Page 42 of Blue Line Lust

That’s something for future me to worry about.

Right now, all I can hear in my head is Coach’s warnings. If I slip up, I’m off the team. And then what? I get traded? I take up coaching? I start learning how to be a plumber?

The crazy part is that those thoughts don’t even faze me. No hockey? Fine. Media going supernova with the gossip? Whatever. I don’t care what other people think of me.

Violet’s just a kid, though. She deserves better. She deserves everything.

I start to pace. I feel two seconds away from some kind of existential, out-of-body meltdown.

This wasn’t how coming home was supposed to be. I was supposed to stroll up to my house, cocky and confident. I’d pop in, see that Olivia handled Violet without issues. The baby would be asleep, or maybe quiet and fed and playing with something. My house would be clean. There’d be breakfast. I wouldn’t have shit to worry about.

Instead, I’m facing the collapse of all of that.

It’s my own fault, really. This is what I get for thinking with my dick and not my brain.

“Earth to Reese?” Olivia calls.

I snap out of the white noise of my thoughts. I see she has Violet in her arms once again, and once again, that sight is inexplicably attractive. “Yeah? What?”

“Why are you so paranoid?” Her voice softens and I notice her gnawing at the inside of her cheek. “It’s… it’s not just the paparazzi, is it?”

Why is she looking at me like that? All soft and shit. Concerned. Like she can see right through me and the alpha male bullshit and know there’s something eating me up on the inside. This shit with Coach. The stress because I don’t know where the fuck Violet’s mother is or even who her mother is. I don’t know why she just dumped Violet on me to begin with.

I’m not telling Olivia any of that, though.

Instead, I give her the thing I hope gets her off my back and out of my emotions. “I just don’t want those vultures getting their talons in my daughter.”

It works. Her face softens. There’s a complete shift in her demeanor at the flip of a switch—and it guts me. She’s got my daughter cradled right up against her chest. I tell her I want to protect Violet, and she looks at me like I’ve hung the moon.

I want to kiss her.

It’s something intense and primal. This crackle in the air that goes from me to her and then back again. Because the look in her eyes says that she can feel it, too. She knows that I want to take her in my arms, even with Violet in hers. I want to tangle my fingers in that ridiculously sexy bed head of hers. She’d let me, too. I get to have all the control I want with my fist in her hair and my mouth on her?—

Violet, however, has other ideas. She lets out a demonic scream and this time, she doesn’t stop. I don’t have enough patience for this. I’m being torn apart from the inside and out, pressures tugging on me from every direction.

“Make her stop crying,” I say through gritted teeth. “I haven’t slept enough for this shit.”

Olivia scoffs. She’s no longer soft, no longer vulnerable. “You haven’t slept enough? Are you kidd—No. I’m not doing this. Here.”

Then she does something that catches me completely off-guard.

She just dumps Violet into my arms.

I go completely stiff. Violet starts to scream louder. Her cries pierce through my ears like a thousand tiny little drills.

“Take her back,” I command, holding her out.

“No.”

“This is your job.”

“She’s your daughter!”

Olivia screams the sentence. She’s talked back to me before. She’s been snippy with me. But this is the first time that she’s actually, literally screamed at me.

I stare at her, but she doesn’t back down. She’s a damn brick house. Her eyes are narrowed on me and it doesn’t take a genius to see that she plans to stand her ground on this one.

I look down at Violet, who squirms and screeches some more. With some hesitation and some confusion, I pull her closer to me. Nestling her against my chest, I do one of those little bounce things that I’ve seen Olivia do.

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