Sweet Rome

I had to do a shitload of press, answering question after question about how I felt going to Seattle. How do you verbalize a dream coming true? I was excited, beyond excited, and told a thousand journalists so—it was the f**king NFL after all—but something just wasn’t sitting right in my stomach. A sinking feeling of doubt was tugging at my mind. I knew what it was… Mol. She hadn’t decided on a damn school yet for her PhD. We’d been living together for months now. After our stint apart, we moved into our own apartment almost immediately, and I’d seen her apply to lots of colleges and hadn’t dared bring up my anxiety about us having to live apart. At this point in my life, I knew I couldn’t be without her. Hell, I didn’t sleep anymore if she wasn’t curled into my side.

Those thoughts kept playing on my mind as I shook a million hands, met Seahawks staff by the dozen, and by the time I got back to the green room—my friends and Molly still giddy as all hell from my achievement—I was ready to tear my f**king hair out with worry.

Flashing me a huge smile, my girl launched into my arms, pressing kisses all over my face, singing, “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

Trying to ease my anxiety, I pulled her into my chest, probably holding her too tight. I obviously had, because when I let her go, her eyebrows were drawn and she asked, “What? What’s wrong?”

She could read me like a book.

I glanced over her shoulder and noticed our friends staring at us, smiling… Well, except for Ally. She was frowning too, sensing my weird turn in mood.

I held up my hand to our friends, excusing Molly and myself, and, needing to deal with this crap now, pulled her down a corridor, making sure we were alone. She smiled and playfully tugged on the peak of my cap, but I could see the strain around her eyes… She thought I wasn’t happy.

Reaching for the cap and pulling it off, I said, “I am happy, baby.” I didn’t want her to misunderstand that. “But I can’t do it without you. Seattle. I’m going to Seattle. You applied to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford that I know of. You’ve been so f**kin’ secretive, and I’m going insane. We could be on different sides of the country for all I know, and I need you with me. I don’t think I can do this without you.”

“Rome—” She tried to interrupt, but I had to get all of this out before it ate me alive.

“I feel like just demanding it because I know you would drop everything for me. But I also want your dreams to come true. I don’t know how to have both you and football.”

Her face was unmoved, relaxed even, and I couldn’t understand how she wasn’t freaking out like me. Was she actually okay with us being apart?

Holding my hand, she pressed a kiss on each of my fingers before confiding, “Romeo, I’ve run away from my problems all my life, never to return, but you’re the first person I’ve ever run back to. That means so much to me. You pulled me out of the darkness.” I swallowed hard when she took my hand she’d just kissed and pressed it against her flat stomach. We’d decided to wait to have more children, wait until we were older, more settled, but it still ripped me to shreds knowing we should’ve been preparing for our angel’s arrival if things had gone down differently.

With a soft squeeze of my hand, she made me refocus. “And gave me hope. Hope that one day I will be a good mother… when the time is right, and that I do have a family… in you.”

I couldn’t speak, and when she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the angel wing tattoo on my chest, my eyes closed and I had to take a deep breath. “You once told me that one day you wanted to get away, that one day you would be your own person, and that one day you would get everything you wanted.” I had, all those months ago in her room, but what I wanted now landed solely in her hands.

Cupping her face, I told her, “But what I want is you. Everything I want is with you. You’re my ‘one day.’”

She handed me an envelope from her pocket, and a small smile set on her lips. “Your ‘one day’ is finally here.”

I immediately ripped it open and read the short paragraph:

Miss Shakespeare,

We at the University of Washington, Seattle, are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted on the PhD program for Religious Philosophy. To confirm your place, please contact us using one of the methods below.

My heart pounded and my hands were actually shaking. Looking up at my girl, I couldn’t digest it. She was coming with me? She’d done this for me?

But… how?