SCRUMptious: (Dublin Rugby #3)

by Rebecca Norinne

  I flattened my lips into a hard line and huffed out a frustrated sigh. Crossing the room, I peeked my head around the corner, expecting to see my roommates in the kitchen. When I didn’t see either, Eoin filled me in.

  “Tadhg’s in the shower and Fergus is out with some girl.”

  I nodded. I loved Fergus like a brother, but this was not a conversation I wanted to have with him in the house since he had a big mouth and a tendency to speak before thinking. Eoin almost knocked him on his ass after he’d told us he was secretly dating Aoife and Fergus had mouthed off about what a hot piece of ass she was. Tadhg was the more sympathetic of the two, but he wasn’t really a relationship guy. He wouldn’t understand how or why I’d fallen for Lauren so fast. Hell, I barely understood it myself.

  “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and sat at the table. Popping the lid, I downed half of it in quick succession. Wiping the foam from my lips, I confessed, “I think I came on too strong with Lauren.”

  Eoin pulled his own beer out of the fridge—he was here so often that he still kept it stocked with his favorites—and dropped down across from me. After swallowing a few sips of his own, he asked, “How so?”

  “You know how she’s supposed to be leaving soon?”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I warned you about that.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, you did. But it was too late.”

  “I fucking know how that feels,” he commiserated, taking another pull from his beer. “So, what are you guys going to do?”

  “She has some stuff going on in L.A. that she has to be back for, but she was planning on staying an extra week and we were going to go be tourists. You know, see all the shit you’re supposed to see but we never do because we fucking live here.”

  “Aww, how cute.” Eoin titled his head to the side and batted his eyelashes. “You all loved up on a B&B in Dingle.”

  “Fuck you. You know I hate B&B’s and all that flowery shit.”

  Eoin chuckled. He’d learned about my aversion to “all that flowery shit” after I’d stayed the night at his parents’ place a couple of years back and his mom had put me up in a room covered in pink rose fabric. She’d explained it was something called Laura Ashley, but I couldn’t have cared less if it was the fucking Queen herself. I’d felt like sneezing the entire night, absolutely positive the non-existent pollen would suffocate me while I slept.

  “I take it that’s no longer on the table?” he asked, bringing the conversation back to the reason for the acid roiling in my stomach.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted with a sigh.

  “You don’t know?” he asked, raising an eyebrow my way.

  “We got to talking, and she asked if I’d come out and stay in California for awhile. Since I don’t have anything better to do—” I lifted my booted foot “—I figured why not. But then, because I’m me and you know how I get—”

  “—You mean how you can never leave well enough alone?”

  I gritted my teeth and nodded. He and I both knew this was not up for debate. “Yes, that.”

  If Fergus spoke without thinking, I was notorious for acting without thinking. Anytime a red flag might have been raised, I’d brush it aside, figuring I’d make things work somehow. Frankly, I’d been that way my whole life and was lucky I’d never been burned by my impulsive behavior. Then again, I’d never cared about anything the way I cared about Lauren, so even if I had suffered some repercussion, I’m not sure it would have changed things. If today’s conversation with Lauren had proved anything, it was that I was still prone acting before thinking things through to their logical end.

  “What did you do?” he asked, finishing off his beer.

  “I told her I didn’t want to just visit; I said I’d move out there.”

  Eoin groaned and dropped his face into his hands and then spread his fingers wide so he could see me through them. “You didn’t.”

  I groaned back. “I did. But it gets worse.”

  Eoin dropped his palms to the table and his head fell back. Speaking to the ceiling, he said, “Of course it does.”

  When he brought his face forward, I continued. “I might have said I wanted us to be together. Like forever. Stick a fork in me and all that.”

  Eoin took a deep breath and let it out on a long gust. “Wow.” Then he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow.”

  “What did she say?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose as I recalled that moment in vivid, technicolor detail. “Lauren didn’t say anything.”

  “That’s good though, right? I mean, it’s not like she told you to feck off or anything.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” I answered. “I specifically asked her to tell me she heard me loud and clear, and that she believed me. She bit her lip and refused to speak.”

  “Oh fuck.”

  “Yup. Fuck indeed.”

  “At the risk of sounding like a chick, she has told you she loves you though, right? I mean, this isn’t all just one-sided?”

  I took the final drink of my beer, the liquid now warm. “No, it’s not one-sided. She told me she loved me that night at the museum. And then she told me she loved me again, even as she was telling me she couldn’t commit to me the way I wanted her to.”

  “Shit, man. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Neither did I, so I left.”

  “Like, you just walked out of there?”

  I nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Yeah, been there done that. It typically doesn’t end well.”

  That was the understatement of the century! When Eoin had found out Aoife was pregnant and had contemplated getting an abortion without telling him, he’d been devastated. In the heat of the moment, he’d called her a heartless cunt and then stormed off. They hadn’t spoken for weeks afterward, and it was only Aoife’s brother Declan knocking some sense into Eoin—literally—that had put them back on the path to domestic bliss.

  “The good news is I didn’t call her a cunt,” I answered with a wry chuckle.

  Wincing, he replied, “Yeah, smart move.”

  Months later, the names Eoin had called Aoife remained a sore subject between them, and I knew from past discussions that for the rest of his life, Eoin would regret the way he’d spoken to her that day.

  “But you didn’t say anything you can’t take back, did you? I know how you can get. You go for the jugular first.”

  “No,” I said with a protracted sigh. “I knew I was getting there, so I told her I was going to head home before either of us said something we might regret in the morning.”

  Eoin’s head jerked back and his eyes narrowed. “Really? You said that?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Who are you and what have you done with my best mate Donal Casey?”

  I chuckled again. “Fuck you.”

  “I’m serious. At the risk of sounding like a mother hen, I’m proud of you. Restraint isn’t really your forte.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Um, need I remind you I practiced a very particular, very painful, brand of restraint for 22 fucking years. I think I know how to hold myself in check, despite some other, more public, evidence to the contrary.”

  “Touche.” He shook his head. “I still don’t know how you or Aoife managed to stay virgins for so long, but more power to you.”

  “Who’s a virgin?” Tadhg asked, strolling into the room with nothing but his towel wrapped around his waist and a Q-tip in his ear.

  My eyes found Eoin’s and I gave him the look.

  “No one,” Eoin answered quickly, popping up from the table to pull two more beers out of the fridge. “Just some book Aoife was reading,” he continued, passing the other can my way while at the same time tossing me his own look; one that said, “your secret is safe with me.”

  I nodded imperceptibly and popped the tab.

  “That’s good
,” Tadhg said, dropping into the seat next to me. “After what went down with Aoife, I’m staying far away from anyone who’s never fucked before.”

  Eoin closed his eyes on a slow, long blink that I’d deemed his, “Lord give me patience” look the first month we’d all lived together. He’d pulled that one out a lot back then, but usually it was Fergus who was the recipient of it, not Tadhg. “Aoife didn’t get pregnant because she was a virgin, asshole. She got pregnant because she had the flu while she was on the pill and the hormones weren’t in her system.”

  “Well, regardless. No virgins for me, man. Too much trouble.” He pulled the cotton swab from his ear and set it on the table between us.

  “Fucking gross!” I hollered, flicking it onto the floor. “Throw that shit away.”

  “What?” he asked, his jaw falling open.

  I looked pointedly to the Q-tip on the floor, its waxy orange coating shiny in the lamplight. “I don’t care if you walk around picking your nose, but don’t put your shit on the goddamn table.”

  Eoin chuckled and rose from the table. With a smirk he said, “My baby’s all grown up,” and then strolled out of the room.

  “Clean that up,” I barked at Tadhg and then trotted after Eoin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He flopped down onto the couch and picked up the remote and game controller. Before he flicked the TV back on, his eyes slid to mine. “It means, asshole, that since you’ve been with Lauren, you’re finally acting like an adult.”

  “I’ve always acted—”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  And then he tuned me out with the sounds of digital warfare.

  Chapter 14

  D O N A L

  It’d been three days since I’d last seen Lauren. Seventy-two long hours since I’d walked out of her apartment to give us time and space to think about what we both wanted from our relationship. I wanted her, but I needed her to want me just as much. And if she didn’t … well, I wasn’t sure I saw the point in staying together. It would suck to break up, but until recently neither of us had seen our relationship going the distance, so I tried to tell myself I’d get over it.

  Tried, and failed.

  I didn’t think you simply got over a woman like Lauren Andrews.

  On the bedside table, my phone pinged, alerting me to a new email. Because it was after midnight, I figured it was just spam or something, but I was an addict when it came to my phone, so I rolled over and grabbed it anyway. Launching the email application to my screen, I sucked in a quick breath when Lauren’s name appeared at the top of my inbox.

  With a moment of brief, nervous hesitation, my thumb hovered over the bolded text, and then I swiped to open it.

  My eyes rushed over her words, and when I reached the end, I started all over again, my jaw slack and my mind disbelieving.

  Donal,

  I spoke to Martha Kennedy, and with Harold back in the kitchen, we’re going to wrap up my contract with Dublin Rugby a week early. I didn’t want to tell you like this, but, you asked for space, so ...

  I know I hurt you when I wasn’t able to say that I saw us growing old together. I never meant for that to happen, but you have to understand that nothing in my life has ever led me to believe that was a possibility for me. My mom and dad were more in love than any two people I’d ever seen, and he was ripped away from her. And I know you don’t like it when I say his name, but when Javier left me, that just reinforced every worry I’d ever had.

  In my life, love—no matter how strong—doesn’t last.

  It doesn’t go the distance.

  I want it to, trust me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

  And if I’m honest, I wanted it with you. I just couldn’t let myself hope for it, or believe it could. And now, maybe I’m glad I didn’t … because if we had continued down the road we were on and you walked out on me a couple of years from now like you did the other night, I don’t think I could handle it. You would have broken me.

  Anyhow, my flight back to California is tomorrow. I wish we’d gotten to spend these last days together, and that you were coming with me. I wish for so many things. But mostly, I just wish that you’d stayed.

  I wish you nothing but the best, and I hope that life brings you everything you’ve ever wanted. You’re a special man, Donal Casey. I’ll never forget you.

  All my love,

  Lauren

  Mother fucker! Lauren was right; I had asked for space—just not a whole goddamn continent’s worth.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I’d fucked up when I’d left her apartment and then not called her like I’d promised—I knew that—but this wasn’t how things were supposed to end for us. Hell, they weren’t supposed to end at all.

  I wouldn’t let them.

  Lauren had been partially right, but she was wrong too. Love could last. It could go the distance. If, after watching my dad blow through one woman after the next for my entire life, I could believe in the power of relationships, then surely I could make Lauren believe it too.

  I clicked out of my email app and brought up my contact list. Clicking on my favorites tab, I tapped her name and brought the phone to my ear. As I listened to it ring, I scrubbed my other hand down my face. Fuck, I was exhausted, but not too tired to have this out tonight. Something this important couldn’t wait until morning.

  Which was why when my call jumped to voicemail, I hung up and tried again.

  When Lauren didn’t answer for the second time, I nearly threw my phone against the wall in frustration, but at the last second, dropped my arm back down. Then, I pulled up a browser to check tomorrow’s flights from Dublin to Los Angeles. Without stopping to think things through, I bought the last available seat on the last remaining direct flight to the west coast. With my size, I hated sitting in economy—especially on such a long flight—but if ever there was a time for sacrifice this was it.

  As soon as the purchase went through, I heaved out a heavy sigh. And then, despite the late hour, I dialed my dad’s number.

  “Hey dad,” I said when he answered. “I hate to ask, but I need a huge favor.”

  The entire time I made my way through airport security, I kept my eyes peeled for Lauren, but by the time I made it to the assigned gate, I still hadn’t seen her. And that worried me. I hadn’t had a lot of time to formulate a coherent plan to win her back, but the one I had managed to cobble together rested entirely on us being on the same flight. Specifically, sitting next to her for the 11 hours it took to fly to Los Angeles. I’d stopped at the ATM and pulled out four crisp €50 bills to bribe whoever’d actually been assigned the seat next to her. That, and I’d picked up a bottle of limited edition Teeling Irish Whiskey. I was a desperate man willing to resort to desperate measures.

  As the minutes ticked by, I became increasingly nervous. I didn’t know where Lauren lived—not entirely. All I knew was that she owned a house in Los Feliz that she’d been renting out as an AirBnB while she’d been in Ireland and that she could see the Griffith Observatory from her deck on a clear day. According to Google Earth, you could see the Observatory from the whole damn neighborhood, so I had no idea how I was going to narrow down her location.

  I feared I’d have to ask my dad for another favor.

  We’d spent an hour on the phone last night while I’d filled him in on my relationship with Lauren and why I was going to L.A. on such short notice. If it turned out she wasn’t on my flight—or worse, if she was but refused to forgive me—I was going to need a place to crash once we landed. He’d quickly offered up his beach house and the keys to his Range Rover. I’d had an important stop to make before I’d headed to the airport, but once in the taxi, I’d mapped the distance from Malibu to Los Feliz, and I really fucking hoped it wouldn’t come to that. With L.A.’s notorious traffic, the trip between my dad’s place and Lauren’s could take close to three hours.

  When the gate agent called pre-boarding for business class passengers, I raked my eyes over my fellow tra
velers once again, my good leg bouncing frantically. Shit. She wasn’t going to be on this flight. Before I fell into a full blown panic, I scanned the crowd one last time. And then my eyes landed on her coming down the hall toward our gate.

  I let out a massive sigh of relief. I hadn’t seen Lauren yet because she hadn’t been here.

  I caught the eye of the man sitting directly across from me. “Can you watch my stuff?” I gestured to my duffel bag, the only luggage I’d bothered to bring. There hadn’t been time to pack properly. And besides, anything I hadn’t thought to bring or couldn’t live without I could pick up once we landed. It wasn’t like I was going to a third world country or anything. “I need to go find my girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he answered with a quick glance my way. Then he did a double take. “Are you—?”

  “Yup,” I answered quickly, shaking his hand and stepping around my bag.

  Given that I hadn’t been one of the team’s superstar players, I was always surprised when people recognized me. (People not dressed in sequins and wearing three layers of paint on their faces, that was. Those girls had radar like you wouldn’t believe and could pick a player out of a lineup a mile away). Had I been paying attention to him instead of tracking Lauren’s progress down the hall, I would have noticed the Dublin Rugby cap he wore on his head.

  “Thanks!” I called over my shoulder and gave him a thumbs up. It wasn’t how I would normally have treated a fan, but I needed to get to my woman, not stand around chatting with him about my injury. If I’d still been on the team, I might have double-backed to chat, but I’d been officially retired for a couple of weeks now. My brushing him off wasn’t going to land me in hot water with the team’s management or PR group.

  When I was within a few feet of Lauren, and I realized she hadn’t noticed me yet, I stopped and studied her; just let my eyes take their fill. God, I missed her, I thought, my heart pinching painfully in my chest.

  And it looked as if she hadn’t been doing so well without me either. Her eyes were rimmed in red and she’d thrown her hair into a haphazard bun on top of her head, several wisps having broken loose of their hold. In the nearly two months I’d known her, she’d never once looked this haggard—not even when her kitchen had almost burned down.