Page 55 of Flagrant Foul
“Liar.” I take a seat beside him and break a pair of chopsticks apart, digging into the selection of sushi he ordered. “Mm, thanks, Sev. This is exactly what I wanted.”
We eat in companionable silence, and I spend the entire time thinking how right we are for each other. The evidence is staggering. He doesn’t like wasabi, and I love it. He likes a ton of ginger, and I only need a tiny bit with each piece of sushi. We both love soy sauce.
We’re perfect together.
“Oh no,” I trill once we’ve tossed the boxes and cleaned up. “It looks like your blanket is a lot smaller than mine is, so I guess I’ll have no choice but to sit really close to you so we can both get under it.”
He rolls his eyes, a swirl of black tourmaline flicking upward, accompanied by a forced grumble. Despite that, when he’s made himself comfortable, he holds the blanket up for me to curl under. I scoot up as close to him as possible, twisting my upper body so my head is on his chest and one arm is wrapped around his waist.
“Is this okay?” I ask.
He makes the same sound again, but he lets his arm fall heavily over my shoulders.
It’s official. We’re cuddling.
I’m so happy that it takes every ounce of self-control I have to stop myself from making a revolting, gurgling sound. I manage by pressing my lips firmly against the bulk of Sev’s chest.
If I died now and went to heaven, nothing would change. I’d still be on the couch, curled up with Sev, head on his chest, arms around each other. Paradise could be exactly like this. I mean, maybe there’d be more fluffy white clouds floating around, and there’d probably be one of those Top Ten Legendary Saves shows on TV, and obviously, they’d all be saves I made, but other than that, it would be exactly like this.
My cheek is nestled into the meat of his chest. His T-shirt is soft, his pec a hard shelf that props my head up. I hear his heartbeat, a softdoo doofthat answers mine almost exactly.
My heart’s beating faster than normal. His is too.
I don’t move for the longest time because I’m too afraid to do anything that will break the spell, wake him up, and remind him he thinks it’s his job to push me away.
Eventually, I get a crick in my shoulder, and I’m left with no choice but to move the arm I have resting on him. As I do, he catches my wrist, tugging on a few of the hair ties he finds there.
“What’s with the hair-tie thievery?” he asks.
“Do you want the truth or a lie?”
“Am I going to regret it if I say the truth?”
“Dunno. Will it bother you if I tell you that I love it when you wear your hair up ’cause it makes your face look all angular and hot, and honestly, I eat that shit up. But when you wear it down,oof, it fucks me up in a very, very specific way I find hard to recover from.”
“Teddy,” he warns.
“Do you want to know why I have your hair ties on my wrist or not?”
“Didn’t you just tell me?”
“No, that’s why I take them, not why I keep them.”
“Fine. Why do you keep them?”
I lift my head and sit up, looking straight into his eyes. What I see there makes me nervous to say it. So nervous that before I open my mouth to speak, I know my voice is going to be shaky and softer than usual. Part of me doesn’t want to say it. Even though I’ve laid so many of my cards on the table already, this is different.
“I keep them because…” Shit. I was right about my voice. “When you kiss me for real for the first time, I want your hair to be down like it is now. I’ve been daydreaming about that kiss for as long as I can remember, Sev, and when it happens, I want to press my body against yours and open my mouth—myself—to you, and I want to knot my fingers in your hair. Hard. I want to do it hard enough that it pulls. I know I’ll need to because just thinking about it makes me so weak that I’ll know I’ll need something to hold on to to keep myself upright. And afterward, when the kiss is over, I want your hair to be all messed up, so if anyone sees you, they’ll know your lover’s hands have been in your hair.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus fucking Christ, Tee, you can’t talk like that.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Let’s pretend I don’t. Explain it to me like I’m five.”
He moves his hand from his nose and looks at me hard. “Nate doesn’t want us to be together. You know that.”
