60

Kassie

Deep Indents And Creases

The anticipation of exactly what was in Ryan's locker buzzed under my skin.

What can it be?

"Art girl—Kassie—let's discuss this," Ryan tried to negotiate, like this was something we could've negotiated, as he jogged up to me. "Adam's being a dumbass. It's how he is."

"What's in your locker? Hustler magazines?" I teased. A thousand possibilities raced through my mind. Playboy pin-ups? A half-empty bottle of lotion and a box of kleenex? What had Ryan put in there that I missed out on the first time I saw the inside of his locker, when it was all perfectly organized?

"That'd be a lot fucking better," he muttered under his breath.

"You know you're just intriguing me more ."

He grunted.

"How bad is it?"

"Ten."

"On a scale of one to ten?"

"On a scale of one to five."

That didn't do anything to temper down my excitement. Maybe I should've been kinder to the guy who just ate me out so beautifully on his couch but this was too much of a temptation.

The locker room was completely silent. Which made sense, everybody was out on the field. I made a beeline towards his locker but he easily beat me there. I tried to open it but he shut it just as quickly, keeping his palm against the door

He wasn't my boyfriend Ryan, he was Ryan Cross, captain of the football team, trying to put me in my place.

"Let's go get the banner," he said, his voice firm.

"I want to look inside."

" No. "

I shrugged. "I'm going to look inside anyway. Either now, when you're here, or…"

"How about you look inside next month?"

"So I'll forget about it?"

"Christ, I hope so."

"Ryan." I folded my arms over my chest, unable to keep the smile off my face. " Please? " I fluttered my eyelashes the most I'd ever done before and pouted. Actually pouted. "Pretty please?"

For a long moment, I thought he was going to put a hand on my back and lead me on a scavenger hunt to go find the banner. His dark eyes stayed on mine for a beat too long. Muttering under his breath, he slowly swung open the locker door.

The thrill of finally getting to see what was inside was only masked by the confusion of…Ryan's regular locker?

The jerseys were hung up properly. Everything was clean and in its place. Ryan's natural habitat. Literally, there wasn't anything wrong with his locker that I could see, but Ryan stood quiet next to it, watching me.

My eyes flickered to the top shelf and I saw the hint of a piece of paper hanging half-an-inch over. Just the hint of a piece of paper, really. With a frown, I turned back to Ryan. His stance tightened. He was waiting for something.

How bad can it be?

I reached up to the piece of paper and felt a stack of them. Worn papers, crinkled papers. They were loose, unconnected by anything in particular, and I brought them down in a huge pile. My heart thumped in my chest for no reason. I didn't know what I was expecting but I could feel the tension rolling off of Ryan while he counted down until my reaction.

My eyes widened as soon as I spotted the first paper.

They were my…sketches.

The very first one was a basic expressive chart I'd finished for practice. There were six different poses, my chin lifted, the tight-lipped smile, the wink in the corner, my nose crinkled to the side, all little sketches I'd worked through on a piece of torn-out legal paper while I'd been waiting for Ryan during a gym session.

It'd definitely been tucked away in my sketchbook. I'd been convinced it'd fallen out somewhere but here it was, with new crease lines.

I slipped the page underneath the pile and the one underneath was an anatomy drawing. That'd been at the beginning of October, when I had him take a dozen pictures of my hands at Gianna's. Below that, the step-by-step of a football, tumbling over the ground, the shadow study of my hair, and me, bunching up his jersey to see if I could draw the folds in the fabric.

There were…so many papers. I flipped through them, faster and faster. An entire collection that I'd thrown in the trash or left at Ryan's dorm or he'd clearly nicked from my sketchbook.

They're all right here .

My fingers curled around the pages. There was a hard lump in my throat. Ryan had kept all of them. Every scrap, every sticky note, every receipt that I'd drawn on the back of.

I looked up at him, and slowly, he tugged out a worn paper from the bottom, with deep indents and creases, like it'd been folded and unfolded a hundred times.

Oh my god .

The exercise was the very first time I'd drawn Ryan. When he'd modeled for my art class and ripped the paper out. My fingertips tingled just touching it. How many times did Ryan open this?

"I—I—" I struggled to say anything, completely in shock.

"At first, I kept them in my dorm but you needed to be there more than I expected,' he explained, his voice strained. "I had to move them. And keeping them here just…made sense."

"But—but—" I swallowed. " Why? "

He was quiet for a moment. "It's a reminder of what I work for."

My heart leaped to my throat. I knew why he'd been reluctant to show me and I knew he was waiting for something to happen, but I could barely speak. No one had ever done anything like that for me before.

He always kept a piece of me around and I had no idea.

"Nobody's ever…" I fidgeted with the papers. Overwhelmed. "Nobody's ever…done this…"

Gently, he pulled the papers from my hands and tucked them back in the top shelf of his locker, still with his dark honey eyes on me. Sometimes, I could forget the size difference, but this wasn't one of those times. He cut the small amount of space between us and I was forced to look up at him, up at the tousled curls, his curved mouth. The piercing eyes.

He took another step forward and his hand found the back of my neck.

I wanted to say more. I wanted to say how much it meant to me that he'd carefully kept everything and how much it meant to me that he'd put in the work to do that and how much he meant to me. But saying words like that took functioning thoughts. The more his eyes darkened, the less I could say. The less I could think at all.

Slowly, he dipped down low and his lips pressed against mine.

A slow, sweet kiss. Chaste even. We pulled away at the same time, gazing at each other. The air was heavy. My heart beat so hard in my chest, I was half-convinced it wanted to escape.

With another step, Ryan forced me back to the lockers and I bumped against them. His lips found mine again. There wasn't anything he could say that he didn't say with that kiss. He lingered and his fingers tightened against my neck, drawing the kiss out of me, taking control. In one kiss, I could feel how long he'd waited to do this. I could taste how much he wanted to kiss me again.

I reached up to run my fingers through his curls but Ryan brushed my hand aside. This wasn't about me wanting to touch him. This was about him touching me . He fisted my hair with his other hand before he kissed me again, and again, and again.

The kisses weren't sweet and soft anymore. They were hard kisses, demanding kisses, shoving me up against the lockers kind of kiss. The kind of kisses you can't stop. Ryan grabbed my leg, hoisting it up to his hips and thrust me back to the lockers.

He claimed all the space between us, kissing me with the kind of insistence that left no room for air. No room to breathe.

I couldn't think with him touching me like that and Ryan didn't give a damn. He didn't care when I had to break away to gulp in air. His lips found my throat instead.

Fuck, I want him.

I'd never wanted anyone more.