“It was delivered to my office a couple of months ago.” My voice is timid. I’m so afraid to do or say the wrong thing when I’ve already done so much wrong to begin with.

“To your office? Kincade Sports Management is your office?” His voice escalates in pitch with each word. “I thought you were a grad student working on her thesis. I thought you were learning about military life, deployment, and Jesus Christ,” he says and runs a hand through his hair. “Kincade Sports Management. I remember it now. The dad and the daughters working for him. You’re one of his daughters. YOU are part of it. You’re a sports agent.”

“Gunner.” His name is a plea to forgive me, to let me explain, to anything.

“Now it all makes perfect sense to me. Fucking perfect sense—don’t you take another step toward me,” he thunders, causing tears to spring to my eyes and stopping me in my tracks.

“It’s not what you think. This is all a mistake. A white lie that tumbled out of control before I could fix it, and by then it was too late. By then I was falling for you and knew deception was something that was a deal-breaker for you—”

“You’re goddamn right it is. Have you not listened to me? About the deceit that cost me the life I had? The dreams I once had?” He shoves up off the bed and paces back and forth in the small space, the orange envelope gripped in his hand. “I thought you were . . . everything I thought about you . . . you’re not you.” His voice is barely audible. The disbelief edged with hurt in it is like a knife to my heart.

“I am me. I promise. I just got—”

“You warned me. Fucking told me I wouldn’t like the real you and I . . . I argued with you about it. Fought you on it and”—his eyes are defeated but sparked with anger as he shakes his head—“you were right.”

“No. Don’t say that. I am me. I am the same person. I just—”

“What about the boys?” he asks, switching gears as if he can’t focus on one thing at a time. My surefooted Gunner is anything but that right now. “You made promises to little kids. And for what? To win me over. To use them to get to me—”

“Those promises are real,” I shout with an exasperated desperation. “You have to believe me. The boys have nothing to do with this. I never would—”

“Believe you?” He laughs, arms out to the side, looking at me like I’m crazy.

“Gunner, you have to believe me—”

“You played me.” He pounds his fist on the desk beside him and then storms past me out of the close confines of the room. I scurry behind him, desperate in a way I’ve never been before. “And for what?”