Page 134 of Out of Bounds

"Low blood sugar?" She shook her head incredulously. "Don’t we pay you two enough? Ryan, can’t you make sure sheeats?It’s a basic thing."

Ryan nodded. "I’m taking her to get food right now and then I’ll drop her back home."

There was no way we were eating anything. I was dragging my feet. Exhausted was a road sign that I’d blown by a long time ago. But even if Ryan had won afootball game,he didn’t have a hairout of place. It baffled me. Whereas, I felt like I’d crawled out of a grave by my fingernails.

"How did we get away with this?" I muttered to Ryan and waved at Cleo and Miles, getting into their car. It was hard to tape a smile on my face but I did my best.

Ryan opened the passenger door. "Fantastic makeup skills."

"Cosplaying was bound to pay off eventually."

He opened his driver’s door and slid in. "What’s that?"

"Cosplaying? Uh…it’s like dressing up like people in movies and anime and stuff."

"People do that?"

I had to press my lips to keep from smiling. Another thing to educate him about the twenty-first century, like he’d been thawed out of a block of ice and I had to be the one to break the news on dating apps and VR headsets.

"Ryan, you were meant to live in the caveman era."

"That’s not true."

"Uh-huh. Why not?"

He reached down to place his hand on my thigh. "Because I wouldn’t have you there with me."

My eyes flashed from his hand, running along the inside of my thigh, to him. Him—Ryan—still gazing out the window, driving us out to the road, so serious, so solemn in his answer like it was a fact he was starting instead of answering my joke.

Because to Ryan, he was stating a fact.

My ears burned hot.

I wasn’t used to those kinds of declarations. And Ryan was the most intense person in the room at all times. It left me fumbling for a reply more than I could ever admit to him.

And he was stilltouchingme.

His fingers ran down the inside of my thigh, drawing tight circles against my legs, under my dress. They were the same fingers I’d drawn a bazillion times in my sketchbook. I knewthem better than my own. But it was like I’d never outlined them before.

The way he rubbed his thumb against my thigh, I could feel my body pulsing along to his movements.

I swallowed. "How are you not tired right now?"

"I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m used to it."

"What do you mean?" I glanced up from his hand again. "Since when?"

He made a face I recognized. The same face he made when he didn’t want to admit to something to me. "Since…I started meeting to take on the captain title."

"Sincespring?"

"Before that. Last…December, I guess."

"You’re joking."

"No." Ryan took the next exit and once we hit the freeway, he stepped on the gas, out in the non-existent early-morning traffic. "I used to be able to hit six hours. Now if I hit four hours, it’s a good night."

"What?" I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. "Ryan, you do realize you’re an athlete, right? How much you work out, the kind of stress your body is under, you could do long-term damage. Wait—I got that from yourtrainers. I knowyouknow. How are you not even getting six hours anymore?"

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