Page 111 of The Thing About My Rival

Then finally, just as my waves die down, he lets out a groan so deep, so guttural, from so far inside him, it sounds like it’s coming from the very core of his being.He’s utterly lost in pleasure. Pleasure from me. Pleasure from us.

I open my eyes to find his foggy, lust-filled gaze on my face, and that oh-so-Hugo smirk growing at one corner of his mouth. “In all my footballing years, I have never had a better victory celebration.”

“Yeah, it was okay. I guess.”

Coming back to reality, I’m aware of my spine rubbing against the tile and shift a little.

“Careful,” he says, wrapping his arms around me. “I got you.”

“You do,” I tell him, placing my lips on his in a slow, deep, shower-soaked kiss.

Does he ever. The whole kit and caboodle. He’s got me.

“Come on,” Hugo says as I emerge into the office in fresh clothes with my hair half dry from a quick blow with the hairdryer, which is, indeed, much stronger than the one in the women’s locker room. “The guys will wonder where we are.”

“Just need to grab another layer. It might be chilly up there now.” I round my desk to get my jacket from the back of my chair.

As I’m slipping it on, my phone buzzes on the desk.

JILL

Spoke to the general manager. Essentially, if you want to come back we’ll have you any way we can. Let me know when you’re free for the three of us to video chat. So excited!

I lean on the desk, overcome by the relief of knowing I have a future, a job to go to if it doesn’t go my way here.

“You okay?” Hugo asks. “Is that bad news?” His eyes widen. “Oh, it’s not your fucking dad upsetting you again, is it?”

“No, no.” I darken the phone and slip it into my pocket. “It’s nothing.”

“Come on, then. They have beer and snacks, and I’m thirsty and starving.”

I nod at the man who has rocked my world, who’s made me believe I could give myself totally to him, but whose orbit I can’t possibly be in for much longer, and follow him along the hallway to the stairs to the owners’ box.

When this season is done, either he gets the job and I’ll go to Portland or I’ll get the job and he will doubtless move back to the UK.

There are no wins here. This is now nothing but a lose-lose situation.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

DREW

Where the ever-loving hell has my log cabin charm disappeared to? I can not leave for the last game of the regular season without it.

Good grief. The last day of the regular season is tomorrow. How have the two months since I got here gone so fast?

And we’ve gotten lucky—well, it’s notallluck. Hugo and I have worked our asses off and done some great things. But it is fortunate that no team in the league has had a glorious season. A record number of draws has left the playoffs not quite anyone’s game, but it’senoughof anyone’s game that we still have a microchance of qualifying.

Whoever thought the Commoners would be in with even the slimmest of slim chances of making the postseason?

No one. That’s who.

Apart from maybe Hugo, who radiates unrelentingself-belief at all times. Or at least he does on the outside. Just last night, when we were cocooned together in the darkness of his bedroom, he whispered, “I don’t know if we can do it.” And it was me who brought him back around to the positive side. Even though I haven’t dared believe we could make it myself most of the time.

The soccer press is going wild. We’re the comeback story they never thought they’d be lucky enough to have. Hugo and I have done more interviews since last Saturday’s win over Toronto than we would ever care to. Even he finally got tired of being in front of a camera. But at least the press likes him now—the British tabloids are finding more and more good things to say. It’s quite the comeback for him as well as for the Commoners.

Anyway, I am not getting on the bus that’s idling outside the office window, waiting to take us to the airport for our flight to Florida, without my lucky log cabin charm. It’s been on the zipper of my jacket for every game this season. Yes, for the losses too. But whoever said sports superstitions made sense?

I checked Hugo’s place before I left this morning, and stopped in at the pub to scour my apartment on the way here. It’s not in any pocket of any garment, not in any bag. And now I know it’s not in any drawer or on any shelf in this office, nor under my desk, which I have just thoroughly searched and have a bump on my head to prove it.

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