“I’m not a celebrity,” I finally said.
Gunner laughed. “Dude, there are paintings and photographs of you doing incredible plays at Oklahoma for sale all over the internet. Google it.”
I reached for another cookie, wishing they’d talk about someone or something else. At home, with Aurora, I was just me. It was the two of us. She made my world complete. If I was injured tomorrow and had to end my career I would be fine. Just as long as I had her with me. One day soon I wanted a ring on my hand telling everyone I belong to her. I want to see her stomach grow with our child and to see her hold our baby. I was ready for all of that. It was what mattered. Not my career. Not football.
“I need to know how much you had to pay to get your house back, Gunner,” Nash said, taking the attention off me. He knew I didn’t like it.
Gunner shrugged. “Enough.”
Asa laughed along with West.
“He paid a fucking fortune,” Brady said. “That’s what ‘enough’ means in Gunner talk.”
Eventually the conversation fell into everyone’s plans, wedding dates, and where they would have them. I smiled, thinking about the fact that they’d have another wedding to put on their calendars soon enough. I didn’t expect it to surprise them, just as I knew Nash was making his own plans to put a ring on Tallulah.
I figured Asa and Ezmita would be the last of us to walk down the aisle. They were the newest couple. But I had no doubt they would end up there. Asa had never really gotten over her to begin with. We all knew it.
“In ten years, let’s come back. Make it a tradition. Leave the kids at home, bring the damn food, and come back for this. Our new grown-up-style field party, as disgusting, yet filling and delicious, as it may be,” West said.
I had no doubt in ten years we would all be here. The boys of Lawton High had found their forever. That wasn’t going to change. Even if our lives continued to.
CHAPTER SIX
RYKER
Nash stood beside me just inside the entrance of the gates to Hunter Maclay Field. Cars would start to arrive soon. The dedication was to begin in an hour. Aurora was getting ready with Tallulah in the offices. She was nervous and Tallulah had promised me that she would help reassure her as well as convince her to have a glass of the champagne that was chilling in the boardroom. When this was finished, our families would go inside to a reception. We would all need a drink by then.
“This is it,” he said. “What we have worked for.”
I slapped him on the back. “I didn’t do much. Not compared to you. This is your idea. You drew out the plans, you pitched it, you built this.”
He smirked as he looked over at me. “None of which I could have done without your money and the investors you got involved.”
I shrugged. “My part was easier. What you’ve done here is something I will forever be grateful to you for. I may even let you beat me at a game of pool.”
He chuckled. “I doubt it.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I agreed.
We were silent a moment as the first car pulled into the parking lot. It was Aurora’s dad. “What you did for them, for Aurora, for Hunter… it really is fucking incredible,” I told him.
Nash shrugged. “I wanted to have something like this. To build it and give kids a future, or at least some hope. Hunter was one of us. He didn’t get to fall in love… or come to the last field party. I couldn’t think of a better name for the place. Besides, you’re the one who is funding the scholarship in his name.”
“He would have been my brother-in-law one day,” I said. “And that wasn’t the last field party. Remember in ten years we’re having another one.”
He chuckled. “I’d like to think we will, but who knows where we will all be, what we will be doing.”
I wanted to argue, but he was right. We didn’t know what the future held for all of us.
“Last night was good,” I told him. “We all needed it.”
“Yeah, it was. Even with the spread of food and girly drinks,” he replied.
More cars began to pull into the parking lot, and we waited to greet them all as they walked through the gates.
With the stands packed full of family, friends, and people from this town we had known all our lives I watched as Aurora stepped forward to the microphone. I was so fucking nervous because I wanted to be up there holding her hand. I knew this was a big deal for her, and I was struggling to let her do it without me.
“Thank you for being here today,” she began. That smile that owned me lit up her face, and I watched as she glanced at the notes she had written, then put them down as if she had decided not to use them.