Marrying Madison had been a mistake—he’d figured that out early on. But he’d had no intention of adding infidelity alongside stupidity on his list of flaws.

The time spent with Mollie hadn’t changed that. It wasn’t as though he’d lusted after her. She’d been twenty-two to his twenty-nine, for chrissake, and had treated him like the big brother that he should have been.

But his connection with Mollie, however platonic, had been the wake-up call he’d needed to realize that his marriage was seriously broken. The day after he’d dropped Mollie off at the airport on her way to Columbia University (Madison had been getting her nails done) was the day Jackson had contacted a marriage counselor.

It was also the day Madison had signed a contract for Real Housewives, Sports Wives Edition, despite Jackson’s ardent protests.

Desperate as he was to fix his marriage, Jackson wanted to do so privately. It had been enough of a stretch for Jackson to consider spilling his guts to a marriage counselor. He sure as fuck hadn’t been about to do it on national television. Not that it had mattered—Madison had refused marriage counseling outright. Anything that would threaten their reputation as America’s golden couple was out of the question.

So on camera they’d pretended to be what everyone thought they were: two college sweethearts wildly in love. Off camera they’d been, well…broken.

And then they’d splintered. On camera and off.

Jackson swore and dragged his hands over his face, wishing he could banish all the memories.

His phone buzzed at his elbow and he glanced down, somehow surprised to see that it was an incoming call from Madison. No doubt she’d sensed him thinking about her and mistakenly assumed they were good thoughts. They were never good thoughts, but that wouldn’t occur to Maddie.

The phone eventually stopped buzzing, only to buzz once more with the voicemail notification. Jackson reached out a finger and spun his cell phone around on his desk, half hoping it would go crashing to the floor of his office and become unusable. He’d been dodging Madison’s calls ever since getting to New York. He hadn’t gone so far as to block her number—yet. But he’d gotten pretty adept at declining her twice-weekly calls the second they came in. He had nothing to say to her. And absolutely nothing that he wanted to hear from her.

He shoved his phone in his desk drawer. He’d deal with it later. Jackson turned his attention toward his computer, toward the blinking cursor on a blank white page.

Word count: zero.

Jackson’s job security: nil.

A year ago, Jackson had thought that being a star quarterback was a damn challenging job. The physical wear and tear. The memorization of plays. The constant pressure—not to always be at your best, but to always motivate your teammates to be at their best. Jackson had silently scorned all of his friends with “real jobs,” inwardly mocking their never-ending complaints about HR and micromanaging bosses and the “blue screen of death” on their corporate laptop. How hard could it be to sit at a desk all day and tap stuff on a keyboard?

Now he had his answer. A desk job was fucking hard. Also miserable.

Jackson had been staring at that blinking cursor for a good fifteen minutes when someone knocked at his office door. Shit. And it wasn’t even lunchtime.

He hated interruptions—hated these well-dressed colleagues with their easy confidence and witty repartee who had him feeling helplessly out of place and longing for a beer and a porch swing like some sort of backwoods hick.

He hated interruptions even more when they came in the form of his boss. His frowning boss.

Jackson had played for some of the most hotheaded coaches in the NFL, and yet not a single one of them had made Jackson want to squirm in his seat like an underperforming third-grader the way the editor in chief of Oxford did.

At first glance, Alex Cassidy shouldn’t have been intimidating. Jackson had spent most of his life bench-pressing among the beefiest of linebackers, and Cassidy’s frame was lean by comparison. Cassidy didn’t have tattoos, missing teeth, or even a scowl to be seen. But the man was intimidating as all hell, just by breathing.

The dude radiated effortless confidence, and it was damn impressive. Plus Jackson couldn’t imagine Cassidy ever loosening his tie, much less taking if off. The man looked like he’d come out of the womb wearing one of those damn perfectly tailored suits. Alex Cassidy was a man who knew what he wanted and never once doubted that he’d get it.

And a few months ago, what Cassidy had wanted was Jackson Burke as his fitness editor. The man had pursued him hard, and was so skilled in negotiations, Jackson had found himself signing the contract before he’d even registered that he wanted to. Hell, Jackson still wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to.

And looking at his boss’s expressionless face, Jackson was damn sure he wasn’t the only one who had regrets.

“Can I come in?” Cassidy asked, leaning idly against the door jamb.

Jackson shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “You’re the boss.”

“Glad you remember that,” Cassidy said, ambling into Jackson’s office and taking a seat.

Jackson tensed. “Meaning…?”

Cassidy’s smile was humorless. “Meaning you come in late and leave early, and your email response rate is about fifty percent.”

Jackson kept his features carefully calm, but inwardly he flinched. He’d had his fair share of criticism before, certainly, when tempers were high on the field. But never had the criticism felt quite so rightly deserved. And never had it hit quite so close to home.