52

Kassie

You Can't Keep That Going

I could've kissed him when he came back with the makeup, all put together in a grocery bag. I did kiss him. And then I spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom, assembling my neck back together while Ryan stood outside, my brave guard dog.

We didn't leave UrgentCare until close to five o'clock in the morning and when Cleo saw the test results, she was shocked.

"Low blood sugar?" She shook her head incredulously. "Don't we pay you two enough? Ryan, can't you make sure she eats? It's a basic thing."

Ryan nodded. "I'm taking her to get food right now and then I'll drop her back home."

There was no way we were eating anything. I was dragging my feet. Exhausted was a road sign that I'd blown by a long time ago. But even if Ryan had won a football game, he didn't have a hair out of place. It baffled me. Whereas, I felt like I'd crawled out of a grave by my fingernails.

"How did we get away with this?" I muttered to Ryan and waved at Cleo and Miles, getting into their car. It was hard to tape a smile on my face but I did my best.

Ryan opened the passenger door. "Fantastic makeup skills."

"Cosplaying was bound to pay off eventually."

He opened his driver's door and slid in. "What's that?"

"Cosplaying? Uh…it's like dressing up like people in movies and anime and stuff."

"People do that?"

I had to press my lips to keep from smiling. Another thing to educate him about the twenty-first century, like he'd been thawed out of a block of ice and I had to be the one to break the news on dating apps and VR headsets.

"Ryan, you were meant to live in the caveman era."

"That's not true."

"Uh-huh. Why not?"

He reached down to place his hand on my thigh. "Because I wouldn't have you there with me."

My eyes flashed from his hand, running along the inside of my thigh, to him. Him—Ryan—still gazing out the window, driving us out to the road, so serious, so solemn in his answer like it was a fact he was starting instead of answering my joke.

Because to Ryan, he was stating a fact.

My ears burned hot.

I wasn't used to those kinds of declarations. And Ryan was the most intense person in the room at all times. It left me fumbling for a reply more than I could ever admit to him.

And he was still touching me.

His fingers ran down the inside of my thigh, drawing tight circles against my legs, under my dress. They were the same fingers I'd drawn a bazillion times in my sketchbook. I knew them better than my own. But it was like I'd never outlined them before.

The way he rubbed his thumb against my thigh, I could feel my body pulsing along to his movements.

I swallowed. "How are you not tired right now?"

"I haven't been sleeping well. I'm used to it."

"What do you mean?" I glanced up from his hand again. "Since when?"

He made a face I recognized. The same face he made when he didn't want to admit to something to me. "Since…I started meeting to take on the captain title."

"Since spring? "

"Before that. Last…December, I guess."

"You're joking."

"No." Ryan took the next exit and once we hit the freeway, he stepped on the gas, out in the non-existent early-morning traffic. "I used to be able to hit six hours. Now if I hit four hours, it's a good night."

" What? " I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Ryan, you do realize you're an athlete, right? How much you work out, the kind of stress your body is under, you could do long-term damage. Wait—I got that from your trainers . I know you know. How are you not even getting six hours anymore?"

Ryan shifted back just a little and caught my eye. For a moment, his dark eyes trailed my face, and he glanced back towards the windshield again, silent.

Me?

I blinked, shocked. "Since…the…first kiss?"

Out on the field in front of everyone?

Because it'd been hard for me to go to sleep too. I could still remember it. The way Ryan had yanked me back and kissed me, telling everybody I was his after the football game.

"Since the dinner," he replied, his voice gruff.

"What dinner?"

"The first dinner."

My ears hadn't been hot before, they'd been warm, because my entire face scorched with three words. Ryan lost all that sleep since the first dinner. Oh my god. I wanted nothing more than to tell him to pull the car over and take me right there and then.

But I couldn't keep down how worried I was over him.

"You need to get some sleep," I insisted. "You can't keep that going."

"I haven't figured out the trick yet."

"If you have to drug yourself, that's the trick." I slipped my hand over his. "Do something. Figure it out. You need to sleep. You have too much on your schedule for us to even be arguing about this."

His hand tightened on my thigh. "How am I supposed to sleep now?"

All of my worry about his sleep schedule was still there but took a respectful step back to the true and honest fact that this man just ate my pussy so good, I legitimately was afraid to pass out. In terms of things to be concerned about, it was difficult to settle between the two of them.

"We can…we can…?" I trailed off, staring at the view in front of us. "Uh…Ryan?"

"Yeah?"

"What're we…doing here?"

Gianna's had just opened fifteen minutes ago and the to-go coffee line was already out the door. But what the hell were we doing at the on-campus restaurant with zero sleep between us?

Ryan ignored my questions and released my thigh, stepping out of the car and opened my door before I could even think to do it. I stared up at him, drowsy and confused.

"You haven't eaten in more than twelve hours,"

My stomach clenched uncomfortably at the thought and I was sure he could hear it. It felt like forever since I'd eaten something. Nothing before the dinner—I'd been too nervous—nothing during the dinner, and the only person who'd been eating after the dinner was Ryan.

I snuck a little look at Gianna's . "Uh…we could also eat cereal at my place and have sex."

"You need to eat a full meal and sleep."

"Pssh, you need to sleep."

When I tried to shut the door, Ryan held it still with his hand. I knew without a doubt that no amount of me yanking on it would do anything. The football player slept forty-five minutes every night but apparently that did nothing to his muscle mass. Ridiculous. I sighed and stepped out of the car.

"Do you really want to go home?" Ryan asked quietly, dipping down to make sure I heard. "Because I want to talk to you about something."

I sighed again. "Is it important?"

"Yes."

If anybody else in the entire world told me that after a night of zero sleep and an exhausting ordeal like hiding out from Cleo in a hospital bathroom, I would've started yelling. But Ryan wasn't everybody. I couldn't pretend otherwise.

"Fine."