Page 65 of Playoff

The weird thing is, it’s not uncomfortable. It’s like we’re picking up right where we left off. It makes no sense, and yet, it feels right.

A few minutes pass, and I feel him shift. He uses his hand to lift my chin so we’re facing each other, and I swear the look in his eyes is the kind of thing fairytales are made of—worship, adoration, and things I’m too scared to try to analyze right now. “I don’t know if I’ve said it before now,” he says in his deep voice, “but I’ve really missed you.”

My heart melts.

This guy is so, so dangerous. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to stop whatever this is that we’ve started.

And tonight, I’m not even going to try.

“I’ve missed you too.”

TWENTY

Blake

Since it’s a day off,there’s nowhere to be the next morning, and I stay with Rowan. We’ll have to find a way to sneak me out of her room without getting caught, but I don’t care about that. Breakfast with the team is optional, which means we can stay in bed and order room service.

Rowan has just come out of the shower, in that same bathrobe she wore last night, and it takes a lot of self-control not to rip it off her again. But we had so much sex last night it seems greedy to want more. Especially since we don’t know what the rest of the day will bring. Coach said there would be no practice after last night’s long game to give our bodies time to rest and heal, but there will almost definitely be a meeting of some kind either this afternoon or at dinner.

“Thank goodness for coffee,” she murmurs, pouring herself a cup since breakfast arrived while she was in the shower. I’d been in there with her in the beginning but then she was doing some conditioner mask on her hair and shaving her legs, so I left her to it.

“You hated coffee in high school,” I said. “I know damn well you only drank it for me.”

She laughs. “In the beginning yes, but then it grew on me. By the time I went away to college—since it was nearly a year later—I couldn’t function without it.”

“Did you work that first semester?” I ask curiously.

She nods. “Yeah. I got a job at a gym. It paid better than the mall, and I got to work with trainers, see how they did things.”

“And then you went to community college?”

“I took three classes that second semester of what should have been my freshman year. It was good to get English 101, College Algebra, and some random humanities class out of the way. Those were all easily transferable credits, and it saved a little money too, since I graduated with a 4.0 and could go to any state school on a scholarship.”

“I’m sorry you lost a year because of me,” I say. “I know you would?—”

“Stop.” She peers at me over the rim of her cup. “You’ve apologized enough. We’re past that now. It’s not entirely your fault. I was also young and stupid, riding my boyfriend’s coattails as long as I could because I was afraid of losing you. I should have been more independent, more cognizant of what was happening.”

I pick at the eggs in front of me. “They say love is wasted on the young and you don’t understand it until you’re not young anymore.”

She chuckles. “Eh, life is a journey and love isn’t the destination—it’s part of the ride. What fun would it be if we already knew exactly what was going to happen and when? Where’s the adventure in that?”

I smile.

She’s always been thoughtful like this.

And I let this beautiful, smart, hard-working, sexy woman slip right through my fingers.

I was truly the dumbest of dumbasses.

“What happens now?” I ask after a moment.

She knows what I’m asking without me having to spell it out, and I’m pretty much holding my breath as I wait for a response.

There’s more to us than sex.

Even an idiot like me knows I might not get another chance like this.

“I don’t know,” she says at last. “I’m not sure what we can do. I signed a contract with a no fraternization clause.”

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