Page 99 of Playing for the Hat Trick
I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Yeah. Me too.”
Silence stretches between us, but it’s different now. Not the brittle, scared kind. Comfortable. Familiar. The type of silence that says we could build something right here if we were stupid (or brave) enough to try.
Scottie leans back on her elbows, tilting her face toward the sun, her hair catching the light, hoodie sleeves bunched at her wrists like she’s wearing a piece of me without even realizing it.She looks fucking beautiful, and it wrecks me because I know I’m about ten seconds away from saying something incredibly dumb.
“You’re thinking something,” she says without opening her eyes.
“I’m thinking you’re dangerous,” I admit.
She smiles, just a little lazy and lethal.
“Dangerous how?”
“Making me want things I shouldn’t,” I say, voice low, honest in a way I usually regret too late.
Her eyes open, bright, and steady on mine. “Like what?”
“Like this.” I gesture around us—the sun, the trees, the stupid perfect Sunday morning feel of it all. “Like the idea of doing this every weekend. You and me. Pretzels and fun dogs and getting old and cranky together.”
She swallows hard, the slightest movement, but I catch it. Feel it. She wants it, too, even if she’s still too scared to say it out loud.
And because she’s Scottie, because she can’t sit in something real for more than a few beats without deflecting, she smirks and says, “You just want an excuse to come buy more pretzels.”
“That too,” I say, grinning like the lovesick idiot I absolutely am.
She laughs then—a real one. Light and easy and so goddamn gorgeous it knocks the breath out of my chest.
I shift closer, lying back on the grass, hands tucked behind my head, pretending like I’m totally relaxed when every part of me is vibrating. She follows a second later, stretching out beside me, close enough that her knee brushes mine when the breeze picks up.
“You know you’re not going anywhere, right?” I murmur, turning my head toward her.
She doesn’t answer right away.
But she doesn’t argue either.
And maybe that’s all the permission I need.
I roll onto my side, closing the last few inches between us. She blinks up at me, startled but not pulling away, her mouth parting like she’s about to say something clever or cruel. I don’t give her the chance. I lean down, slow enough that she could stop me if she wanted, and brush my mouth over hers in the softest, stupidest kiss of my entire life.
She tastes like salt and sunshine and the promise of something bigger than either of us know how to handle.
Scottie makes a soft, broken sound against my mouth—then, fisting her fingers in the front of my hoodie, she yanks me closer and kisses me back, hard enough to knock every coherent thought out of my head except for one.
More.
More of her, more of this, more of whatever the fuck we’re building and burning at the same time. Her mouth is urgent, reckless, tasting like everything I didn’t know I was missing. I slide my hand to her waist, pulling her tighter against me, losing myself in the way she fits, in the heat blooming between us like wildfire.
And then?—
The sound of a throat clears. “What the fuck, man?”
Scottie freezes. I freeze.
Slowly, with the bone-deep dread of a man about to be executed for crimes he absolutely committed, I lift my head.
Leif.
Only a couple of feet away, pushing a stroller.
