Page 62 of Floored

"That's your sister Molly's boyfriend, right?" I asked.

She nodded. "He used to be our next-door neighbor when we were younger. Molly had the most obnoxious crush on him, so it was total kismet that they ended up working together at Washington."

It was interesting, sitting with her while she watched her loved ones play the sport they loved. My parents had never come to a single one of my matches since I became a professional player. My brother came a couple of times a year, but I'd never see him afterward. No one had ever waited to tell me how excited they were for our win or console me after a loss. Never had anyone tell me they'd screamed like a maniac in the stands. Not until Lia.

"What's it like?" I found myself asking.

When she turned to me with a question in her lovely eyes, I wanted to retract the words immediately.

"What?"

It felt as though I'd rolled over, exposing a soft underbelly that I'd never inspected before. My throat felt dry, and I couldn't quite conjure a flippant response with her looking at me like she was.

"To watch your family do what they love like this." I gestured weakly at the screen. "Across the ocean, they still hold enough weight in the world that you can sit here on my couch and watch them do this incredible job."

Suddenly, I found myself holding my breath that she wouldn't brush off my question. I hoped she'd give it proper thought because I wanted to know, quite desperately, what most families must've felt.

"It's …" She paused, clearly searching for the right words. "It's weird sometimes. Mainly because it's so normal for me to have my brother on camera. I'll admit that I don't think too existentially about it, but other times, like right now ... I'm sitting with you while they talk about my brother and my future-brother-in-law, and honestly, I could cry from how proud I am to call them my family." She smiled. "I was like, twelve when Logan won the Super Bowl, and oh, man, I was so obnoxious when I went back to school. I didn't appreciate the magnitude of it then like I do now, but knowing that people I love have had such an effect on a game on this scale is pretty fucking cool."

If I'd been anyone else, less emotionally stunted, less ... British, I probably would've teared up at her words. I tried not to think about when Lia needed to go back to Seattle when her semester was done, but moments like that made it difficult to ignore because I'd miss her. I'd miss having her around and hated the thought of it, almost as much as I hated the idea of how completely inept I was at trying to have any sort of healthy relationship. Maybe if that was all she'd said, I could've turned back to the game and marveled at how nice it must be to have a family like that. But then she spoke again.

And when she did, she sealed her fate.

She smiled at me, completely unaware of what was happening behind my rib cage, what vulnerable emotions were daring to escape from between the skin and bones. "I guess it'll be that way with me and the little nectarine, huh? We'll be wearing our Sheppertons kits and screaming like maniacs for you next season. We'll be the loudest cheering section you've ever heard."

"Will you?" I said roughly.

Her eyebrows bent in over her eyes. "Of course." Gently, she took my hand and laid it on top of the small bump under her black and red Wolves shirt. "This ... this makes us a family, Jude. We'll always have your back."

What was she doing to me?

Why did the fabric of my carefully constructed world feel like it'd been ripped in two?

Lia's beautiful face softened at whatever she saw in mine, and instead of commenting on it, she turned, muting the game. She cupped my face with her hand and slowly leaned forward, placing a soft, heartbreaking kiss on my lips.

"No rules," she whispered. "Just ... whatever we want this to be."

My body caught up before my brain did. My hands slid up her arms and into her silky hair, where I could tilt her head and take our kiss into a different depth. Somewhere darker, somewhere delicious.

She sighed into my mouth, and I pushed her backward onto the couch, prowling over her and caging her head with my arms while we kissed.

I pulled back, and she blinked slowly.

"My bed," I said. "No couch, no bloody single bed, no worrying about anything except what I'm about to make you feel."

Lia smiled. "An excellent idea."

I stood off the couch and held my hand out to her. "Shall we?"

19

LIA

When the strength of his fingers curled around mine as I took his hand, I almost stopped.

Not because I wasn't sure about crossing this particular barrier—my hormones were screaming at me to bang the bejeezus out of him—but because I was afraid that ascending that staircase would kill the electric mood.

Weeks ago, I'd stopped trying to figure out what shifted things between us. Sometimes it was a look that lasted just a fraction of a moment longer than was polite. Sometimes, he slid his hand up my back, and I wanted to shove my hand down the front of his pants. Sometimes he breathed, and I wanted to shove his hand down the front of mine.

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