Page 113 of Texting, Trouble & Touchdowns
“Should I remind you that I just came out of the shower?” I whisper.
“You’re the one who’s making it hard to sleep.”
“Is that a compliment?”
Lucian hums. “It’s a fact.”
And then—silence.
His breathing evens out behind me. His hand remains warm on my stomach. Oddly enough, I don’t feel like I need to run.
I close my eyes.
Wrapped in his shirt. In his arms.
Wondering when this stopped being about benefits and started becoming something that could break me wide open.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lucian
Midnight Addendums and Other Lies
Things you discover in the middle of the night . . .
Olivia talks in her sleep.
Not full sentences. Not anything useful to tease her about the next day. It’s just murmurs. Fragments of her day stitched together like a fever dream with no plot. Right now, she’s doing it again—curled against my chest, wearing my shirt and my boxers, her hand resting over my heart as if she forgot how not to touch me.
She’s warm. Her hair is mostly dry, still faintly damp at the roots where it’s pressed to my collarbone. One of her legs is tangled between mine, like she’s trying to claim space and retreat from it all at once.
“. . . no glitter . . .” she breathes out, soft and slurred. “Dogs don’t eat glitter . . .”
I grin into the dark. Of course she’s dreaming about her clinic, or maybe Sarah doing something while she’s scrapbooking. Who knows?
It’s probably work. This woman could be mid-orgasm and still mentally ticking off a to-do list for the next staff meeting.
My fingers skim the hem of the shirt she’s drowning in—my shirt. The fabric bunches around her hips, clinging to her as if it wants to be part of this whole ridiculous, beautiful disaster we’ve created. And God, so do I.
I should sleep. My body is exhausted. Training camp has left me aching in places I didn’t even know existed last season. Tomorrow brings another early call, and I need every minute of rest I can get.
But I’m wide awake.
And she’s still here.
And that should scare the shit out of me.
Because I’ve done this before. The benefits thing. The whole casual, no-strings-attached, just-having-fun thing. Hell, I practically wrote the damn manual on it. But this? Olivia? She doesn’t fit the mold.
She’s not just in my bed—she’s in my head.
In the way I check my phone too often when she’s not around. In the way I sleep better when I know she’s already asleep. In the way I can’t stop thinking about her in my kitchen, barefoot, talking to my dog like they’re best friends.
And worse?
She feels like home in a way my ex-wife never did. With Ingrid, it was always a performance. A checklist. A polished version of intimacy that never touched anything real. Yeah . . . That’s a fucking revelation.
I stare up at the ceiling, the blue glow from the phone charger slicing across the wall as if it’s trying to underline every thought I’ve been trying to bury since this whole thing started. Sarah’s snoring like a freight train at the foot of the bed. This girl needs to stop moving during the night. I won’t be surprised if she somehow manages to sandwich herself between us like a furry little wrecking ball.
