Page 82 of Out of Bounds

Fuck.

My eyes flickered to the mirror again and met Ryan’s. The dark honey stayed fixed on me while he started easing down the straps of the dress, tugging on the knots until they unwound. The close proximity of the fitting room, Ryan’s whole body just inches behind me, all of it left my mind whirling. If I took a step back, I would’ve stumbled into him.

The more he loosened up string after string and shifted the fabric together, the more putty I became. Blood pounded in my ears. Heat rushed to my neck. And an inner struggle occurred while I weighed the pros and cons between keeping professionalism intact and—uh—not doing that.

I want a taste of Ryan Cross.

His eyes shifted away from mine and darkened. I didn’t recognize the look on his face and Ryan only spoke one word.

"Goddamn."

My eyes flickered to the mirror and I completely knew what he meant. The dress, the ten thousand dollar straitjacket, didn’t just flow on the rack, it flowed onme. I couldn’t believe it. And the bracelets…oh my god, the bracelets. They sparkled in the light and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them.

"Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry," the attendant’s voice came through. "Ma’am, do you still need help getting out of the dress? Do you still need assistance?"

In an instant, the spell was broken. I took an automatic step from Ryan as he backed away from the fitting room. The more space between us, the more I could breathe again. Andlookat what I was wearing.

What the hell am I doing?

If anything happened to the dress—or, god forbid, the bracelets—I couldn’t cover it. I couldn’t even afford an interest fee.

"He’s not buying these," I whispered to myself. "Um—we’re not buying these!"

"Yes, we are," Ryan retorted.

I ignored him and poked my head out of the fitting room. "Can you help me out of this? Please? Thank you so much but I’m holding his credit cards hostage, so unfortunately—"

He chuckled. "Art girl, I had to put down a credit card just to bring the bracelets out."

Oh, you bastard.

"Well, you’re going to lookstunningwhile you strut around in these," I told him with a smile, trying to ignore my stomach twisting into knots, thinking abouthim. "Because I’m not wearing any of it."

32

Ryan

Don’t Print That

I thought girls were supposed to like dresses.

And Kassiedidlike dresses. Every time she wore one with pockets, she didn’t hesitate to tell me eighty times about it. So why was it that when I wanted to spend some ofmymoney to buy one, it was a problem?

I had no idea. But I had to think of something else.

And there was plenty of time in the van ride to the food bank. Usually, when we did volunteer events for football, it was composed of twenty football players doing something that required lifting a lot of shit and cracking jokes about passes without interceptions to the big guys who ran the organizations. We always made a day out of it.

I’d never done one with my girlfriend before.

"We don’t have to go through the front," Kassie told me, amused, when we walked inside. She took a sharp right turn and ignored the front desk entirely. She hummed under her breath. "I haven’t been in ages."

I glanced around. "You’ve volunteered here before?"

"Something like that."

I was about to ask her what she meant when we pushed through the double doors that opened to the warehouse. There were rows of people sorting donations into boxes. The supervisor at the head of the first line leaped up when she spotted us.

Here it is. Football fans.

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