’d shamefacedly confessed to being as good as broke.
The truth was, he hadn’t actually lost it. More like, it’d been stolen from him with zero chance of recovery. While Oliver had been able to hold onto the cabin in New Hampshire where he now lived, as well as his beloved Porsche, which I'd loved teasing him about, he’d been forced to liquidate nearly everything else three years ago when he’d learned that he owed the I.R.S. almost two million dollars in back taxes. What was worse was that when he’d confronted his business manager, he’d discovered several real estate schemes the man had supposedly invested in using Oliver’s name and cash. Only, as it turned out, there was no high rise penthouse condo in Miami or small luxury eco-resort in Roatan. What there was was a palatial villa in Ho Chi Minh the man had fled to with his very young Vietnamese wife shortly thereafter. And because Vietnam didn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S., the chance of Oliver ever seeing that money again was zero.
“Well, my dad’s even more broke than I am, so my brother Ben hatched this whole plan where me coming on the show would drum up a bunch of business to keep the old man afloat.”
That was … the stupidest idea I’d ever heard.
“Umm. I don’t mean to be insensitive,” I found myself saying, “but you do know you’re already famous, right?”
He shook his head. “No I’m not. Not really. But if I made it to hometowns, we’d get the diner on the show, and people would—”
I snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No?” he asked, scratching his jaw.
I grabbed hold of his hand and tugged him toward me. Wrapping my arm around his shoulder and tucking him up against me, I cooed, “Oh, my sweet, beautiful Oliver. It’s a good thing you’re so pretty.”
“Fuck you,” he wheezed, pushing against my side in an attempt to break free, but I held firm. He was bigger and stronger than me, but not by much, and unless he really wanted me to let him go, that wasn’t really happening.
“Oh, hush. You know I’m just teasing,” I said, tucking him back into my embrace and dropping a kiss on the top of his head. “But seriously, Oliver. If that’s the only reason you came on the show, you could have done a thousand other, less difficult things to help your dad’s business stay afloat.”
“Like what?” he asked, settling more comfortably against me.
“For starters—and this is just off the top of my head—you could have called up a bunch of your former teammates and asked them to do a charity touch football game. Or, I don’t know, maybe re-named the diner Oliver’s or something, and really leaned into the whole football god thing you’ve got going on. Games showing on the TV, memorabilia lining the walls, menu items named after special moments from your career.”
“But I don’t. Have it going on, that is. It’s been years since I played. No one cares about me anymore. I’m the equivalent of a one-hit-wonder.”
I leaned back so he could see my face when I next spoke. “You won the Super Bowl in the final seconds of the game with a Hail Mary that ESPN called the ‘Pass of the Century.’ You’re a fucking legend, Oliver. How come you can’t see what everyone else so clearly does?” I’d legitimately never met anyone who had less of an ego about their accomplishments than he did. The second he’d walked into the mansion, every conversation had ground to a halt, every guy here doing a double-take. Weeks later and Matty was still freaking out that he was sharing a house with Oliver Fucking Cooper. The man took humility to the next level. If I wasn’t so in love with him, I might find it supremely annoying.
“I don’t know,” he hedged, chewing on his lip.
“Tell me this: who was your football idol growing up?”
He didn’t hesitate for a second. “Troy Aikman.”
I scoured the recesses of my memory for all the football knowledge I’d managed to accumulate from my childhood, finally latching on to two key facts. “Right, okay. And between the two of you, who actually won the Heisman?”
He dropped his eyes, his cheekbones turning a burnished pink. “I did.”
“And who was a first-round draft pick?”
“We both were, actually.”
“Shit. Okay. Never mind then. Who umm … who had the best rookie season?”
“Again, that was me.”
“And who was on the cover of Sports Chronicle magazine five times?” I asked, thinking I was really on a roll now.
“Aikman was on the cover six times. He also played twelve seasons to my three. It’s not really a fair comparison, Elijah.”
“Okay, full disclosure. I don’t know shit about Troy Aikman, but I know all about you, Oliver Cooper, and I am telling you that you are a certified badass.”
“I was a badass. Past tense.”
I gripped him by the shoulders. “Present tense.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Clearly, we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
I kissed him hard. “Let’s get one thing clear right now: the only thing I’ll ever agree to disagree with you about is mayo on French fries, and even that’s questionable.”
“For the record,” he said, fully laughing now, “that’s disgusting.”
I pushed him down onto his back and covered his body with my own, our feet tangling near the headboard. Holding myself up on my flattened forearms, I stared down at him. “I’m serious, Oliver. You’re amazing. I wish you could see yourself like I see you.”
“I think you might see me better than anyone ever has,” he whispered, his eyes flicking over my face. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
I dropped down onto him, letting the weight of my body press him into the mattress. Against his lips, I said, “We both must have been very good in past lives.”
He hummed. “You’re too good to me.”
“You’re not good enough to yourself,” I told him. “Trust me when I say you didn’t have to come on some reality TV show to save your dad’s restaurant. You could have—”
My words were interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat outside Oliver’s door, followed by a loud knock. “Change in plans, man. We’re heading out in an hour, and … umm … when you see Elijah … ahem … let him know, too.” There was a bit of a pause, but Brett didn’t say anything else, and after a moment we heard his footsteps heading away.