Page 167 of Only in Your Dreams

A laugh tinkles across the field, and I find the woman with her head thrown back, shiny hair tickling her back.

So fucking pretty.

She catches me staring again. The laugh lingers on her face as she holds my gaze. Something bizarre happens in my chest. A rapid thrumming.

I wonder what her name is.

No way it’s an ordinary name. I bet it’s something spectacular—something that fits her. Embodies her apparent ability to emit her own sunbeams. Something that feels like the euphoria of summer. Rays soaking into your skin, the salty scent of the ocean in the air.

“Why does your agent have a say in your dating life?”

I clear my throat, forcing my attention back on Mel. Peter, clearly bored to tears by all this, settles onto the grass.

“Apparently some photos have surface of me and…” I heave a sigh, humiliated all over again after Josh’s lecture this morning. “They’re paparazzi pictures from right after I announced my retirement, before I moved back here. I was in a rough place and had a few not-so-subtle one-night stands. Teams that were interested in bringing me back suddenly want nothing to do with me—Josh put me on strict orders to keep it in my pants until I get signed. Avoid dating around, anything that makes me seem flighty or like a… I believe he used the wordsman whore.”

It’s not enough to get back in peak physical shape in order to get signed. As Josh pointed out just this morning, I have to battle my post-injury reputation, too. Never mind that I haven’t done that kind of thing in the year since I’ve been back in Oakwood.

It’s called a fuckingbedroom, Attwood. Four walls and a door, firmly closed. Ever heard of it?

I have heard of a bedroom, obviously. But the guy I was right after my injury—the one who lost everything he’d worked so hard for, at the ripe age of twenty-seven? He was in such a dark place that life became about little else other than instant gratification. Bar bathrooms, dark alleyways. As long as his companions were willing and eager, the rest didn’t matter.

My therapist—bless her patience—managed to snap me out of it. But apparently, I’m not done paying for that version of me’s unrelenting sex drive.

My eyes stray across the field. She’s the one staring, this time. The woman chuckles, thoroughly unabashed at getting caught, before cutting away. Tucking her hands into what I realize is a pair of scuffed-up overalls.

Overalls.

They should look ridiculous. I mean, they’reoveralls. But there’s something so debilitatingly sexy about them, the way they hug her full curves. It’s not enough to have a striking face, huh? She’s got to have an insane body, too.

“Hey, maybe you should do the fake dating thing again. Pretend you’ve settled down with someone,” Mel says with a laugh. “You’ve had the practice.”

“There’s a chance it comes to that,” I say vaguely.

Overalls looks over again. Attempts to stifle a smile by biting down on her lip, and I’m irrationally jealous that she gets to do that. I want to be over there, absorbing her attention instead of these stolen glances. I want to taste that lip. Finger the clasps of those overalls, before snapping them open. Seeing what’s underneath.

I’d say something cliché about my dying to bend her over. But a face like hers?

You don’t bend that over.

You keep your eyes on her, every second you’re inside her. You catalog every little twitch of her eyebrows, commit to memory the shape of her mouth when she moans, so that fifty years from now you still remember exactly what she looked like when she came apart for you.

That is, if you’re unlucky enough not to keep her for those fifty years.

“Heads up—heads up,Brooks—”

Melody’s urgent voice cuts through my overall’d fantasy.

Oh, fuck.

I zero in on the football about two seconds before it bonks me in the face. Take a quick step and a half back, and make the easy catch.

And thank God for that—in the corner of my eye, I see Overalls with her back to me, but her hair is swinging over her shoulder. Clearly having watched the near-debacle.

At our feet, Peter whines, gravely disappointed. Either he looked forward to the comedic effect of my getting bloodied by a football to the nose, or he really wanted it to hit the ground for his own use.

“Are you planning on getting these drills in or what, Attwood?” Parker calls from where he stands with hands planted on his hips.

I wave him away. With a visible sigh, he sinks to the ground to fiddle with his phone. Overalls is laughing again. Such a perfect sound that I’d think she was hamming it up for my attention, except she seems deeply absorbed in whatever her friend is saying to her now. Not paying me any mind at all, and…

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