Page 83 of Chasing The Goal
You deserve this.
It hit me like a body check to the chest.
Because I wasn’t sure I believed that yet. But I wanted to.
***
Twonights later, I decided to try in the only language I knew—action.
Jaymie had practice and I was supposed to be resting, which I mostly did. But around three, I shuffled into the kitchen in his softest hoodie and a pair of socks I found in his drawer, determined.
It wasn’t much. Paper thin chicken parm, piles of spaghetti, and homemade garlic bread. It was messy. The bread got too brown around the edges and I used way too much garlic, but it smelled good. I also managed to bake a decent batch of those cookies he always gets from the bakery. There may have been flour all over the kitchen, but it felt like home.
He came in around seven, still in his sweatpants and team fleece, hair damp from a post-practice shower at the rink.
The second he stepped through the door, his nose lifted.
“Is that…?”
“Dinner,” I said, spinning toward him, wiping my hands on a towel. “A thank you. For everything.”
His eyes softened so fast it made my knees wobble. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
He walked closer slowly, like he wasn’t sure I was real, then stopped just short of touching me.
“You didn’t overdo it, did you?”
“No. Just enough to feel human.”
Hereached for my hand, pulled it up, and pressed a kiss into my palm. “You are human. The best kind.”
He stopped right in front of me. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. Close enough for his fingers to brush the hem of the oversized hoodie I was wearing—his hoodie.
“You didn’t have to,” he said softly.
“I wanted to.”
He kissed me before I could say anything else—slow and tentative at first, like he was testing the waters, like he needed to be sure I was all the way here.
I was.
I grabbed a fistful of his hoodie, tugged him down with all the urgency I’d been choking back for days, and kissed him like I meant it. Like I needed him in my skin, under it, part of me.
His hands slid under the hem of the hoodie I’d stolen from him—his fingers tracing the stretch of bare skin at my hips, warm and reverent.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his voice already breaking.
He grinned against my mouth, cocky and wrecked, and then in one smooth move he lifted me, setting me on the counter like I weighed nothing. The cold granite stole a gasp from my lips, but I barely felt it—not with him standing between my knees, breathing me in like I was his next breath.
Hismouth found my neck—hot and open, trailing from my pulse point to the dip of my collarbone. He nipped, licked, whispered, “Tell me if you want to stop.”
I shook my head, already dizzy. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He sank to his knees.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
