Page 59 of Keeper
But the pain on his face is all wrong. And the feeling in my gut over Sidney being here is still present. “What about your hands on Sidney?” My teeth are clenched. Simply voicing her name makes me nauseous.
“Sidney is nobody to me. She’s just a friend,” he answers, defeated.
“I’m just a friend.”
“You haven’t been a friend since the second you came back, Poppy, and you know it.”
My breath shudders at his admission. He’s said it now. He’s practically laid it all out there, and now I need to do the same.It’s now or never, Poppy. No running away this time. You’re a first choice keeper.
My voice is timid when I utter the words I’ve been needing to say for far too long. “What if I told you I want your hands on me, Booker?”
I lift my gaze to him as a heaviness lifts from my shoulders. As scared as I am to finally put it out there, it feels as if the clouds over my entire life are parting.
He looks down at me, his jaw bone ticking viciously with unexpressed emotion. “You have a funny way of showing it,” his voice cracks.
I exhale. “I’ve been trying to show you for weeks, you daft idiot.” I shove him in the chest and he sways on his feet, looking at me in confusion. “Andrew is only a friend. He’s actually gay and was probably picturing you when he kissed me.”
His eyes turn to angry slits. “Is this a fucking joke to you?”
“No!” I cry, swiping a loose strand of hair out of my eyes. “Far from it. I’ve been tormented all week trying to get you to see that I’m more than just your old mate Poppy and a lot bloody more than a slip.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He spreads his shaking hands out in front of him, gesturing toward me. “You’re a lot fucking more, and that’s why this is so hard. I don’t want to lose you.”
“What does that even mean? Why would you lose me?” I close the space between us, gripping his face tightly in my hands. “Look at me! I’m right bloody here, and I’m telling you I have feelings for you!”
He holds my wrists and closes his eyes, refusing to look at me. His face looks so hurt and tortured I could cry. I slide my hands inside his jacket and wrap my arms around the warmth of his waist. I hate that this is so hard for him. I hate that this is so hard for us. I press my cheek to his hard chest. His pounding heart mirrors my own. He crushes me against him, his arms a heavy vice around me as I twine my fingers behind his back and squeeze. It’s not a romantic hug. It’s a hug of desperation. A nail-scraping grip of what we mean to each other. Like if we let go too soon, we could lose each other like we did that day on my doorstep six years ago.
“Hey, guys.” Tanner’s voice cuts into our bubble of emotion, and both our heads snap in his direction. “We’re leaving now. Andrew is apparently taking Sidney home. She broke her heel, so they left. Everyone else is in the limo already.”
“We’re coming,” I say, squirming out of Booker’s grasp and wrapping my arms around myself.
“No worries, Poppy,” Tanner says sweetly with a smile meant only for me. “Finish your talk. Just meet us at the club for dinner in an hour.” Tanner flings a set of keys to Booker. He catches them swiftly. “Security is shutting everything down, so let yourself out the practice field door.” He flicks his gaze between us and says seriously, “Booker, you’ve got Poppy, right?”
Booker’s eyes find mine and he nods, a look of determination on his face as he grows taller before me. “I’ve got her.”
“Great, we’ll see you both soon. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” He playfully taps the tunnel wall and is off, running toward the exit where a security guard waits.
When he’s out of sight, Booker entwines his fingers with mine and pulls me down the long, dark tunnel. A friend in Germany once told me that you can tell a man’s feelings for you by how he holds your hand. A clasp hold is friendship. A pinkie hold is just sex. A waffle hold…is love. I try not to read too much into his hold that’s definitely waffling mine as he takes a left down another hallway illuminated by dim lights. He stops at what looks like a normal door and slides a key into the lock. When it opens, fluorescent lights automatically kick on overhead.
It’s a mini turf football field, about a quarter of the size of an actual pitch. There’s a regulation sized goalie net on one side and a rack of balls along the wall. Booker locks the door behind him and says, “This is where we practice manoeuvres and penalty kicks when the weather is shit or the pitch is under maintenance.”
I assume he’s going to walk to the other door on the opposite wall marked EXIT. Instead, he stops next to a medical bench and loosens his tie, pulling it off over his head. He leans back and runs a hand through his hair. “Let’s talk.”
“Here?” I look around nervously, like we’re being watched.
He shrugs. “Why not?”
Slowly pacing the turf, my mind races with where we go from here as the rough texture of the fake grass scrapes on my wedges.
“I still don’t know what I’m doing with you, Poppy.” He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head, clearly at a loss. “And I’m bloody terrified of that.”
I chew my lip and nod thoughtfully. Even after everything that’s been said, I can see there’s still a chance that Booker could want to be just friends. And that might kill me. So, do I tell him I’ve loved him forever? Do I tell him why I left for Germany? Do I tell him that I can’t even look at the woods behind our houses without feeling a million cuts all over my heart? If he’s terrified now, all those truth-bombs are going to make him want to cut and run. I have to be creative about this. Explain that we could be great together in ways that he can better understand and without our old baggage weighing us down from the start.
I lick my lips and try to ignore his hunched shoulders and grave eyes. “Well I told you I have feelings for you. You said more of the same, but you’re scared. Those are the facts we have in front of us.” I pause, steeling myself to be brave before turning to face him. “We’re on the practice pitch, so let’s discuss the details in football terms. Maybe it’ll help.”
He laughs and shakes his head as I bend over and unbuckle my wedges. This is probably going to make me look absurd, but I don’t care. Football has always been the part of his life that I avoided. I’m not a footy expert, but I know enough to be dangerous. Now I intend to go balls deep with him about it.Maybe literally, I think to myself with an immature snicker. I pad barefoot over to a bank of footballs on the wall and grab one, tossing it back and forth between my hands as I walk toward the goalie net.
“What are you doing?” He watches me with amusement as I position myself dead centre in the net.
