Page 55 of Only in Your Dreams

ZAC:I’ve wanted to see you.

Well, whatever awkwardness there was after our hook up last week, the man seems to have recovered just fine.

I tug my hair free of its prison-bun. Massage my aching scalp.

I have no clue what possesses me in the seconds that follow. One moment I’m clutching my phone, eyeing my bath towel. Contemplating that much-needed shower. The next…

MELODY:Give me half an hour. I’ll meet you at the stadium.

* * *

“What are you doing?”

Ignoring the question, Zac crowds me until I drop into the plushy swivel chair behind his desk the moment we make it into his office at the UOB stadium. He crouches at my feet, unlaces my sneaker and peels off my sock to study the bruising at my ankle.

“Rotate your ankle for me.”

“It barely hurts anymore. This isn’t necessary—”

“Rotate your ankle, Melody.”

He stares up at me until I do, wiggling my toes for good measure. Still, he runs his fingers over my skin, checking every bump and angle with all the concentration in the world. Lips curled into his mouth like he does when he’s really being careful with something. His touch is delicate and, to my horror, goose bumps erupt over my bare legs, crawling up my body.

I mean, can you blame me? The day I last saw him, we were rolling around in the mud together. All wet and slippery, feeling so good.

Sex with Connor had never been an issue—it was the one thing I could consistently get right with him. But it had never—ever—felt the way things did with Zac. We’d gone six years without falling into the kind of effortless rhythm Zac and I fell into that day. Reading each other without even trying. My body never ached for Connor the way it does for Zac.

Zac follows the trail of goose bumps up my legs, disappearing under the ancient, too-tight sundress I plucked from the cardboard box of my teenaged belongings.

“It’s really cold in here,” I mumble.

He tips his head. “It’s Sunday. This is an extra practice and they don’t run the A/C in here on our off days.”

Right on cue, beads of sweat erupt at the back of my neck. I rub my lips together and his eyes zero in on them. Jaw slacks a little.

God, this has to stop. I don’t know what brought me here to see him, but this wasn’t it.

I turn, scanning the room. Zac’s office doesn’t have any windows, but it’s decently sized, with wall-to-wall shelving loaded with binders lining the far wall. Behind me hangs a framed white and maroon UOB Huskies jersey with the name Porter over the number ten. It’s the same number he wore in high school.

Apparently satisfied with his examination, Zac carefully slips my sock back on, followed by my shoe.

“What’s the prognosis, Coach?”

“Almost good as new,” he says, sitting on the edge of his desk. He scans the rest of me. “How have you been?”

How have I been? I’ve been flip flopping between angry tears and snapping at inanimate objects in my closet all week. But at least I finally washed my hair.

“I’m great, actually. Parker’s been working overtime to make up for sending me on such an ill-fated trip, so that’s been fun. He’s been cooking every night. Set up a desk in my room for my work.” I shrug. “In fact, I came here to ask you to please stop harassing Summer with texts asking how I’m doing. You’re really starting to freak her out, and as you can see, I am perfectly fine.”

Zac crosses his arms, non-verbally rejecting my claim that everything is a-okay, but he doesn’t push it. “Do they know about… everything right before we got rescued?”

I raise my brows. “What happened right before we got rescued?”

His mouth tugs into a smirk. “Do they know you let me play with your pussy, that you practically begged me to fuck you—”

God.

I roll my shoulders back, feeling a little hot around the non-existent collar of my dress. “Oh,that. I haven’t told anyone. And I think it’s a good idea to keep it that way.”

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