Page 17 of Body Check

I trace my fingers over the cool metal strap of my purse and cling tightly to the linked chain. Since approaching Coach Hall, I’ve combed through this conversation with Jackson a million times over in my head. I’ve pictured him falling at my feet, grateful as all get-out for doing him asolid.I’ve imagined him turning ambivalent, like I’m a little too late to the cause. I’ve even played out entire scenarios where he’s so overcome with happiness that he twirls me around in the air like I’m some sort of Disney princess on ice.

In noneof those versions of the conversation, however, do the following words evenconsiderbeing uttered: “Your nipples are hard.”

Except that’s what I say.

Your. Nipples. Are. Hard.

Oh my God, someone kill me.

Jackson’s dark brows shoot up. “Excuse me?”

“Your nipples,” my stupid mouth utters without my support, “they’re hard as diamonds.”

Eyebrows still arched high, he sits up a little. Glances down at his chest and rock-hard abs. Like a woman possessed, I count each abdominal ridge as though I’m in pre-K and learning how to count on my fingers with the Count fromSesame Street:one delicious ab, two delicious abs, three delicious abs, ah ah ah.

Girl, you are losing it.

Jackson tilts his head, clearly trying to eyeball his pecs. “How many carats you thinkin’?”

I cannot believe I’m having this conversation right now.

I slam my eyes shut. “One.”

“Yeah?” The blatant humor in his voice is nearly tangible, and I get the feeling that he’s dragging his thumb along his bottom lip, trying to keep a lid on fully-blown laughter. “Just one?”

“Cubic zirconia. Off the shelf of Target.”

“Fitting,” he husks out, “since you’d live in Target if they let you.”

Too true. It’s hard to resist the lure of a place where I can literally buy whatever I want in one store. Growing up in Natchitoches, department stores weren’t a thing—not until I was older and already had one foot out the door. It’s not my fault if I choose to make up for lost time now.

The sound of the bench creaking under his weight has me opening my eyes again.

I watch as he searches through his stall for a shirt. He’s given me a prime view of the slope of his taut back and the faded pink lines that stretch horizontally across his flesh. Stretch marks, he once told me. Growth spurt after growth spurt as a kid carved their memories into his back forever.

For years, I’d trail my fingertips over each one, memorizing the feel of the raised, puckered flesh, so very different from the youthful pictures his mother once showed me.

Tall. Strapping. The Beast of the Northeast.

He slips a gray T-shirt over his head now, and the stretch marks and his hard nipples and the muscles-on-muscles disappear from sight.

“You changed your mind,” he says casually as he pulls a pair of sweats up his legs. I do my best to ignore the fact that if he were alone, he’d probably shuck off the compression shorts and leggings before pulling on a fresh set of briefs and jeans.He’s trying to be respectful.Maybe. I’m not sure. “Did you take the six-figs?” he asks.

I didn’t take anything from Sports 24/7. Not a dime.

Instead, I asked the Blades to cover the basic expenses required by my team. “This way you’ll know that I’m working foryouand not some TV producer,” I’d told the board of directors for the Blades. “Ensuring that the guys come out of this with the same reputation as they had going in is my top priority.”

They accepted.

The pay was infinitely less, much closer to my usual rate, but I didn’t make a fuss.

I meet Jackson’s gaze. Try to get a read on his emotions. Finally, I answer his question with one of my own: “Would you believe me if I said no?”

For a moment, he says nothing at all. He ruffles his brown hair with one hand. Loops the string at his waistband into a tight knot. Then, “You’re an entrepreneur, Holls. A better one than I’ll ever be, which means I know you’re being compensated for the gig at whatever amount you feel makes it a worthwhile venture.”

He steps forward, and I’m ashamed to say that I step back in response. It’s instinctual, self-preservation at the most basic level. A need to keep him at arm’s length before the steel walls around my heart soften and cave in to futile hopes and desperate dreams. “This is what you wanted . . . for me to take the gig.”

Like we’re embarking on a dance that I never received an invitation to, he risks another step forward again. There’s a glint in his dark eyes, a silent challenge that dares me to hold my ground and let him approach.

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