In a Rush

Chapter 15

chapter fifteen

Ryan

Today’s Learning Objective:

Students will take old relationships to new heights.

Derby Day was at once the best and worst day of my life.

Best: I woke up wrapped around Emme again.

Worst: I was so hard that when I pried myself away from her and out of the bed, I had to grab onto a chair because I was dizzy.

Best: I knew she preferred to start each day with an orgasm.

Worst: I wasn’t involved in any part of that and thinking about it had me on edge, every muscle in my body drawn painfully tight.

Best: I talked to just about everyone on the long, long list of people Jakobi and I prioritized for this trip, and Emme was charming them into pleasant submission. I’d sign up for all this glad-handing and backslapping and boozing bullshit every day of the year if I could do it with her.

Worst: There were multiple occasions when I should’ve been following a conversation but was instead staring at Emme like I couldn’t decide if I was dreaming or awake. She had this ability to ask people questions about themselves and make it sound like she truly cared—an ability I did not share—and it made everyone eat out of her palm while she did it.

Including me.

My mind wasn’t built for an event that started and ended within two minutes. I understood the development of a defense in response to the other team and the mechanisms of offensive plays within a game. The race was impressive as hell, though as someone who played a sixty-minute game over the course of three hours, I had a hard time with blink and you’ll miss it sporting events.

We made the rounds at a handful of parties after the race, and while I could’ve quit the whole thing hours ago, there was one last elusive name on my list. One person who had to meet Emme this weekend if this plan was going to work for me.

We hadn’t technically been invited to the final party we stopped at though I didn’t see that as a roadblock. It was late enough that no one would be guarding the doors too aggressively and—while this was arrogant as fuck to admit—I didn’t need an invitation.

As expected, we strolled right in. Less than five minutes later, Wally Wallace—that was his real, legal name—sauntered across the covered patio toward us, a hungry little smile on his face. The guy never failed to come across as a complete creep.

I gripped Emme’s waist a little tighter than necessary when his gaze shifted toward her. “I’m going to apologize in advance for what’s about to happen,” I said under my breath.

She glanced up at me, eyes wide. “For—what?”

“My dear Mr. Ralston,” Wally drawled, wagging his jeweled walking stick at me. “I had no idea I’d bump into you at this soiree.” He leaned on the stick, leering at me with his small, watery eyes and a smile that was all teeth, no warmth. Jakobi had once referred to him as a groundhog and I couldn’t unsee that. “How fortuitous.”

I nodded. As a rule, I hated pretending to like people for the bullshit reason of it being good for business. If I had to gargle someone’s balls just to close a deal, I didn’t want the deal that much. And it wasn’t just pretending to like people that killed me but also associating with known creeps and passively approving of that creepy behavior.

Case in point: Here I was, throwing Emme to that fucking groundhog.

“Good to see you, Wally,” I said. “How about that race?”

He made a puttering noise, like an old VW Bug trying to get up a hill, but then patted the breast pocket of his linen jacket. Probably full of cash from his winnings. “Oh, it was all right, Mr. Ralston. It was all right indeed.” His attention turned to Emme then and he rapped his stick on the slate floor like a judge bringing court into session. “And who is this lovely lily?”

Again, I squeezed her waist. “Wally Wallace, this is my fiancée, Emmeline.”

“Well, my dear, allow me to extend my warmest felicitations on your impending nuptials.” Wally held out a hand to Emme while baldly eye-fucking her tits. Instead of shaking her hand like a non-deranged human being, he kissed his way across her knuckles. I gave him until the count of three in my head and it was a damn good thing he put his tongue back in his mouth before I reached three.

“Thank you,” she said while he licked his lips. Such a fucking creep.

“Aren’t you just a dove?” he purred, ghosting a hand over her cheek. He was lucky I let him keep that hand. “I’m sure I’ve seen this face before. You’re on that television program, the one with the lady doctors, isn’t it?”

Emme laughed. “Oh, no, I’m a teacher.”

“A schoolteacher,” he gasped. “What do you teach, Miss Emmeline?”

“Second grade.” She paused, waiting for his next question, but he was busy staring at her cleavage again. “It’s a really fun age,” she added.

“And you’re making an honest man out of Mr. Ralston here,” Wally said. “I suppose it would take someone who knows how to dole out the discipline.”

Emme cocked her head to the side but her smile never slipped. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Wally belted out a laugh and didn’t trouble himself with noticing that Emme and I hadn’t joined in. When he was finished, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted the corners of his eyes. “What a delight you are,” he said to Emme. To me, he tapped the handle of his stick against my chest and added, “It’s a fine thing to see you’re settling down. It’ll do you good.”

Wally made a show of bowing his head and kissing Emme’s knuckles again, and then found someone else to harass. Not a minute too soon.

When he was on the other side of the patio, Emme whispered, “What the fuck just happened here?”

“You just got me one very big step closer to sealing my franchise deal,” I said. “Which means we’re leaving right the fuck now.”

“Open your mouth.”

I stared up at Emme and the hands she held poised over my face. “Where did you learn this again?”

“Just do it,” she said, her fingers wiggling. “You’ll feel so much better.”

Little did she know, lying on a massive bed with my head in her lap while we shared a bottle of wine already had me feeling pretty great. “Remind me what it is you think you’re fixing.”

“Your jaw,” she cried. “All the clenching and grinding. You’re giving yourself headaches.”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

She gave me a flat stare. “Probably because it’s turned into one long, constant headache and you’ve just accepted the pain as part of your everyday life.”

When I didn’t respond—because she wouldn’t believe the amount of pain that I’d accepted as part of my life—she brought fingers to either side of my face, right near my ears. She pressed her fingertips down the line of my cheeks, moving in small circles as she went.

“Open,” she said, digging a bent finger into my cheek.

I gave up the fight. I didn’t care if she’d learned this from some snake oil science video she found on social media. I didn’t want her to stop.

“And close,” she said, slowly dragging that finger down the ridge of my jaw.

A sound grunted out of me as the motion unspooled some ancient store of pressure. “What the hell was that?”

She brought two fingers to either side of my jaw, slipping through my scruff and working up to my ear and then back down. “Just me being right once again.”

“Hmm. Should’ve known.”

I continued opening and closing my mouth on command, and Emme continued kneading and molding me. It reminded me of all those times when we were younger that she’d plop down beside me and announce I needed a hand massage after a long written exam or I should try a pumpkin face mask with her or something like that. Those were my favorite moments with Emme. I’d faked so many hand cramps the last year of high school that she looked up wrist exercises.

“What was the deal with the guy?” she asked after a few minutes. “The one who just needed a monocle to complete the rich villain look.”

“His grandparents started a bunch of gas stations across the southeast like a hundred years ago,” I said. “His dad turned it into a chain of highway off-ramp convenience store destinations but also bought big stakes in other businesses. Trucking companies, logistics, cardboard manufacturing. And now Wally is chairman of the board but has no hand in day-to-day operations. He sits on a pile of cash that he uses to buy whatever amuses him, among which currently includes soccer club franchise licenses.”

“And somehow he finds time to shove his tongue between random women’s fingers,” she mused. “Easy, easy there. Don’t go clenching that jaw up on me after I worked out some of those rocks.”

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that.” I glanced up at her as she went to work on my temples. “If there was any other way?—”

“I knew what I was getting into when we started playing fake fiancé,” she said. “You forget I’m very familiar with that old money crowd and all their weirdness.”

“I’m still sorry about it. Especially the slobber he left on your hand.”

“Why soccer?” she asked. “Did someone say fútbol so you went along with it and you didn’t realize the mistake until it was too late?”

“Funny.” I watched as she grinned, amused with herself. She was so damn cute. “You know why.”

She gave a shake of her head that said she wasn’t playing ball tonight. “If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”

A few strands of hair slipped over her ear and brushed her cheek. I loved the shorter length. She’d always worn it long but there was something that punched me in the gut about it now. I reached up, caught those strands between two fingers. “Because I actually like soccer.”

“Mmm. That would help.”

“What? No, I told you so ?”

Another obstinate head shake. “Nope.” But then, because she’d never been able to walk away from this topic without getting the last word in, she added, “But it’s good you’re excited about life after football.”

“I am,” I said, willing her to meet my eyes. She didn’t.

“It’s good you’re finally doing something because it’s what you want,” she said.

“I finally can.”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. I felt her soft sigh on my forehead. “You can tell me you had to go to Arizona and you had to enter the draft all you want but I know what’s true and what you’ve let everyone else believe is true.”

I closed my eyes as her knuckles pressed the hinge of my jaw. “That’s not fair, Em. I had to take care of my family.”

“What’s not fair is how every game you’ve ever played has been about your dad first and you a distant second,” she said. “The only reason you played in college is because everyone told you how proud he would’ve been, how all he’d ever wanted was to see you make it to that level, how much it would mean to him. Not a single person stopped to ask if you wanted that. They just told you how much your dad would’ve loved cheering for a Big 12 team.”

My father spent nearly half of my life dying. It was a slow avalanche that consumed everything in its path for years until it gained speed and wiped out everything.

He’d always been larger than life. He did everything, knew everyone, helped everywhere. He was the guy who’d come over to help you patch your roof after a storm, the one who hosted the best tailgate parties for any game, and the one who coached both girls’ field hockey and peewee football until he couldn’t stand on the sidelines any longer. There were photos of him carrying all four of my sisters through the snow one year, and another, from an earlier era, of him lifting a full keg one-handed.

When he was sick, everything we did was for him. Rearranging our bedrooms so he didn’t have to climb the stairs, rearranging schedules so someone would always be with him, rearranging the ways we thought about what it meant to be alive.

The least I could do was take the field every Friday night and play the game of my life. My father needed that joy, that hope. We all needed it. And I’d needed the purpose.

But then we rearranged our lives again, and that time it was to make room for grief and loss.

Those Friday nights turned into a tribute. Every game was played in his honor, a memorial service in many parts. My family—the whole town, really—had grieved and celebrated his life through those games but it’d never worked that way for me.

When the scholarships rolled in, I went as far from home as I could get. As far from the soft-eyed expressions and “Your dad’s up there cheering you on!” as I could get.

But it wasn’t far enough because college sports news reporters were obsessed with my backstory. There were four or five different human interest packages they played every game day. The worst was the one about me finally winning the state high school football championship less than five months after my father’s death and I’d dedicated the game to him. Never once had I dedicated a game to anyone, and my team won that game. But as far as that reel was concerned, my arm and I were the only things that mattered.

Pro ball had never appealed to me but my mom was going to have to sell the house in order to swing all the payment plans for Dad’s medical expenses and my sisters’ college tuition. She hadn’t let me worry about those things at U of A but when I realized the scope of the debt bearing down on her, I couldn’t come up with a better option.

So, I kept playing with the ghost at my back. The human interest stories never stopped. Draft day was—well, fuck, I’d dissociated through most of it but my origin story video nearly drowned itself in its own tears.

Now I was on the board for the leading ALS foundation in the US. I was their celebrity spokesperson and helped raise millions of dollars for them each year and matched every penny. I appeared in their commercials along with a photo montage of my dad coaching my peewee teams and I voiced a line about me carrying on his legacy of sportsmanship that made my stomach drop every time I heard it. I would’ve done it regardless of whether anyone knew my story, but goddamn, Emme was right.

She’d always been right.

I didn’t want to live in a life written by loss—and I knew now that my dad wouldn’t have wanted that either.

“And allow me to add,” Emme went on, “that there were years between the time he passed and when you got your draft day signing bonus. If taking care of your family was your biggest concern, you would’ve skipped college ball and gone to work on a lobster boat.”

“I wouldn’t have lasted a week on a lobster boat.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Think of it this way,” I said. “If I hadn’t entered the draft against your very specific advice, I wouldn’t be buying these teams which means I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me.” I turned my head and rubbed my face against her belly. She pushed her fingers through my hair. I wanted to pry my ribs open and show her my heart because I’d swear to god it only beat like this for her. “I’m not complaining. You don’t have to either.”

“I’ll stop bringing it up,” she said, “if you stop doing things you hate.”

“I don’t hate football.” When she didn’t volley that comment back to me, I added, “I started seeing a sports therapist three—four?—years ago. Whenever we lost to Minnesota in the Super Bowl.”

“That was five years ago, my friend.”

“Shit, really?” I tried to get ahold of time but her fingers on my skin were making it hard to think. “I started seeing this guy a couple of months after because I couldn’t reconcile the loss. It wasn’t—it didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t add up.”

“You did choke pretty hard in the third quarter.”

“I thought you didn’t watch my games.”

“It was like you forgot how to read your coverage and couldn’t find your receivers on the field.”

“Love you too,” I said. She gave me a smirked smile that made me think of lemony sunshine and sinking my teeth into her thigh. “He helped me think about things differently. To separate out all the things I’d packed into football and figure out which ones I need, which ones I don’t.”

“Has it helped?”

“I signed a contract extension, didn’t I?” I asked. “I could’ve walked away. I thought about it. I had enough money for my whole family to live comfortably the rest of their lives. I didn’t need anything else from the game.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I realized I don’t hate football,” I said simply. “It was possible I never did but it’d all grown so cluttered and complicated.”

“So, you chose it. For once.”

“Yeah.” I shifted to wrap an arm around her waist. “You’re the only person who ever noticed that it wasn’t my choice. I never forgot that, even when I did the exact opposite of what you wanted.”

“I just wanted you to—gah. Never mind. I’m happy it’s better for you and I’m happy there are good things waiting for you in the future.”

You’re the only good thing that matters.

“Did therapy help with everything at home?”

A stitch pulled too tight in my chest. That was always the spot. My therapist liked to say big emotions took up space inside us, and while I’d rejected that theory for longer than necessary, I knew now that my grief lived under my breastbone. I felt it swell every August as the memories of his final days crowded around me and again every time Mom and Gramma CeCe lobbied for me to come home for the holidays. Things were better when I kept my distance.

And I could afford to take them and my sisters on tropical holiday vacations so it all worked out.

“Yeah,” I said, though it sounded halfhearted even to me. “Still working on it.”

“That’s okay.” She gave me the same reassuring smile she’d given me all through high school but especially that last year when most days I couldn’t remember how to breathe. “I haven’t figured out things at home either.”

“We’ll figure it out together.” I burrowed into her belly again. I loved how soft and luscious she felt. “We always do.”

She ran the backs of her fingers from my forehead to my chin and up again, and I thought I was going to float away. I hadn’t been this chill in a decade. Longer, probably. “It’s fun being your fake fiancée,” she continued. “I’ve missed hanging out with you and now I get to do it while glaring at anyone who shakes their boobs in your face.”

“I don’t think that…happened,” was all I could say.

“I know you’re not blind, Ryan. You’re fully aware it happens all the time.”

I shrugged. I wasn’t debating this while her nails scraped at my scalp. Certainly not touching the fake fiancé comments.

“We make a good team,” she said, reaching for her glass on the nightstand. “And drinking absurdly expensive wine in fancy hotels with you isn’t bad either.”

“We are a good team,” I said, watching as her tongue peeked out to catch a drop of wine. “I always knew we would be.”

Emme was not in a good mood when she woke up the next morning.

She emerged from the shower wearing a hotel robe that didn’t look like it fit too well and her hair twisted up in a towel. A cloud of steam billowed out behind her like a personal army of fog.

She barely spoke to me as we packed for the airport, and tossed a few pillows to the floor that’d angered her in some way. I figured she was hungover. After nonstop liquor and not nearly enough food or water to soak it up this weekend, anyone would be in rough shape. And we’d made the genius decision to top it all off with red wine last night.

“I’m cold,” Emme said, snatching a hooded sweater out of my hands. “Need to borrow this.”

She returned a few minutes later wearing the sweater with a pair of leggings. She looked…amazing. So good I couldn’t speak. I had to turn around while she dried her hair so she wouldn’t see the smile on my face.

The ride to the airport was quiet, which I attributed to the hangover. I didn’t think much of it because we were both on the struggle bus. I couldn’t even think about a mint julep without my stomach sloshing.

But when we boarded the plane, Emme more or less collapsed into her seat and curled herself into a ball. I didn’t know what to make of that. I kept an eye on her as we took off, glancing over the frame of my iPad every few minutes.

Once we were airborne, she pulled the hood up, tucked her knees into the sweater, and dropped her head to her folded arms. She was pale, none of her usual rosiness riding high on her cheeks. Even her lips were pale.

I leaned forward, my arms braced on my thighs. “What’s goin’ on over there, Muggsy?”

She shook her head but kept her eyes closed. “Cramps.”

Ah.

Well.

Okay.

I could work with that.

She’d always had a bad time with cramps. Gone in for surgery during college because of it too. Endometriosis. They’d said she’d probably need more surgeries. I didn’t know if she was at that point again. I just wanted to make it better.

I went to the back of the cabin to grab a few things from my bag and put the attendant to work making some hot chocolate. Kneeling in front of Emme, I pried her hand open and dropped a few tablets in her palm. “Take these,” I said, holding a glass of water for her. She accepted it with shaky fingers. “Good girl. How about some blankets?”

I slipped my hand under the sweater and pressed my palm to the small of her back. She’d always liked that when she had cramps in high school. She’d called me her hot water bottle. I’d been dumped twice—no, three times—by girls who’d found that troubling.

Maybe they’d been right but I’d never cared much. It wasn’t like I’d gone looking for girlfriends. They’d always appointed themselves to that role.

“You’re so warm,” she groaned.

“Then come sit with me while the meds kick in,” I said.

She considered this for several long seconds before giving me a resigned shrug. “Only if you tell me if it’s uncomfortable for you.”

I was more likely to chew my arm off, but I said, “Yeah.”

I reclined the seat all the way back and Emme settled on her side, her head on my chest and a leg thrown over one of mine. I tucked the blanket around her and rubbed her back while she dozed.

The hot chocolate was ready but I decided against waking Emme. We could always reheat it. Or make more. To my mind, the only reason to have this much money was to give the people in my life every single thing they needed, exactly when they needed it.

If my girl wanted a fresh cup of hot chocolate, she got a fresh cup of hot chocolate.

I stared at the ring on her finger as she slept. I’d spent an entire week looking for the right one. Jakobi almost strangled me. Apparently, other people didn’t need to visit eighteen jewelers in four cities to find the right ring. I doubted other people were hoping their fake fiancée actually fell in love with them before the jig was up.

Emme shifted a few times, which was only fair because I was about as soft as a concrete basement. Eventually, after some blanket fluffing and several frustrated huffs about the armrest being in her way, she ended up straddling my thigh.

We could’ve gotten away with this the same way we got away with a lot of the handsy shit we did—by systematically ignoring it—but something about this was different from kissing for cameras and jaw massages.

And that something was the way I started rocking her against my thigh as I rubbed her back.

At first I was just trying to shift the position of my irritable hip, but her breath caught and she pressed her face deep into my shoulder when we connected at a certain angle.

So I did it again.

It was gentle, barely more than a nudge when I stroked my palm up her spine. I kept that up for a few minutes, saying not a fucking word and keeping my gaze on the ceiling. The last thing we needed was some eye contact to make this too real.

Then Emme decided to participate.

When my hand moved up her back, she rolled her hips to meet the pressure. There was no way she didn’t notice my sharp inhale or the hard flex of my fingers against her skin.

The hood concealed most of her face and I was sure she preferred it that way. As much as I wanted to see her eyes glaze over with need, it was enough to watch her hips moving under the blanket and hear her tiny, half-swallowed sighs of pleasure.

Those little sighs lit up every corner and fold of my brain. I loved them. Wanted to hear them every day for the rest of my life.

But I couldn’t think about anything but the warm, glorious place where she rubbed herself against my leg. My joggers were thin enough that I could feel the heat radiating out of her and I was hit with a staggering need to slip my hand under those leggings and find out how wet she was.

I didn’t, but god, I wanted to.

I wanted so much. Wanted to get a handful of her ass and show her exactly how to ride this out. Wanted her tits in my face. Wanted to take her hand and show her how hard she’d made me.

But she learned all about hard when she started sliding her leg up and down my shaft.

I shifted a hand to her hip to give it to her just the way she needed and the responding groan that vibrated through her body almost had me popping off. I had to wait, had to hold out, but she wasn’t making it easy.

The hungry roll of her hips against my leg was almost too much to watch. I knew how those hips would bounce on my dick, how they’d jiggle when I pounded into her from behind.

In my head, I had her stripped of everything but my sweater. I nipped at her breasts through the wool while she sank down on me. Kissed her neck, her jaw, her shoulders while she bucked and screamed. Held her tight while she came, even tighter while I came.

I forced my eyes open and saw her tongue dart out to wet her lips. Fuck, I hadn’t even thought about her tongue yet.

My hold on her hip was unforgiving, my fingers digging into the plush skin there and driving her harder, faster. But she met every rock with a roll of her own, with shuddering breaths and deep, perfect moans.

I wanted to say something. Anything. I wanted her to know how gorgeous she was, how incredible she felt, how much I wanted this—how I’d always wanted this.

Though it didn’t matter what I wanted because Emme’s thighs tightened around me as she whispered, “Oh god, oh god, oh god. Yes, fuck, yes. ”

“That’s right,” I said, low and easy like we weren’t rewriting everything we were to each other. “Let me make you feel better.”

I rolled my lips together as she went on rocking against me, slower and a little shaky now but still blindingly hot. She dragged the flat of her thigh over my cock with enough pressure and friction to make me forget my name.

Something like “Right there” and “Don’t you fucking stop” babbled out of me as I came so hard and so long I was concerned I’d damaged something. Never before had I felt my body hollow itself out—and then keep going.

Neither of us moved. We didn’t say anything. I just stroked her back and kissed the top of her head and let myself enjoy the aftershocks. Her skin was damp under my palm and I loved how hard she’d worked for it. Even though she’d kept her face from me, she wasn’t shy.

There was nothing shy about dry humping.

My shirt was soaked like I’d been hit with several water balloons and I could survive the discomfort but Emme was having a hell of a time staying out of the mess. After one last kiss to her hair, I climbed out of the seat and tucked the blanket around her. “I’m gonna change. Stay right here.”

When I finished cleaning up, I found Emme curled up in her seat and working very hard at feigning sleep.

I sat down and braced my elbows on my thighs. I was still woozy from the orgasm, from all of it, and I wanted to pick her up and bring her back to my seat but she’d chosen this. She knew what I wanted and she made a different choice for herself.

I had to respect that. I couldn’t bully my way in—no more than I already had—just because rubbing up against her while fully clothed was the best sex of my life.