Then she caught him staring at her, and the sadness and regret in his blue-gray eyes haunted her ever since.
Tonight—the first Friday of training camp—she worked until dusk, tired but satisfied with how the turf was holding up. As she walked toward her car, Brett caught up with her. The guy usually studied game film until late at night. Only Zach and Tyler stayed later.
“I’m glad I caught you. Got a few minutes?” Brett asked.
“Sure, I was just heading home.”
“How about a drink?”
Mac hesitated, wondering how much Brett knew about her and Bruiser and whether he hoped for a second chance now that Bruiser was out of the picture.
“Hey, just friends, right?” Good thing he was a mind reader.
“Okay, sure.” She didn’t feel like going home alone tonight, looking across the yard as Will’s widow and her new husband had yet another party.
Mac followed Brett to O’Malley’s and sat across from him, making small talk about which rookies and free agents had a chance of making the team. Brett’s eyes lit up whenever he talked football. It was a damn shame he wasn’t with a team where he’d have a chance of starting, but Harris tied up that job for the foreseeable future.
“I went fishing with Bruiser a few days ago.” The sudden change of subject caught Mac off guard. Brett’s blue eyes watched her, as if gauging her reaction, not missing a thing.
“Oh, did you catch anything?” she asked, wondering where Brett was going with this.
“Uh.” He scratched his head as if he didn’t want to answer that.
“Guess not. Do you ever catch any fish?”
“It’s the journey, not the destination.” Brett smiled at her.
“If you say so. I’ll have to take your word for it. Fishing seems like an excuse for guys to laze around on a boat, drink beer, and swap tall tales all day.”
Brett’s half smile said it all. He looked over her shoulder for a moment then back at her. His expression sobered. “Bruiser misses you, Mac.”
Mac shook her head, trying to clear it. Surely she didn’t hear him correctly. “I thought you didn’t like us together.”
He shrugged and stared down at the table. “I didn’t, but I was wrong. You two were good for each other. Bruiser’s been a bigger asshole than Harris for the past several days. He’s got the rookies shaking in their cleats whenever he comes near. And you—you’ve been a real bitch too. All the guys have noticed. They’re giving you a wide berth.”
“Well, thanks for the compliment.” Mac resorted to sarcasm; it was her go-to defense when the shit got too deep to handle. “The team doesn’t know about Bruiser and me, do they?”
He shook his head. “Nope, only me, but they sure as hell suspect something’s fucked up.”
Mac shrugged and raised her hand to order another beer.
“Give him another chance, Mac.” Brett finally got to the heart of the matter, and Mac wished she’d gone home instead of accepting his offer for a drink.
“He’s the one who walked out, the one who chose to stay away.”
“You might need to make the first move.”
“Are you kidding? Why would I put myself through that grief again?”
“Because you care about him. He cares about you.”
“Did some linebacker slam your head into the ground today or what? Bruiser would never say that.”
“Not in words, but I know him.”
Mac sighed. Typical Brett. Always putting everyone’s feelings ahead of his own. Bruiser and she could learn a thing or three from the unselfish backup quarterback. “I know him too. It’s all about Bruiser. He’s an attention slut. Everything he does is carefully calculated to net the most press.”
“You don’t honestly believe that.”
She nodded. She wanted to, oh, how she wanted to. A selfish, egotistical Bruiser was much easier to dislike than the glimpses she’d seen of a completely generous, kind Bruiser. “For example, his work with the burn foundation. He’s their sponsor, but you can bet if it didn’t net him good press, he’d never do it.” She cringed at her own feeble justifications. Bruiser wasn’t that guy, and she knew it.
Brett gave her a look that seemed to insinuate that she’d missed the mark. “If you really believe that, you truly don’t deserve to be with a good guy like him.”
“What do you mean by that?” Now she felt even more like a bitch because Brett spoke the truth.
“Did you know that Bruiser works with child burn victims because of his twin brother?”
“No, I had no idea.” Mac’s bitch status just upgraded to beyond bitch. She hugged herself tight and stared at her beer as if it held the answers to her problems.
“His twin brother, Brice, was badly burned in an accident.”
Mac’s hands flew to her mouth. Forget bitch—that was too kind of a term for her.
“Brice couldn’t deal with his horrendous burns and quality of life, so he shot himself in the head a year later at fourteen years old. Bruiser found him.”
“I didn’t know.” That explained the sadness lurking in Bruiser’s eyes and the nightmares—the horrible, horrible nightmares.
“Yeah, well, you of all people should never judge a book by its cover.”
She deserved that and more. “Why does he keep his twin a secret?”
“Because he feels responsible for what happened.”
“How could he be responsible?”
“Survivor’s guilt, maybe. It’s not my place to tell you the details. I’ve said more than I should.” Brett looked away, and Mac was certain the Army vet knew a thing or two about survivor’s guilt.
“Yeah, I can understand that. I just never imagined Bruiser—”
“No one does. Why do you think he’s so good with those kids? Especially Elliot. He’s been working with burn victims since college.”
Bruiser? Since college? Sure, he’d been great with Elliot, and he’d mentioned others and that he tried not to get involved. She’d never guessed the extent of his special mission. Why did he work so hard to play the part of a shallow pretty boy? It
