Chapter 37
GRAYSON~
For a second after she left just stared at the bag.
Of all the things I had expected from Blair Monroe today, homemade lunch had not made the list.
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She cooked for me. Actually cooked for me? Walked into my locker room in front of the whole team and set it down like it was the most natural thing in the world. The same woman who had spent most of this marriage matching me shot for shot in a private war neither of us fully admitted we were fighting.
My first thought was not gratitude.
It was suspicion.
She had been out to get me since I threw her clothes in the pool. A sudden act of kindness sat wrong. Too soft. Too easy. Part of me genuinely wondered if she had put something in the food-nothing deadly, just enough to send me sprinting for the toilet in the middle of afternoon sessions and give her a story to laugh
about later.
I wouldn’t have put it past her.
“Shaw.” Callum’s voice cut across the room. “If you don’t open that bowl, I will. It smells good.”
Marcus leaned on the edge of his stall. “Home-cooked food. In the locker room. From your wife. Do you understand how many of us are living on protein bars and regret?”
“I’m serious,” Theo added. “One bite. A single bite. I’ll pay you.”
“Fuck off,” I said, already picking up the bag. “All of you.”
I didn’t want to share. This was for me. She’d said it herself. I knew she’d said it only to mess with me but for some fucking reason, my body didn’t care. It was simply happy that she’d thought of me.
Their complaints followed me as I left the main room and pushed into one of the smaller spaces down the hall, where the noise dropped and no one could watch me hesitate over a meal like it might explode. I set the containers on the table and opened the first one.
Seafood boil.
Corn. Potatoes. Shrimp. Crab legs. The whole thing still steamed when the lid came off.
Didn’t she say it was chicken and veggies? I opened the next containers and found the chicken she talked about. Exactly how long did she spend in the kitchen for me?
It was a lot of food. Far more than a casual gesture required.
I poked at a shrimp with the fork, turned it over, and felt ridiculous for even checking.
“Get a grip,” I muttered.
I took the bite.
The flavor hit me-the kind of balance that didn’t happen by accident.
My eyes widened before I could stop them. I had eaten in expensive places with team dinners and sponsor events and tasting menus that tried too hard. This didn’t try. It just landed. Proper seasoning. Proper timing. The shrimp was cooked exactly right, the sauce clung without drowning anything, and the longer I chewed the more obvious it became that someone who knew what they were doing had made it.
She cooked like a professional…but with warmth and love in her food.
Fuck.
I sat down and ate. Unable to stop myself.
Successfully unlocked!
Once the first few bites cleared the last of the suspicion, hunger and surprise took over. I worked through
Chapter 37
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the shrimp, cracked into the crab, finished the corn and potatoes, and used the bread on what was left of the broth like someone who hadn’t been fed properly in weeks.
The sides disappeared after that. Then the chicken and rice. Veggies as well. She had packed enough food that any normal person would have saved half and it was gone in under ten minutes.
I stared at the empty containers. Shocked that I’d eaten so much in such little time.
She had actually done something nice for me.
Not as a public stunt. Not with cameras nearby.
She had cooked, packed it, walked it into a lockerroom full of whistling idiots, and left it with me
And I had inhaled every scrap of it because it was that good.
I had this strange feeling in my chest.
Warmth. A pull. The same stupid shift that had been happening more often lately-when she stepped in front of me, when she matched me in an argument, when she sat in the stands wearing my name and watched the game like she actually saw it.
I didn’t want soft feelings about Blair Monroe. Soft feelings complicated this marriage and my relationship with Lily.
I gathered the empty containers and stacked them with more force than necessary.
She was still the woman who provoked me on purpose. Still the complication that made my entire life a mess. I couldn’t let one meal make me forget the reality of our situation.
This wasn’t real. None of it was. And it wasn’t permanent either.
Still. I was having a difficult time understanding what this was about.
She had wanted me to taste her food.
I had wanted, against every better instinct, to like it.
And I had liked it enough to clean every container and sit alone in a quiet room afterward with my hand on my belly, thinking of her.
Her food wasn’t the only thing I liked the taste of.
I leaned back in the chair and dragged both hands down my face.
“Trouble,” I said to the empty room. “She’s trouble.”
It didn’t cover it.
Not even close.
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.