Page 41 of Play Maker

“The world is the world, and I try to focus on the good parts. Eva is a good part.”

“Even now?”

“Even now.”

I stared up at the ceiling, not ready to meet his gaze yet. “Have you ever felt trapped with all these constants, yet scared of change? Like you made certain choices—ones you don’t regret—and they locked you onto a path, but you don’t know how to do anything else?”

The bed jostled as Adam lay down next to me. He was close enough I could feel the heat from his body, but we weren’t touching. The silence lengthened, and I assumed he was trying to find a nice way to tell me he never felt that way.

“Yes.”

I sucked in a shocked breath, but he wasn’t done.

“I’ve always been good at football. My parents worked hard to make sure I had every chance to succeed in school. No one in my mom’s family went to college. The obvious choice was to do the thing I was good at—play football for a scholarship, kick ass, get into the NFL, buy my parents a new life. One where they don’t have to work their asses off just to have the people they work for look down on them.”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve always been good at football, but I don’t feel it in my soul.”

“Whatdoyou feel in your soul?”

“Music. The way it sucks you in.” His eyes cut to me. “Sex and love and hunger—need—all wrapped up in a series of beats, a sensuous rhythm, a sound that pulls on everything inside me. I’m good at that too, but football is my life.”

“Why haven’t you told anyone this?”

Adam shrugged, brushing my arm and setting off ripples of sensation that coalesced in my chest. “No one’s ever asked—except you.”

I nodded as the urge to ask him more things, all the things, washed over me. We had time now. In between responsibilities and wounds and want versus need. Caught in a space where the real world hadn’t intruded yet, neither of us made an effort to move away.

“I have more questions.”

He studied my face and smiled. “Ask away, Sunshine.”

15

Iscowled at the lone towel on my rack as the water running down my body slowly cooled. The last two weeks living with Blue had tested the limits of our apartment’s hot water heater. She liked long, scalding showers after our runs in the morning. I knew because the thought of Blue naked, warm, and wet sent me to my own shower to handle Big Mac’s incessant need for the woman.

Nothing like a spray of cold water to convince my dick to focus elsewhere. If only it worked on my mind too.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Without the shop to run, she had actual free time around her classes, and she spent them quizzing me on the best way to approach people in a social setting. Talking about finding a date was fine—it was the hands-on practice I couldn’t handle.

Blue would come out of her room, ask me a bunch of questions I tried my best to answer honestly, then flirt with me mercilessly until Big Mac begged me to put him out of his misery. She’d smile and touch and inch herself closer to crossing the line we’d both drawn.

I never even considered stopping her, and she always pulled back at the last second with a quiet thanks. Fuck. I liked it even better when she dropped the act.

Hence my presence in the shower despite our break from training this morning. I considered circling back around to the fantasy of Blue joining me under the water when the door crashed open in real life, making me jump.

RJ waltzed in and frowned at my mirror. “That’s what I thought.”

I lowered the loofah to cover as much of my junk as possible. “Girl, I told you from day one you were cut. You’re going to get the same answer at every mirror in this apartment.”

She pursed her lips, carefully not looking in my direction. “Your bathroom is clean.”

“Yes. Shocker. I clean. Sometimes. Is this conversation necessary to have while I’m naked?”

RJ dropped her attempts at modesty to glare at my face. “Oh? Does it bother you to have someone barge in during your shower?”

“That was for your own good, and Eva sent me in there.”

“Twice?” She shook her head, resuming her examination of the wall next to the door. “It doesn’t matter. Shaw and I just got back from campus, and the kitchen is clean.”

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