Page 46 of The Marriage Playbook

He had to read it. Even if there was a chance that it would turn out to be something painful, he needed to know for sure. He needed to find out what had been so important that it had driven her to write to him after a solid week of no communication.

With a sigh, he opened his email app.

He hadn’t opened it in days, and the number of new messages was overwhelming. But the one he was looking for was right at the top. Cara had sent it less than an hour ago.

After only a moment’s hesitation, he clicked it open.

It took a moment for what he was seeing to register. He had expected a block of text, a Dear Liam, something that looked like a letter. This wasn’t that.

Cara hadn’t written anything at all. It was a forwarded message. He scrolled down to the body of the original email, which he understood at once was something that had been sent to her.

Ms. Bailey,

Thank you for reaching out. I can’t tell you how glad we were to receive your message. The whole management team has read it and is thinking about what you’ve said.

We did find the story in the news to be a bit hard to believe, and we suspected there might be more to it. We appreciate you sharing the truth with us.

If what you say is true—if you and Mr. Sims are willing to go on record and set things straight—there is still a place for him with the Lions. He’ll have to sit on the bench for the rest of this season, of course, but there’s a chance he might be able to start next year if he puts in the work and pays his dues.

We’ll look forward to hearing from you about this as soon as possible.

Warmest regards,

Ben Harvey

Liam stared at the message for a long moment, hardly able to take it in.

She had done it.

She had really done it.

This was what they had been working toward all this time. This was what everything had been for. And now, here it was. A team wanted him. He was going to be able to play football again, just like that. His life wasn’t over after all. The one thing that mattered to him…she’d gotten it back for him.

He scrolled up again the part of the message that was from her, the place where she could have typed something for him if she had wanted to, wondering if perhaps he had missed it. Surely she must have wanted to say something in this moment, even if it was only to gloat over what she had done. To tell him that she had been right to focus on PR in the moment when he had wanted to step away.

There was still nothing.

She was right, though. I was the one who was wrong the whole time. I was ready to give up. I was going to stop trying. Because I was overwhelmed, and because I didn’t believe there was any chance this would ever work out the way I wanted it to. But Cara never gave up, and it’s thanks to her that I have a chance to play again.

The last week rewrote itself painfully in his mind.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t cared. It was that she hadn’t been ready to quit. It was that she had believed in him enough to keep trying even after Liam had given up on his own future.

He thought of Colorado. Of going out there and being part of a team again. Sitting on the bench for a few months, yes, but he would be a part of practices, and soon enough they would consider letting him start. He would be back on the field, picking up where he had left off as though nothing had ever gone wrong. Everything would be as it should be.

So why did it hurt to imagine it? What was this ache that made it impossible for him to embrace that vision?

He didn’t really even need to ask the question, if he was really being honest with himself.

It’s because Cara wouldn’t be there.

He sucked in a breath. The thought of being without her, truly without her, opened a chasm in the pit of his stomach that he didn’t know how to close.

Would it be enough to have football back in his life if it meant moving away from Miami and sacrificing the one person he had ever truly felt he could talk to?

In the moment when things seemed most dark…I didn’t want a team, I wanted her.

Now he had the chance to be a part of a team again.