Page 213 of Out of Bounds

Don’t Go

That was the last free two hours.

Nothing offered to Cleo cut it. Any time I had left was cut in half and divided again. If I thought I had ten minutes, I needed to be somewhere. If I thought I had five minutes, I didn’t.

I stretched out on the couch in the meeting room on the third floor of the training center. The voices all blurred together from the laptop. Forty-five minutes had already passed from the Washington coaches but this was just a formality, basically a long pitch that I had to listen to, with another forty-five minutes left on the clock.

With a sigh, I leaned back and closed my eyes.

I took a deep breath through my nose.

It’s going to be a long fucking night.

A soft knock echoed from the door and I blinked my eyes open, tired. No doubt it was a custodian ready to tell me that the training center was closing in ten minutes and I’d jingle the keys from my belt.

The door pushed open and the one person in the world I wanted to see glanced through.

"Hi," Kassie mouthed.

I straightened up. Her dark hair was swept up in a ponytail that trailed down her shoulder and she wore one of her Romans shirts, cinched at the waist that I loved to grab on to, with her jeans, scribbled with the number four on the front.

I pushed up from the couch but Kassie shook her head, pointing at the phone.

"How long?" she mouthed.

I didn’t want to tell her. Another forty-five minutes. Might as well have been hours. I couldn’t walk out of the training center with her and she had to go before they locked the doors.

"You have to go," I mouthed back, trying not to let the letdown show on my face.

"Long?"

I nodded.

Her eyebrows knitted together, concerned. "You want me to go?"

No.

But Kassie needed sleep. And as her boyfriend, my role was to make sure she got that. I gazed down at her for a long moment and nodded slow enough that her lips pressed together.

"Training center’s going to close," I mouthed.

Kassie hesitated by the door. The only time I got to hold her hand anymore was when I slipped into bed. And sex was nice, in the hurried fifteen minutes we had, but I wanted more.

She walked past me and pressed a button my phone. "Muted it. When are you going to bed?"

"I’ll head out in about an hour," I said, my voice low.

"You needsleep." She listened for a moment and rolled her eyes. "Such bullshit. How is this not an email?"

"Coach Lawson and I were supposed to do this together but he had a family emergency. I told him I’d stick around for the call," I explained. I kept my distance away from her, standing next to the couch. If I wrapped my arms around her, I wouldn’t let her go. "You have to get out of here before they lock the doors."

Kassie shouldered her bag. "Yeah. We have an early morning."

Don’t go.

I nodded. Feeling like shit.

She looked at me for a long moment and started walking towards the door but I couldn’t help the last question. "Where are you—uh—sleeping tonight?"

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