Page 70 of The Score We Never Settled

“I have dinner with Uncle Ben.”

“Great. Then you’re gonna dance with me, Layla Jean, because I’ve been stripped of that right on our wedding day, and I know how much you like it.”

I do.

“I don’t,” I deadpan right before Briggs wraps an arm around my waist and guides me to the dance floor, where there are already dozens of couples. I drag my feet. “Briggs Kerrigan, I will punch you in the balls.”

“As long as you kiss them later then.”

He takes my hand and spins me, forcing me to focus on my feet, so I don’t fall on my ass before he’s lacing them together and pulling our joined fingers to his chest.

Then our bodies are pressed together, Brigg’s free hand splayed right above my ass as he slowly begins to rock us back and forth.

I can’t help but look up at him, and gone is his irritation from me calling him out with Sterling’s sister. He stares down at me with too much…everything.

It’s intense, it always is, but not in an uncomfortable way. It melts away any animosity or hurt I’ve felt in the last couple of years. It drags me back to us as sixteen, seventeen-year-old kids who had all the hope in the world that this would last.

This would be us forever.

When we got married, we were happy. He would fly me out to whatever city he was in, and I’d still act like a teenager sneaking away from Uncle Ben with excuses of why I wouldn’t be home.

He bought them, and I never felt guilty about it until I got back to Magnolia Ridge and Uncle Ben asked me questions.

I was going to tell him.

But then his health declined a little, and it terrified me. I felt like the news of marrying Briggs would send him into a stroke. He was all I had left, and I don’t believe I could’ve lived with myself if I were the cause of his decline.

Then there was Briggs and Cruz.

Cruz entered the MLB about two years after Briggs did, and from the first game they played against each other, it stirred up a rivalry.

One the media ate up like vultures.

Briggs started getting into fights with him. I begged him to stop. Meanwhile, Briggs began bringing up my fake relationship with Cruz and what really happened.

It’s his abandonment issues.

I knew that.

However, I got tired of repeating myself over and over again. All we did was argue and fight, and I knew it wasn’t going to work.

So, I asked for a divorce.

That sent Briggs into a few weeks of sheer rage that I’d leave him when I promised I wouldn’t. Then, the divorce papers, he’d write down all the reasons why he loved me on them, then send them back.

I went to Memphis twice myself to try and get him to agree, but we ended up…having sex while he tried to riddle my head with doubt that we were, for eternity, together.

Then he’d go back on his I-need-to-punch-Cruz-in-the-head phase or why-isn’t-he-on-the-same-page-you-two-were-fake crap.

It was exhausting, but I knew Briggs was struggling out there alone, married to a girl who kept him a secret and still has.

Until tonight.

“When you’re quiet, you scare me,” he mutters, running his thumb up and down my skin. “You’re thinkin’ of ways to evade me for the rest of the time I’m here, aren’t you?”

“How can I do that when you’ve got me in a bear-lock hold, Briggs?”

“You could cause a scene.”