Page 78 of The Game Plan

“Oh, Sienna, you might be my fake sister but I real love you,” Sas says, making me shake my head as I look to the heavens. As if forcing Sienna to go to the toilet with her wasn’t bad enough. “For what it’s worth, though I can’t believe you’ve married my brother, fake or real, he’s different around you.” Sas looks across my wife’s shoulder directly at me. “I almost like him. But don’t tell him.”

“Mom’s the word,” Sienna says, pulling away and stepping behind the rear passenger door to give Sas access to her ride.

“Speaking of moms,” Sas says, tossing her shoes into the footwell then sitting into the backseat. “She likes you, too. I’m not sure whose heart you’re going to break more when you file for divorce.”

That wipes the smirk right off my face. I feel like holding my hand up because I have the answer to the question – I know too well that it will be my heart that gets broken. Sas’s reminder that I might have five weeks left with Sienna is like a puck to my gut.

Is it possible to mourn something I haven’t lost yet? Something I maybe never had?

“Sweet dreams, Sas,” Sienna says, oblivious to the fact my heart has stopped beating over here. “It was good to see you.”

“You too, sis!” Sas says. “And, I’ve got to say, I think what TJ did with the video⁠—”

TJ leans over her and pulls the door shut. Thank fuck. We don’t need to relive TJ’s one-night stand gone wrong that resulted in my wedding ceremony being revealed to the world.

“My family can be really fucking annoying,” I say, when it’s Sienna and me left on the sidewalk, our car pulling in front of us.

“They love you,” she says, smiling up at me.

God, that smile. I could drown in it. I nod. “I know,” I say, voice breaking.

Then her smile fades. “You shouldn’t lie to them and I’m sorry that I’m making you, Jax. You all deserve better.”

I reach up to her temple, where hair has come loose now, and stroke the strands behind her ear. “I chose this too, Si.”

Her pupils dilate as I watch the whisky-gold flecks in them shift like a swirling globe. “I wanted this,” I tell her. My words are quiet, thoughtful, laced with fear because I don’t remember every detail but I recall this feeling in my chest, like I’ll never be able to get enough air again if I can’t⁠—

She leans up, presses a kiss to my mouth and stills. I freeze up. This has never happened to me but I’m as mobile as a steel statue. Locked like stone by the overwhelming need I have to make her mine.

She reads it wrong – how could she read it right when I’m not kissing her back? I’m just standing here, dumbfounded by intense emotion. I can’t even voice it before she slips behind the car door the concierge is holding open.

I reach for her hand in the car and she entwines her fingers in mine, but she spends the drive looking out of her window and I’m lost in the million questions about us I keep running over and over.

At home, I unzip her dress in the lounge and kiss her cheek. “Sweet dreams, Si.”

“Sweet dreams, Jax,” she says, looking back at me, staring after her as she heads to her own bedroom.

And I flop down to the sofa, loosening the buttons of my shirt and dragging my hands over my face.

We’re lying to our families, half my teammates, the world.

I think the only person I’m not lying to is myself.

Because the ache in my chest won’t let me fob it off.

I want her.

I need her.

I’m fucking desperate to have her, yet I’m lying here on this couch wondering, once again, whether I’m having some kind of coronary episode.

32

OCTOBER

Sienna

The Reckoning