Page 63 of Nothing Less Than Everything

On top of that, Sunday’s game was away at Cincinnati. With travel, team meetings, and keeping our relationship a secret, I hadn’t seen him since we said goodbye in New York. He roomed with one of the other guys on the team when they were in hotels, so calls were few and far between. With his early mornings and late nights, we stayed connected through stray texts and voicemails.

Could a relationship even be real if the people in it couldn’t be together?

No wonder Romeo and Juliet’s outlook was so bleak.

I wanted to cry myself a wishing well so that I could change our reality.

I cracked open the Whitney West novel and stabbed the fork into my pie. It was my last night of concussion protocol. Damn the chicken and sweet potatoes straight to hell. I was treating myself with pie, dammit. And eating my feelings, instead.

The pie filled the hole in my heart in the way that only sugar and carbs could, the iced coffee put a little pep in my step, and Whitney West had tears splashing on the pages by chapter six. I hoped Annie wouldn’t mind there being tiny warps on the paper…

The pie was long gone by the time I packed my things and headed out. I left the cozy ambiance of Annie’s, trading it for a cool breeze and the bright evening sun. Brilliant orange rays exploded over roofs as the sun began to set.

I drove home with the windows down and Bon Jovi on the radio. The August heat had dwindled, and autumn was right around the corner. I couldn’t wait to take the field without immediately sweating through my deodorant.

I swung my SUV into a parallel spot in front of my building and did a little shimmy in the seat at scoring a close parking space. And the lack of paparazzi. It was the little things sometimes.

I keyed open the main entrance and jogged up the stairs to my floor. A mountain of gray and red cotton was piled up in front of my door.

My eyes grew to the size of pie plates and my heart thumped with the enthusiasm of an elementary school marching band. I choked on a squeal, hoping that none of my neighbors would come out and see me having a complete freakout.

“Tatum!” I hissed. “What are you doing here?” It took everything in me not to pounce on him, cling to him like a koala bear, and kiss the crap out of his face. I was happy. I was scared. I kind of had to pee. And suddenly I was seriously regretting leaving my apartment without putting something cute on.

Faded denim shorts, flip flops, and a white tank with grout smeared on it wasn’t sexy enough for my man when I hadn’t seen him in seven days.

Tatum jumped up at the sound of my voice. He licked his lips, the swipe of his talented tongue doing all sorts of things to my insides. “The security in this building is shit.”

I took off running, covering the remaining expanse of hallway between us in seconds, and leapt into his arms. Tatum scooped me up, wrapping his arms around me and slowly rocking back and forth. There was safety in his arms. It was a place where I didn’t have to have it all together. He buried his face in my shoulder. “A week is way too long.”

“What are you doing here?” I murmured. “Someone could see.”

“I had to see you.”

I crashed my lips to his in a heady kiss as I crossed my ankles behind his back. “I missed you.” It came out warbled, but it was the best I could do. “But… But someone could see. And do I even wanna know how you got in here?”

Tatum plucked my keys out of my hand and unlocked my apartment door without ever setting me down. “The door downstairs was propped open with a brick.”

“But your car—”

“I ran here.”

I mean, he was a professional athlete. A few miles was nothing to him. Still… He had just played a four hour game yesterday, then had practice this morning. “But what if—”

“Little Bird,” he murmured, silencing me with a kiss. “Don’t worry about the what-ifs. Think about the right nows.” He pecked my lips again. “Right now, I just needed to see you.”

I snaked my arms around his neck. “I…” I let out a pathetic laugh. “Is it too soon to say that I missed you?” I sandwiched his cheeks between my palms. “I know it’s only been a week, but I missed you like crazy.”

Tatum wound through my tornado of an apartment like he had been here a million times. He elbowed my bedroom door open and tossed me onto the mattress.

“Nah, beautiful.” He stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the floor. “It’s been the longest fucking week of my life without you. Without at least knowing you had been working at my condo. I liked walking in and catching a little bit of your perfume.”

I groaned. His chest looked like a topographical map of plateaus and valleys. I wanted to lay in his arms and study every line and ridge. Wanted to memorize the ink that adorned his skin.

Tatum stretched out beside me, taking up the majority of the queen sized bed’s real estate. I snuggled in beside him as he reached behind his head to wedge a pillow under his neck. “What’s—” Tatum pulled his hand out from under the pillow and pulled out a wad of fabric.

I snapped up from the bed. “Oh, no—that’s—”

He unfurled the shirt and I flopped back onto the mattress, groaning in abject humiliation. Nothing like being the real-life version of the obsessive girlfriend meme.

---