Chapter 16 Nolan

Chapter 16

Nolan

Lottie's apartment was on the north side of Chicago in Evanston, which I was thankful for because the drive from my penthouse in downtown Chicago to hers was long enough for me to try to calm my nerves. I had to wipe my palms on my jeans at least a dozen times by the time I pulled up in front of her place.

The apartment was older with much more character than the modern high-rise I lived in. A warm golden light spilled out from the upper right window of the building, and I could make out the shape of a woman standing on the other side of the gauzy curtains. Leaves drifted toward the sidewalk from the trees that lined the front of the building.

I parked in one of the free spots along the sidewalk out front and took the steps slowly as I tried to settle the churning in my stomach as I rang her apartment.

Lottie's melodic voice crackled over the speaker. "I'll be right down!"

I quickly checked my reflection in the glass of the main door to the building before I saw Lottie's figure coming down the stairs. Her blonde hair was down and loose around her shoulders. She had opted for red lipstick tonight and my heart pounded against my chest at the sight. She looked almost sinful. I had told her tonight would be casual, so she had decided on a pair of jeans that hugged her legs and a loose black sweater that drew my attention back to her red lips.

Would I care if that stained my lips tonight? Absolutely not.

"Hi." She greeted me with one of her stunning smiles that made me a little unsteady on my feet.

"You look beautiful," I told her. It was one of the first times I'd openly commented on my physical attraction to her and judging by the way her eyes flickered to the ground and a smile spread across her face, she appreciated it.

"Where to?" Another pleasantly surprised look crossed her face when I opened her door for her and offered her my hand to help her inside.

"The best restaurant in this entire town." I didn't want to give away too much of my plans. I had thought hard all day about how I wanted tonight's date to go. Did I want to take her out to the most expensive place in Chicago? Or did I want to take her to my favorite dive that she'd probably never been to?

Ultimately, I decided that I wanted tonight to be low pressure. Neither of us was sure about anything going on other than the electric chemistry that we were slowly discovering, and I wanted us to get to know each other better without any extra expectations on the night.

When I pulled into the parking garage of my building, I could tell that Lottie was trying to remember if this high-rise had a restaurant that she didn't know about in it, and only once the elevator doors opened onto my floor did she realize what I had done.

I had transformed my dining room table into something that closely resembled an upscale restaurant with candlesticks and a flower bouquet that I had spent way too much time deciding if it said too much or too little. I'd even called Hawthorn's wife, Sarah, to see if she had any extra dinner plates that were nicer than the ones that I used. I'd ignored all lines of questioning from Hawthorn when I had gone to pick them up, but I knew that he'd probably already texted Derek about it and I was sure to face a full trial of my peers at the game tomorrow. My mom's homemade spaghetti and meatballs was staying warm in my stove.

"I figured since we ruined your date at Formento's that I could try to remedy that. It's my mom's recipe," I told her as I ushered her inside of my place.

I hadn't had anyone besides my friends over in years and suddenly I was self-conscious of everything I owned as I tried to look at it through a pair of fresh eyes. I realized the plain white walls with grey furniture with barely any art or greenery probably looked like a complete bachelor pad for a mid-thirties man, and, well … I suppose that was the truth.

"This was very thoughtful," she replied as she walked over to the table to take everything in.

I'd never been so nervous to make sure I got something right before. Not even with my ex, Rachel. My relationship with Rachel had always felt like a box I needed to check, which in hindsight was never fair to her. But I was pretty sure she cared more about being a part of the group of wives and girlfriends of the players than being in a relationship with me. With Lottie, it was as if her fire was trying to consume me whole and I was a willing victim to walk into the blaze.

"Let me just grab dinner. I have a few bottles of wine you can pick from, if you'd like." I motioned over to my wine cabinet where I kept a small collection of wine I liked to drink on rare occasions or with certain meals like this one.

Lottie took her time looking over each label before she gingerly slid one from the shelf. "I never pictured you as a wine guy."

"My mom is like a third-generation Italian, and wine was always a part of every meal." The two of us slid into our seats once the bottle had been poured and the spaghetti had been dished onto our plates.

"You haven't mentioned your parents before," she noted.

"They come to every game they can, but they usually try to leave to beat the traffic out of the stadiums. They stopped waiting for me to come out of the locker room after my tenth season. They've been waiting on me my entire life; it was only a matter of time before they got over it."

Lottie snorted. Her hand flew up to cover her face, her eyes going wide. I let out a soft chuckle at her obvious embarrassment. She slowly lowered her hand from her face once she'd recovered. "Well, it seems like they raised a great son. I'm sure they're wonderful people."

"They'd love you," I told her. "Especially my mom. She'd love the fire you have. You remind me a lot of her."

"I hope that's a compliment," she hedged.

"My mom is one of the best women I know, so I'd think so."

Lottie's mouth screwed to the side to try and hide a smile. "Well, her pasta might just be the best I've ever eaten," she added around a mouth full of meatball.

"She'd probably tell you that it better be seeing as she perfected that recipe over forty years."

I watched Lottie's smile slowly fade as she pushed the remainder of her pasta around on her plate. "It must be nice having parents that still support you like that."

With the way Lottie was still looking down at her food and not up at me, I knew there was something heavy on her mind. "What about your parents? Are they around?"

"They're not around." Her words came out stilted and I knew I was suddenly treading though potentially unsafe territory.

"So, it's just you and your sister?"

"It's been that way for most of our lives." Lottie gently set her fork down on her plate and lifted her eyes to mine. "My parents got a divorce after I had gone away for college, but during my sister's senior year of high school. For most of our lives our home was not a safe place. We had to live in a constant war zone, never knowing when the next fight would be, and I took on the responsibility of protecting Olivia through as much of it as I could. I hated that I couldn't be there all the time while I was at college, but I'd purposefully picked one of the schools here in Chicago so I wouldn't ever be far away if she needed me."

Suddenly everything about Charlotte Thompson made perfect sense—from how hard she'd worked for everything she had, to her no-nonsense personality, to the way she'd felt like most of her life had passed before her eyes. She'd had to raise herself and her sister practically on her own and work hard for everything that she had because she didn't have the support of a family unit the way I had.

I had grown up with parents that had sacrificed a lot to help me get a football scholarship to one of the best colleges in the nation and all to see my dreams become a reality when I was drafted into the NFL. The entire time, my parents had been there every step of the way. Lottie and Olivia had to graduate high school and then college with no one in the crowd but each other. Lottie's brusque exterior now only looked like armor rather than a know-it-all personality.

"What about the bucket list?" I asked, hoping to transition away from a heavy topic to give her a moment.

That beautiful smile that was beginning to feel like the sun itself finally reappeared. "That was all Olivia's idea after I told her I'd felt like I'd missed out on too much of my life."

"What's on it?"

"Well, you know about the whole date thing and the sunrise." Lottie paused as if she were debating saying something else, before she thought better of it. "Then there's just some things on there that I feel like both Olivia and I missed out on as kids —wear PJs on Christmas morning, have a real Thanksgiving, go sledding, kiss someone on New Year's Eve, and then Olivia and Maggie made me put down having a day where I say yes to everything."

My heart broke for the girl that never got to experience any of the things that Lottie listed off. This beautiful girl sitting across the table from me deserved all those experiences and more.

"Seeing as we haven't made it to the holidays yet, what have you marked off besides the sunrise in New York?" Warmth blossomed in my chest that I got to be a small part of this adventure for her.

"Well, as you know I'm actively trying to cross off the dating one."

I nodded my head and tried to ignore the way my jaw clenched at the thought of any other guy taking her out on a date, especially on the shitty ones she'd been on. "What does it take to cross that one off?"

Lottie paused again and I watched a red the color of the wine in our glasses spread across her cheeks. "I want to feel the spark with someone."

"A spark?" I asked.

"You know," she mumbled as she waved her hands around like that would help me get the point easier. "Like in the movies. I don't want to settle for cohabitation with someone. I want to feel that spark. The kind of love you see in an old couple that still dances on the dance floor of weddings and smile at each other like they're still that young couple in love."

"And you thought Henry and Cole were going to give you that spark?" I teased.

"Hey!" But that infectious smile came back out for just a moment.

Silence stretched between us as it became obvious we were both thinking about the fact that we were on a date , and that I could either join the list with Henry and Cole or this could morph into something else entirely.

The memory of her legs on either side of my waist as we devoured each other in the bathroom at the club flashed through my mind. Electricity had raced through every inch of my body as soon as my hands touched her skin. Something had been set off inside of me that night, no longer willing to be ignored. And again tonight, that same feeling came roaring back up to the front. I liked Lottie and I wanted to be the person who made her feel alive, that gave her exactly what she was looking for. I could only hope that she'd eventually feel the same way.

"Well, I hope you find the right person. I think you deserve that," I told her, because I truly meant it. I was on a quest to achieve one last moment at the top of the mountain while Lottie was in search of a different kind of view than what she'd already managed to accomplish seeing. I found it inspiring that she had identified what she wanted next in her life and was doing what she could to achieve those things. I only hoped that I managed to do the same for myself.

Lottie's eyes softened as she looked at me over the candlelight flickering in the middle of the table. Those beautiful red lips pulled upwards to form the hint of a smile.

"Maybe I will," she replied with a small shrug of her shoulders. The temperature in the room felt like it rose about ten degrees as Lottie gave me a sultry look before she stood up from the table, wine glass in hand, and started to walk around my apartment.

I quickly grabbed my own glass of wine and moved to follow her. Lottie walked the wall of windows that made up one side of my apartment. I looked out over downtown Chicago and had the perfect view of Lake Michigan with Gateway Stadium off in the distance.

"I'm not sure I pictured you as a penthouse kind of guy," Lottie told me as she took in the view while sipping on her wine.

"It was one of the first purchases I made off my first contract after being drafted besides paying off my parents' mortgage."

Lottie's eyes flashed with surprise as if she hadn't pictured me doing anything nice.

I wish she could have seen me when I first entered the league—excited, happy, and not yet jaded by life.

"My mom wanted me to get a nice house in one of the suburbs, but as a twenty-two-year-old, that didn't sound as exciting as a penthouse in downtown Chicago."

"Would you ever live in the suburbs?" Lottie asked after she turned away from the view and started looking at my very minimal decor.

"I think after I retire, I'll look at selling this place. It's never felt like home. It's only ever felt like a place to sleep and eat."

"I get that," Lottie told me as she looked at the MVP trophies I had displayed in my living room next to the only picture I had in the entire apartment—a picture of me with my parents right after my first Super Bowl win. "I'm not sure I've ever had a place that really felt like a home."

Lottie's fingers reached out to barely touch the glass of the picture frame.

My heart ached and pulled me toward her until my chest was pressed into her back, much like we were on the dance floor just the night before. Everything in me wanted to kiss Lottie from the moment I watched her bound down the stairs of her apartment building. That infectious smile that warmed the fractures in my heart. Lottie had gone through so much in her life, yet she never let any of that slow her down. She dealt with parents that didn't give their children the love they deserved. She dealt with people doubting her or talking down on her worth just because she dared to be a woman taking up space in a man's world.

All I wanted to do was kiss the hurt away inside of her and try my best to make her feel even a little bit better. So I wrapped my arm around her waist and spun her so her chest was pressed against mine before lowering my mouth to hers. Touching her was like an addiction and one that I never wanted to have to give up.

It took her only a second before she matched my tempo, her arms moving to rest against my shoulders with her glass of wine still clutched in her hand. Her teeth nipped at my bottom lip and I played back by capturing hers between my teeth for a few seconds before letting it snap back.

Kissing Lottie felt like the same battle the two of us played with each other—all about who would get the upper hand once it was all over. It was a mess of teeth and tongues, hands grasping for purchase, and bodies trying to gain leverage. It was all consuming. She was all consuming.

I hadn't wanted anything new thrown at me this season out of fear that it would be the very reason I wouldn't reach my goals. But it had become clear that Lottie wasn't something that would pull me further from what I wanted, but rather was exactly what I needed to achieve everything I'd ever wanted.

Lottie surprised me by her free hand drifting down to the top of my pants where her fingers dipped inside and teased the skin there. All the blood rushed to meet her touch.

The moment a groan escaped my mouth, everything became a frenzy. Her wine glass was discarded on the mantel. Clothes were thrown in various places I was sure we wouldn't find later. But the only thing I could truly focus on was the woman in my arms as I lifted her up and her legs wrapped around my body.

I walked Lottie back toward my bedroom. For the first time, this penthouse finally felt a little bit like home.