Fighting for Love (Second Chances #4)(14)
I shrugged. “I don’t know. What can we do about it? The damage has been done.”
Tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear, he lingered there for a second before trailing his finger down my cheek. “That may be so, but I’m pretty sure the damage can be fixed,” he murmured gently, moving his body closer.
I’m not so sure of that, I wanted to say, but there was nothing wrong with letting him try.
A quick knock on the door jolted us out of the moment. Once I stepped away, in walked my boss, Bryan Winters, with his head down. He strolled in with a handful of files in his arms, looking through the papers completely oblivious to what just went down.
“Shelby, please tell me you have Cooper Davis’ file in here. I can’t seem to find it anywhere. I want to do another piece on him since he’s back in California playing for Oakland,” he grumbled, sounding frustrated. Matt stepped out to the side and turned around so he could face my boss, which got Bryan’s attention. When he glanced up, his eyes went wide.
“Oh my goodness,” Bryan gasped. “Please forgive me for the intrusion, Mr. Reynolds. I promise I have better manners than this, but I didn’t realize you would be coming to the office today. I’m Bryan Winters,” he said, introducing himself and extending his hand.
Matt smiled and shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Winters. I was letting Shelby here know that I have a promotional photo shoot tomorrow before the fight in Sacramento, and I thought she might be interested in coming to it. It would give her a chance to get to know me and see what I do.”
What? He never mentioned anything about that!
Bryan grinned. “Great, I bet she would love to go.” Turning to acknowledge me, he said, “If you find Cooper’s file for me I’ll let you work from home all next week. Is that a deal? Please tell me you have it.”
Smiling from ear to ear, I rolled my eyes and said, “I swear I don’t know what you would do without me.” Reaching into my file cabinet, I searched for Cooper’s name and pulled out his folder. Smugly, I handed it to Bryan. “I have a witness here that’ll testify that you said I could work from home next week. You better keep your word.”
“You have my word,” he promised, holding up his hand like he was pledging an oath. “Besides, you’re probably going to be busy working on your story. I’m sure Mr. Reynolds has a lot going on to keep you busy.”
Matt chuckled under his breath and mumbled, “You have no idea.”
Bryan smiled and said his good-byes before leaving my office; we were alone again. “Do you really have a photo shoot tomorrow before the fight?” I asked.
Matt grinned and headed for the door. “I do. I have to be there by two tomorrow afternoon. I thought maybe after the fight we could spend some time together? We have a lot to catch up on. Not to mention you’ll be working from home next week. That gives us plenty of time to—” he started to say, but stopped with a gleam in his eye.
“Plenty of time for what?” I asked, lifting my brows.
He winked and pretended to look offended. “To work on the article. What else would I be talking about? Give me your address and you can ride with me tomorrow. That is, if you want to go.”
Silently, his hopeful green gaze pleaded with me. I could tell he wanted to make an effort to correct his mistakes. The least I could do was try to make up for mine. Grabbing a pen and piece of paper off my desk, I wrote down my cell phone number and address, and handed it to him.
He looked down at the paper and smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, angel. Sweet dreams tonight.”
It had been years since I’d heard him call me by that nickname. It felt so right, but yet I knew the lighthearted feeling in my chest wasn’t going to last forever. We had a long, bumpy road ahead of us … and it wasn’t going to be easy. My secret would tear us apart again.
BEFORE I GOT IN MY car to leave work, I had to call my mother and tell her about Matt. She absolutely adored him when we dated, and even after everything that happened she didn’t exactly agree with my choices in life, but she was always there, supporting me no matter what. As the years passed by, she drowned herself in work because that was what she liked to do. She enjoyed helping people and being a doctor was what she loved.
It didn’t surprise me when she didn’t pick up the phone, so I left her a message instead.
“Hey, Mom, I just wanted to call and check in to see how you were doing at the hospital. I found out who my new article was going to be on and I thought you’d like to know.” I took a deep breath. “It’s Matt, Mom. Out of all the people my boss chose, he chose Matt. Talk about crazy, right? Anyway, I saw him today and it was like everything came back at me full force. Is it bad that I want to be with him? Do I even deserve him? I don’t know what to do.” I paused for a second, blowing out a shaky breath. “Call me back when you get the chance, okay? I love you.”
Sometimes it would take her a week to call me back, but I understood. I loved her and I knew she thought about me often, but it would be nice to have her around more often. Now that her phone call was done, I figured it would be best to come clean to both Jace and Caleb. Hopefully, Jace would be at home so I could tell him. He would most likely get pissed, and I honestly had no clue how Caleb would handle it considering we’d only been talking less than a week. It wasn’t like we were serious yet, but still, the timing had been horrible.