12. Blakely

CHAPTER 12

BLAKELY

“Have you told him about your dad yet?” Reese asks as she holds up her phone, aiming it down the long entryway into the Badgers’ practice arena.

She holds out her free hand in a fist, capturing smiles and fist bumps from most of the players as they walk in before practice. She's been busting her ass trying to put the Bangor Badgers on the map social media wise, and while she's definitely doing better than the previous person, she hasn't had that one video go viral yet that would change things for her.

“Let's go!” Jonas, one of the rookies, gives her a fist bump and smiles at her upheld phone before skipping off past us more than pumped for practice.

“That's some fun footage,” I say from where I stand next to her. I'm due inside in a few minutes too, but it's much more fun hanging out here with her than just stretching inside my locker room.

“Ignoring the question,” Reese says, flashing me an accusing look.

“I'm not ignoring the question,” I say. “I'm just trying to think of a way to answer it that doesn't make me look like a complete jerk.”

“You could never be a jerk,” she says.

“I beg to differ,” I say, the turmoil I’ve been dealing with for the last month bubbling to the surface and making my stomach turn. “A jerk is someone who hasn't told the whole truth to the person that she’s…spending so much time with.” I struggle over the last part of my explanation, almost calling Lawson my boyfriend even though he’s not.

I mean, it’s been almost two months since we started sleeping together, and it's been one month since we crossed those lines during our first away game. And the time in between has been nothing short of amazing.

Lawson and I work together, hang out together, and sleep together.

If anybody took a closer look at us, they’d totally think we were dating.

But we aren’t.

But it feels like we are.

I let out a soft groan, and Reese gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder with her free hand.

She quickly puts it back up in a fist to bump as another rookie walks by, but then straightens as she sees who’s entering the building.

Hesitation ripples over her features, but she can't tear her eyes away from Nash as he saunters down the entryway like he owns the building.

And I can't really blame her. He looks incredible as usual, wearing a pair of Bangor Badgers sweatpants and a white thermal, his long, dirty-blonde hair pulled back in a tie, the scruff along his jaw growing out just enough to look wild.

There's a reason he’s so popular on social media—he looks like a celebrity and with the body his NHL routine gives him, paired with his effortless fun charm, he's definitely somebody that people chase.

Reese looks like she wants to drop her fist, fastening an I don't give a shit what you think glare on her face that’s only deepened from all of the banter that they've had back and forth since Clay's party a couple months ago.

Ever since then, Nash has made it a goal to get under her skin whenever possible, and while she pretends like she doesn't enjoy it, as one of her best friends, I can tell that she doesn't mind the attention.

Nash pauses before us, not even paying her raised camera or her fist any mind. He looks directly at her, flashing her a smile that would’ve made my knees shake if I had any inkling of attraction to him at all.

As it was, I've known Nash since my father became the coach of the Badgers, and while I enjoyed his company, it’s more a brotherly affection and protection than anything else.

“Fist bumps?” he asks Reese, tilting his head slightly as his eyes drag up and down her body. “You can do better than that, Reese’s Pieces,” he says. “You think that's the footage you need to put the Badgers on the viral track?”

Reese drops her fist, pursing her lips as she returns his brazen examination. “I guess I could be like you,” she says in an ultra-sweet voice. “And just post videos of myself at bar after bar, exclusive club after exclusive club, and let the people only see surface-level bullshit. That’s what pays the bills, right?”

I hold back a laugh, instantly turning my attention anywhere else than between the two currently having an intense staring competition right next to me.

“The media never gives me a break,” he says. “So what if I want to take it into my own hands?”

“Gets those endorsement deals too,” she says.

“Like that’s a bad thing? Do you turn down easy money?”

“I don’t sell fantasies to lust-starved women.”

“Always such a sharp tongue for me,” he says. “Did I hurt you in a past life? Seems like you've been angry with me since the moment you met me.”

Well, I know that isn’t true, especially since Reese has been crushing on him since sophomore year of college.

“I don't know you well enough to be angry at you, Stokehill,” she says, electing to use his last name even though they've been around each other enough for her to use his first. She did it to irk him, but to be fair, just about everything he did was to irk her .

Nash steps a little closer to her, and her phone drops a fraction from where she'd been holding it up. “We can change that, you know,” he says, his tone low but definitely not low enough that I can't hear it. “You want to crucify me for selling a fantasy, but it seems like you’ve studied me enough to know there’s more to it than that. All you have to do is take me up on my offer.”

“More power to people who can handle bed hopping, but it’s not my thing,” she says.

“Ouch,” he says, holding a hand over his chest like she’s wounded him. “You really think…” He sighs, holding that strong smile even when it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You should try it sometime. Might help you… relax .”

“Keep dreaming,” she finishes, but I can hear the tremble in her voice and hope that he doesn't.

From the way he smirks down at her, I'm guessing he does.

“Oh, I do dream, Reese’s Pieces,” he says dragging out the nickname he gave her months ago just enough that I'm about to start blushing. “And you and your smart mouth have starred in just about every one of them recently.” He flashes her a wink, gives me a brotherly nod, then heads toward the locker room.

Reese blows out a breath, shaking out her muscles like she’d tensed them during the interaction.

“Anyway,” Reese says, returning to her position as another team member walks by and gives her a fist bump. “Tell me again why you haven't told Lawson?”

I gape at my best friend for a minute, then shake my head with a chuckle. “Going to ignore everything that just happened with Nash, cool.”

She shrugs and smiles at me. “We were talking about you before he came down this hallway, not me.”

I blow out a breath, having secretly wished the interaction with Nash would’ve taken the spotlight off of me, but I get why she’s concerned.

“I don't know,” I say. “There are only a handful of people who know the truth, and I kind of like it that way. I've mostly earned the respect of the team, but not everybody has come around. If it gets out who my father is, everything I've worked for will be put into question.”

“And you think that he’ll tell the other players?”

I consider, then shake my head. “No. Not if I ask him not to.”

“Do you think he'd look at you differently?”

“No,” I say. “For all his cockiness, he's actually a pretty compassionate guy.” Memories flood my mind of him going out of his way to make me feel like I’m a forethought in his mind.

Like the times he showed up with my favorite iced coffee just because, or the times that he does the dishes we used from the night before, before I've even woke up.

Little things that added up to big things that added up to more complicated feelings in my heart.

“But we've never had any kind of conversation about exclusivity,” I continue, my voice lowered as more players walk by us. “For all I know he could be out sleeping with other women.”

“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be sleeping with him,” Reese says, and I shrug.

“He could,” I say. “Just like I could because we've never had any kind of conversation that expressed any wish that we don’t want the other person to do that.”

“But you guys spend almost all of your free time together,” she counters. “Even at away games. And you're not sick of each other yet?”

I shake my head, thinking back to my previous relationship with Brian and how sometimes between practicing with him and dating him I would make up excuses just to get alone time. A fabricated final or feeling under the weather just so I wouldn't have to constantly be at his side.

Just another red flag that I totally ignored early on in our relationship that would’ve saved me a lot of time and exhaustion had I listened to those little instincts screaming at me to run.

“He's so much fun,” I say. “And not just in the ways you'd expect, but in all the ways you wouldn't. I have fun watching Netflix with the guy, but he plans these little adventures too that are downright ridiculous. Last weekend he took us to this vintage penny arcade, and I can't remember a time I've had more fun.”

“Sounds like you trust him,” she says.

“I do,” I say, but there’s a slight hesitation in my voice even I can hear. “But the shit with Brian is still so fresh, and Lawson came out of nowhere. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to be able to not have any attachments for at least a year to get my head on straight after everything that Brian did and is still currently doing.”

“Has he left anything at your place again?” she asks, concern rippling over her features.

“The flowers have stopped,” I say with a sigh. “But the texts have ramped up to at least ten a day and a couple voicemails along with it. He's fixating in a big way and it's starting to really freak me out.”

“And you haven't gone to the police yet because?”

Ice-cold fear trickles into my veins at the thought, at the truth behind my lack of urgency when it came to contacting the authorities about his behavior. “I think it will make him worse,” I say. “Because in all honesty, what are they going to do? They can't arrest him for sending me lots of texts and calls and leaving flowers at my door. He’s done nothing that would actually merit an arrest. Trust me, Lawson asked me to look into it.”

“Brian is an asshole,” she says, shaking her head. “A toxic asshole who clearly needs boatloads of therapy. Lawson doesn’t seem like that kind of guy. But I get it. You don't want to make the same mistakes again, and you didn’t have much time to breathe before Lawson walked into your life.”

“Right,” I say, comfort squeezing my insides at my best friend's understanding.

She's not judging me for being the jerk I know I'm being by not telling Lawson the truth about my father, she's only offering support.

“I will tell him,” I say, needing to assure myself. “I just don't know when. I think I'm scared. We both said in the beginning we didn't want any kind of relationship, so if we're sticking to that, and he’s really out there pursuing other women, then there's no need for me to tell him something so serious about myself. Right?”

“If you really believe that about him, then yeah. If he’s being casual and seeing other people at the same time, then no, you don't owe him a thing.”

“Have I told you I loved you today?” I say, squeezing her in a side hug.

“Earlier when I brought you a croissant,” she says, smiling at me. “But a girl likes to hear it more than once.”

“Well, I do love you,” I say. “You’re the best.”

“I try,” she says before pocketing her phone. “I think I've got enough for a video,” she continues. “I'm going to head to the office and work on the footage.”

“Have fun,” I say. “I'm going to go try to teach these boys how to skate some more.”

We start walking our separate ways, and she laughs as she waves at me before disappearing down the hallway.

An hour later, sweat beads beneath my leggings and sweatshirt despite the chill of the ice in the practice rink. My first group had risen to the occasion, mastering the drills I laid out for them today, and I was almost dreading my final group as they lined up before me.

There’s a massive change from when we started before the preseason to now, and I daresay I have a bunch of pride building in my chest for these NHL players who mostly accepted me and what I have to offer them. Most of them were already leaps and bounds ahead of where they started, and I only struggled with a few who continued to roll their eyes at the fact that a figure skater is teaching them skate techniques to improve their game.

My heart does a little flutter thing that’s signature to whenever Lawson is in my presence, and I do my best not to show my full smile as he unabashedly grins at me where he forces his way to the front of the lineup.

I flash him a chiding look, knowing that isn't the best teammate manners. He shrugs, and gives me a wink, his hazel eyes silently communicating things that aren't work appropriate at the moment, and I blow out a breath, trying to remember exactly what drills I planned to introduce to this group.

I force myself to focus and to remember the job I’m paid to do—one that I love and that I'm lucky as hell to have. I do that thing where I compartmentalize my emotions, shoving my downright giddy sensations into a box with Lawson's name on it. I'll open that up when we see each other after practice, but right now Coach Wren needs to make sure these boys are ready to stand against the Seattle Sharks, who we play next.

“The Sharks are in the top five best NHL team ranks for a reason,” I say just like I had with my groups prior. “Not only do they have a hell of a coach, they have a powerhouse of a team. Their defensemen somehow find their opponents on the ice before we even know they're skating toward us and their forwards can skate like lightning. They steal pucks and they score goals, and they work together like a unit who has been playing together for years. They anticipate each other's moves, and they adapt if one of their teammates tries something new. None of them are fighting for individual fame and they operate like they have the collective win as their sole motivation.”

“Sounds like you're working for the wrong team, figure skater,” Jake Waller, a rookie who loves to give me shit, says from the middle of the group.

I bite back the smart response that’s on the tip of my tongue and shift my focus to him.

He's glaring at me in his normal I don't want to be taught anything by a girl way, but I've gotten used to it by now.

“It’s advantageous to understand your opponent and their strengths. It helps you better exploit them when you go up against them. Not doing your homework on who you're playing is lazy. Expecting me to hand-feed you these facts is too.”

Waller sneers at me, but keeps his mouth shut, so I move on with the lesson, dividing them into smaller groups of three and showing them the balance and power drills I’ve assigned for them today.

Waller scoffs, but doesn't verbally express how ridiculous he thinks the exercise is—lifting one leg while holding still on the other to start with a set of twenty-five reps per leg. I then move them on to perfect the explosive crossover start followed by power focus in order to help their speed. I demonstrate every exercise a handful of times before asking them to do it themselves, wanting to show them that I'm not asking them to do anything that I wouldn't do myself.

“Waller,” I call out after a half hour into the power exercise. “You're using the wrong edge, and it's slowing you down. Try shifting to the free leg, and then?—”

“I'm moving faster than half of these guys?—”

“No, you're not,” I say, waving a hand toward the other guys. “They’ve consistently outskated you every single time and it's because you're not listening. I don't know if you're doing it on purpose or if you just can't feel it.”

I demonstrate what he's doing, and then show him the correct way to do it. “Try this exercise and it will help give you an edge when you face the Sharks. If you keep doing what you're doing, they’ll overtake you every time?—”

Waller skates over to me, grinding to a stop right in front of me, cutting my words off with the move. He's not small, and he towers over me as he looks down at me with that same glare he's always given me. I force myself to hold his gaze even though every instinct is firing at me to skate backward a few feet.

I hold my fucking ground.

“I am doing it the right way,” he argues, his tone catching the attention of the other guys who’d been finishing up their drills.

Lawson being one of them. He skates closer, but I give a slight shake of my head hoping he interprets that as I've got it.

“Whether you want to believe it or not,” I say. “I’m on your side.” I point to the Badger sweatshirt I currently wear. “I’m a part of this team. I want you to win. I’m not telling you these things to hurt your precious ego. I want you to beat the Sharks?—”

“The way you talk about the Sharks makes me highly doubt you want us to beat them.” He sneers down at me. “In fact,” he continues. “It sounds more likely that you're fucking one of them. Is that how you know so much about them?”

One second Waller is standing before me wearing a shit-eating grin and the next he disappears, hitting the ice with a loud thunk .

Lawson is on top of him and throws a punch, which doesn't do much damage since they're in full gear, his gloved hand hitting Waller's helmet, but the two immediately descend into a scrap.

“Stop it!” I yell, but they totally ignore me.

Pax is the first one to grab hold of Lawson, yanking him off of Waller and getting him to calm down. But even with Pax holding him back, and a rookie holding Waller back, the two keep trying to go at each other.

“Talk to our coach like that again and I’ll knock your fucking teeth out!” Lawson yells as he struggles under Pax and now Nash’s hold.

“Fuck you, Wolfe,” Waller fires back. “Maybe you're the one fucking her and that's why you're always on her side.”

“Hey!” Kiplin's voice rings out over the yelling as he skates from all the way across the rink where he'd been with a separate group that Coach Hardin was overseeing. He stops in the middle of the two brawling men. “You watch your fucking mouth, Waller,” Clay says, his rough tone leaving no room for arguing. “You don't talk about Coach Wren like that. In fact, I'm going to incite a new rule—don't talk about her at all unless you're saying yes, Coach Wren . Do you understand me?”

Waller straightens up, obviously respecting the captain's words, and not mine.

Coach Hardin skates up behind Kiplin, and shame ripples over me as he gives me that fatherly look of disappointment and confusion as he assesses the situation.

“Waller, Wolfe, my office. Now.” Dad doesn't need to raise his voice; he has that authoritative tone that’s filled with more disappointment than anger. Something I always found much more devastating than if he ever yelled at me. Which he never did. He just isn’t a yeller.

Pax releases Lawson, who doesn't bother looking my way as he skates off the rink, Waller following behind, who does look at me with equal disdain as before.

“The rest of you hit the showers,” Dad dismisses the rest of my group, and I move to skate away, hoping to escape him?—

“Coach Wren,” he calls, and I immediately stop. “Twenty minutes, and then I'd like to see you in my office too.”

“Yes, Coach,” I say, skating off of the ice, my head hanging just a little bit lower.

I’m so screwed.

Twenty minutes feels like two hours by the time I make my way into my father's office. There are a few straggling players left in the locker room, but Lawson and Waller are nowhere to be seen.

I allow myself to enjoy that little amount of relief, knowing that sitting between the two arguing men would’ve been an absolute nightmare of an awkward situation.

My father sits behind his desk, looking as calm as he always does, one of his many Bangor Badgers tracksuit jackets zipped up almost to his neck, his mustache pristine, and his eyes open.

I take a seat across from him, my heart sinking into my stomach. I’m ten years old again and about to get a lecture on why we don't go skating after dark on the frozen lake near our home. The ice had cracked, scaring the living daylights out of my father when he caught me, but luckily, I hadn't been hurt.

Dad lets the silence fill the room until I can hardly breathe around it, and yet I still can’t find the words to speak.

“What the heck is going on here, Blakely?” he asks, his tone even and soft. “That seemed like a lot more than just the normal teammate squabble.”

“Waller has never respected me,” I answer, opting for a little bit of the truth. “Today that disrespect spilled over. I was handling it, and then he said something crass and Lawson— Wolfe —stepped in.”

My father doesn’t miss the way I say Lawson's first name with such familiarity, if the puzzle pieces clicking into place behind his eyes are any indication.

“Uh-huh,” he says, looking lost in his own thoughts as he nods a few times. “I heard what Waller said and you can trust and believe that I gave him a stern talking-to. He's a good player with lots of potential, but he's young. And I'm pretty sure he's got something else going on with him that I'm not one hundred percent sure isn't trickling over into his daily attitude. He hasn't opened up to me yet, but hopefully he will to somebody soon.”

I shake my head, leave it to my dad to be all compassionate and understanding when I think Waller is just being an inconsiderate prick.

“Hey, I heard that,” he says, flashing me a chiding look.

“I didn't even say anything!”

Dad shrugs. “I can tell when you're silently tearing someone to pieces, having been on the wrong end of that more than a few times when you were sixteen, thank you very much. Now, what do I always tell you about people who are showing you the worst of themselves?”

I sigh. “You never know what is going on behind closed doors,” I repeat the saying that he’s grilled into me since I was five years old. “We have to wait until they open their door to us until we can fully judge.”

“That's right,” he says, snapping his fingers and pointing at me. “Time will tell if he really is the a-hole he's behaving like, but first and foremost, are you okay?”

I hold up my hands, glancing down at my body before looking back across the desk at my dad. “I wasn't in the brawl, Dad. I didn't get hurt?—”

“You know darn well that's not what I'm asking,” he cuts me off.

I rub my hands over my face, trying to rid myself of some of the anxiety clawing at my chest. Me and my dad have an excellent relationship, one built from years of trust and understanding, and it’s given him this uncanny ability to see right through any shields I may be throwing up. But just like I'm not ready to tell Lawson who his coach is to me , I'm equally not ready to tell my dad that I might have feelings for his star player.

“Don't try to make something up either, Blakely Wren,” he says, using my first and middle name in the way only he can. “You know I'll be able to tell.”

I sit up a little straighter in my chair, leaning my elbows on his desk and resisting the urge to bang my head against it.

“I'm fine emotionally,” I say, then tilt my head back and forth. “Mostly. I've got some internal debates going on, but other than that, Waller’s heinous comment didn't affect me. I anticipated a lot of those types of comments thrown my way, either to my face or behind my back, when taking this job. I wouldn't have accepted the position if I didn't have a thick skin.”

“That's good to hear,” he says. “But I can tell there's more.”

“Can I pose a hypothetical to you?”

Dad smiles, leaning back in his chair. “I love hypotheticals. Hit me with it.”

“ Hypothetically ,” I say, tension winding tight in my chest, begging me to stop right where I am.

I push around it, hoping that whatever my father's hypothetical answer is will give me some kind of perspective on all the shit that's bothering me.

“Hypothetically...”

“Honey, if you say hypothetically one more time, I'm gonna realize that this isn't a hypothetical.”

A laugh tears from my lips, and I shake my head. “Okay, let's say Reese develops feelings for one of our players. In the beginning, it wasn't serious between them, but now she's not sure. Now she thinks things might be a little more complicated, and she's worried not only about getting her heart broken again or making a big mistake again like she did with her last relationship, but she's also worried about her job.”

Dad leans forward, mimicking my move by putting his elbows on his desk and resting his chin in his hands, nothing but eager intrigue shaping the lines of his face. “Reese being your bestie and our social media manager,” he qualifies.

I can't say yes, because I can't lie to my father, so I nod with my lips pressed together. “Hypothetically,” I add.

“Uh-huh,” he says, and I can tell he's not buying it, but it's all I’m able to give.

“Would you say that she’d need to end it? That her career is more important than whatever may be developing out of that relationship?”

“Now that's a tough question, sweetheart,” he says. “I guess it all depends on the relationship. Workplace relationships are always a tricky thing, not only because you spend so much time together but because it affects the way you act in your role and how they view you in that role as well. Or how they view others treating you in that role.” Dad arches an eyebrow, as if he’s silently indicating the brawl that happened not an hour ago on the ice.

“All that aside,” he continues. “If Reese thinks the relationship is something solid and something worth the work that goes into maintaining such a thing, then they’d have to go on record with not only me but the owner, Mr. McLaren, about said relationship. It's not illegal, and it wouldn't be the catalyst for losing her role as social media manager, but if the relationship affected her quality of work or his quality of play or created massive turmoil between team members...” His voice goes silent, and he looks at me without one ounce of humor in his eyes. “Then that would be cause for termination and justly so. Either on her end or on the player’s end, he'd likely be traded immediately.”

My stomach churns. Lawson may have wanted to be traded in the beginning of all this, to the Sharks no less, but now I knew he didn’t have any interest in that. The idea of me being the reason he’s traded makes me feel a little sick.

Anger, possibly irrationally so, replaces the nausea, bringing me back to what happened on the ice.

Lawson had no right to throw Waller down just because he said some misogynistic shit to me. It didn't give him the right to lay hands on him. And now look at the mess we’re in. Could he not control his instincts for a couple hours of practice? And what would happen if somebody said something worse to me someday?

The possibilities swirled in my mind, each scenario making me angrier than the next.

“Hypothetically,” Dad says, bringing me back to the present. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

I bite my lip, stopping the truth from spilling as I shake my head.

“All right then,” he says, drumming a little beat with his hands on the desk before he motions to the door. “You're free to go, Coach Wren,” he continues. “I gave a good stern talking-to to Waller and Wolfe, so that shouldn't be a problem again, but if you get even a whiff of a comment like that from anyone on this team, I want you to come straight to me.”

I push away from the desk, my hand on the knob of his front door. “Yes, Coach,” I say, hurrying out of his office before I can say anything else that might get me in trouble.

Besides, there is only one person I'm interested in talking to right now, and quite possibly directing some of this rage that's bubbling beneath my skin, and that's Lawson fucking Wolfe.

I send him a quick text asking if he's at home, and when he says yes and that's all, I take that as invitation enough.

I make it to his apartment in under fifteen minutes, and he's opening the door before I even have time to knock.

I hesitate a couple steps into his place, knowing that this is usually the time that I’d crack a joke or that he’d scoop me into his arms and whisk me away for some much-needed cosmic bliss between the sheets.

But this visit isn’t about that, and suddenly I feel like I’m stranded in uncharted waters.

“You look like something's about to bust right out of you,” he says, taking up a lean against the bar that connects his living room and kitchen.

I mimic his position, leaning against the back of the couch just across from him.

“You might as well get it out.”

“What the hell was that?” I release the pent-up question.

Lawson folds his muscled arms over his chest and shrugs.

The man fucking shrugs .

I copy the shrug but add a dramatic flair to it because I'm just a little bit peeved. “That's it? That's your entire response?”

“What do you want me to say, Blakely?” he asks, and I think it's the first time I've ever heard him have even a hint of anger in his usually super chill and cocky tone. “He was being a dick to you.”

“That's to be expected,” I snap, taking a few steps closer to him. “I knew the second I took this job that it’d be hard to convince a bunch of burly, arrogant, chip-on-their-shoulder NHL players that a figure skater might be able to help them with their game. Do you think I care that he accused me of fucking a Shark? It certainly didn’t give you ground to put hands on him?—”

“You think I don't know that?” he cuts me off, pushing away from the counter and meeting me to where we're only a breath away from each other.

I have to arch my neck to hold his frustrated gaze.

“I know that just because he was flying off at the mouth didn't mean I could take his head off, but what do you want me to say? I fucking reacted. Do I regret it? I don't know, maybe . I haven't had enough time and distance from it to see if I do. But he's an asshole, and he always has been, and when he said that you were fucking a Shark when you were just trying to help us, it flipped a switch in me.”

“Well, you just can't go around fighting with anybody who is mean to me on the team,” I fire back. “Hell, Clay barely gives me answers sometimes and can be reduced to simple grunts or glares, and I don't see you fighting him!”

“Clay adores you,” he says. “He actually wants to protect you, in a way that even I don't understand. In a way that I think you could clear up, but you haven't.”

I gasp, taking a step back at the drastic left turn he’s just taken. “What are you talking about?”

“Don't play coy with me, damsel. You’re way smarter than that and you're not giving me enough credit. I've spent enough time with you now to know that you're hiding things from me. Things about this team or the players, I don't know. And I'm fine with that. Everything between us is new, and I know how toxic your relationship was with your ex, so I'm not pushing any topics that you don’t want to open up about. But back to your original comment, Clay may be an asshole, but he’s more of the teddy bear asshole type when you really get to know him. Waller, on the other hand, disrespected you in a way I didn't like.”

I swallow the lump in my throat, somehow wanting to cry and throw my arms around him at the same time at how simply he dismisses me keeping secrets and accepts it and supports me at the same time.

How can he be so incredibly infuriating and insanely compassionate at the same goddamn time?

I study the harsh lines of his face, his chiseled features tight as the muscle in his jaw ticks. “What bothered you more, Lawson?” I ask, my tone soft, any traces of anger completely vanished. “That he disrespected me or that he accused me of fucking someone else?”

A low growl rumbles from his chest, and it sends warm shivers skittering across my skin.

“I don't know which one bothered me more,” he admits, the fire leaking out of his tone. “I know the idea of you fucking a Shark spun my head.”

“But you have to know I'm not,” I say, shaking my head. “It's a good team, anyone would be ridiculous not to acknowledge that?—”

“How would I know that really, though?” he asks. “That's what it comes down to, doesn't it?” He motions to the small space between us. “It's not like we've had the exclusive talk,” he continues. “We've only ever told each other how much we don't want a relationship despite spending nearly every waking minute with each other.” He releases a heavy sigh, and I look up at him, my heart aching to find the right words.

“You can start by asking me if I'm sleeping with anyone else,” I say. “That's simple enough and doesn't carry any weight to it, not really. And my answer would be no .”

“Just no?” he asks, a little bit of mischief flickering in his eyes.

I purse my lips to try and hide my smirk. “Fine, not just no ,” I say. I step a little closer until our bodies are almost flush. “I'm not sleeping with anybody because I know no one else can compare to the great and amazing and incredibly infuriating Lawson Wolfe.”

His smirk deepens. “Well, that much is obvious.”

I raise my brows at him. “Are you sleeping with anyone else?” I ask when he doesn't immediately offer his side of this little dance.

His brow furrows. “No.”

I tilt my head, trailing my fingertip along one of his tense forearms that are still crossed over his chest. “Just no ?”

He drops his arms from their agitated stance, instead electing to gently grip my chin between his fingers. “No,” he says. “Not just no . I can't think or breathe without feeling you in here.” He uses his free hand to tap the center of his chest, and I swear my heart clenches. “And I have no clue what to do with that feeling. I've never felt it before. And I know the timing is shit, so again, I'm not pressing the issue. Neither of us knows what to do with what's going down between us, but I'm fine eating up the seconds you feel like giving me.”

I melt a little.

No, scratch that. I melt a lot.

And I don't have the words to match the sincerity of his, but I hope he can read it in my eyes. I hope he can see that I reflect his feelings like a mirror. So, I do the only thing I can think of, which is throw my arms around his neck and kiss him in a way that hopefully conveys every single way I feel about him.

Intense, playful, passionate, endearing.

I pour every single emotion into the kiss and sigh between his lips when his arms automatically envelope me, wrapping around my lower back and lifting me to his level with an effortless grace that makes me feel like I'm flying.

Or it could be his kiss.

Either way, I don't stop.

I can't stop.

And he doesn't either.