33. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Leo
The February sun beats down on the Seattle Striker's home turf as I run warm-up drills with the team before our first official match of the season. Though it's only, like, two degrees Celsius—Fahrenheit still doesn't make sense to me, despite living in this country for half a decade—I'm already sweating buckets.
The air crackles with anxious excitement, all of us feeling the pressure to perform today. Not only because of Coach Carter's expectations but also those of the fans. We came out on top last season, and it won't go down well with anyone if we fail to defend our title.
That said, soccer fans in the US are significantly more chill than those back in the UK, where a person's favorite team is seen more as a religion. Seriously. You should see what happened at the 2020 Euros finals. People went fucking crazy. Borderline psychotic, actually.
Anyway, my point is, the boys and I are desperate to kick the season off with a win.
"Yo, Sully!"
My gaze flicks to Arun, stretching his hamstrings several yards away. His thick, dark hair glints in the sunlight, and I self-consciously run a hand through my own. Damn, Brynn has given me a complex.
"Your hot nanny is here." He shoots me a wide, salacious smile then wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
"Don't let Alex hear you say that." I force a smile to cover the chaos his words wreak on my nervous system.
I knew she was bringing Salem to watch me today, but it doesn't stop my heart from beating furiously and my stomach to somersault with something not unlike butterflies.
Jesus Christ.
I'm a twenty-nine-year-old single father, and I've got fucking butterflies.
Arun nods his head toward the stands, directing my attention to where the woman I haven't been able to stop thinking about watches us with my daughter on her hip, just behind the barrier.
I don't even look back at my teammate before jogging over to them. It's thoughtless—subconscious, really. It's like someone has sewn a thread through my heart and is pulling me over there, her presence drawing me toward her like we're opposite poles of a magnet.
She has her long hair tied back into a ponytail that swishes behind her as she bounces Salem up and down. When she twists, I’m just able to make out her brother’s name and number written on the back of her shirt.
And damn it all to hell, it should be the number eleven displayed there, right underneath the letters of my name in block fucking capitals.
At my approach, her perfect mouth splits into a breathtaking smile, her lips painted a dizzying shade of red to match the team colors. I'm hit with the mental image of them wrapped around my cock, her scarlet lipstick smearing over the silky skin.
Shit.
I need to get a fucking grip.
Dropping my gaze away from her sparkling smile, I drop my lips to Salem's head. "Hey, baby girl. Have you come to watch Daddy play?"
My daughter giggles and stretches a little hand out to touch my cheek.
"She's very excited," Brynn says, forcing my eyes to look back up into hers. "So excited, actually, I'll be surprised if she doesn't crash out by half-time."
Salem bubbles a loud laugh, corroborating the point.
"I don't care if she falls asleep before the first whistle," I admit. "It just means a lot that she's here."
That you're both here , I want to say.
But after the sheer panic on her face after our almost-kiss the other night, I keep the words to myself.
Behind me, Coach blows his whistle. "Sully! Get your ass back over here!"
"Oops." I grimace, flashing Brynn a bashful smile. "I better get back."
She licks her lips then purses them together to fight her own. And goddamn it, it's hard not to pop a boner right here in the middle of the stadium.
Giving Salem another quick kiss, I turn away.
"Kick ass out there today!" Brynn yells after me.
"Always." I flick her a wink. "Oh, and Brynn?"
"Yeah?"
"Next time you come to watch me play, it better be my number written on your back."
We lost the game.
3-2.
And though I scored a goal from the center line—which was pretty fucking spectacular, actually—we sucked as a collective, and our opposition used it to their advantage.
Arun got a verbal beatdown by Coach in the locker room afterward. We all did, to be fair, but he got it worse as the goalkeeper. Two of the goals we conceded were blamed on our defending players, but he made a royal cock-up in the eighty-third minute when he dropped the fucking ball.
Literally.
It was slow-moving, low-power, and it slipped through his hands like a toddler trying to catch for the first time.
He's in a foul mood now. But then, we all are.
The gray cloud of disappointment follows me the rest of the day. Even as I rock Salem to sleep, her eyelashes fluttering peacefully over her cheeks, I can't stop replaying the match in my head and kicking myself for all the shit I should have done differently. And for a long while, I just sit on the floor of my daughter's bedroom, holding her as she sleeps.
It's almost nine p.m. by the time I walk back into the main living space.
Brynn looks over at me in surprise, one hand holding a glass of white wine, the other flicking through the pages of a fashion magazine that rests in her lap.
Retrieving my own glass of wine from the kitchen, I take a seat beside her on the sofa.
"I thought you'd fallen asleep," she says, setting the magazine down on the coffee table and hugging her legs to her chest. Resting her chin on her knees, she peers up at me through her eyelashes.
God, she's fucking beautiful.
All shimmering eyes and flushed cheeks from the wine. As always when she's at home, she's wearing the smallest pair of pajamas. Pink-and-white-striped silk. Soft against her long legs that are tan somehow despite the Seattle fall weather.
It's like the universe took all my fantasies and built her out of them.
"I was thinking," I reply.
"About the game?"
I nod.
"You played well today," she offers gently. "That goal?" she whistles. "Fucking beautiful."
Her words don't erase my disappointment at today's loss, but they sure do boost my ego. I find myself sitting straighter, my chest puffing slightly with pride.
"Thanks." I shoot her a lopsided grin. "But I played like shit the rest of the game. I missed a chance to pass in the first half because I was too focused on scoring." Because you were watching, and I wanted to impress you. " Fucking selfish of me, really. If I'd been thinking about the team, I'd have passed, and the other team wouldn't have intercepted the ball and then gone on to score. We could have at least reached a draw if—"
The touch of her hands on my shoulders cuts me off mid-thought. I hadn't even noticed her get up, let alone round the couch to stand behind me.
When her delicate fingers begin kneading my muscles, I have to fight to suppress a shudder. "Stop beating yourself up," she says, her hands working fucking miracles.
"But I need to know what I should have done differently."
"You already do." Her thumb finds a particularly tender spot in my shoulder, rubbing in small circles, and my eyes close as I let myself relax into her touch. "You know what you could have done better, and next time, you won't make the same mistakes. So, sitting here driving yourself crazy with things you can't change isn't going to do anything but make you feel shitty."
To be honest, it's difficult to concentrate on what she's saying when she's rubbing her hands over me. She's only touching my shoulders, but my body is reacting to her as if she were on her knees about to suck my dick.
My heart is beating almost to the point of cardiac arrest, every breath carries extra weight, and I'm hard as a fucking rock. It's a goddamn miracle she hasn't already noticed. My track pants leave very little to the imagination, so I'm pretty much saluting her right now.
"You can stop now," I choke out. "Thank you."
Her hands fall away, her absence bringing with it an immediate, bone-deep chill. I have half a mind to beg her to touch me again, but I'd probably spontaneously ejaculate the moment she does. So, it's safer for my dignity—and the well-being of both of us—if I don't.
I pull a blanket from the back of the sofa and throw it over my lap as she sits back down.
Tossing a curious glance at my lap, she asks, "Cold?"
"Yep."
"Can we share?"
She doesn't wait for my response before she's lifting back the edge of the blanket and slipping her legs beneath it. I feel them slide against mine, the heat of her bare skin burning me even through the material of my sweats.
As discreetly as I can, I sneak a hand down to my crotch and adjust myself, tucking my straining dick into the waistband of my boxers. But he isn't happy about it. Horny bastard has his sights set on one thing and one thing only.
"So, how's your work going?" I ask her, my voice strained. "The influencer thing, I mean."
Her eyes widen in shock at my question. I've never once shown an interest in her job. Hell, I've belittled it at every opportunity.
But that was before.
Before her brother made me realize how much of a judgmental, jaded piece of shit I've turned into over the past year. Before I started catching glimpses of the woman behind the mask. Before every waking moment of my damn day became possessed by thoughts of her, like a twelve-year-old with a crush.
It's embarrassing, actually.
All of it is.
Lifting a skeptical brow, she asks, "Why do you want to know?"
"Because I'm interested," I tell her simply.
And it's true.
I asked because I genuinely want to know. I want to know everything about her, and it's pissing me the fuck off.
How I've gone from cursing her existence to being borderline obsessed with her is a plot twist I never saw coming. It must have been a glitch in the matrix or the universe making a mistake. Whichever one it is, somebody's getting fired.
Because Brynn and I together would be chaos waiting to happen.
And there's a real possibility of my premature demise if I give in to my urges and do all the things to her body that I've been imagining for too long now.
"Yeah, it's good." She pauses, rethinking. "Actually, I'm kind of struggling."
"Why?"
She shrugs. "Just slipping behind on content a bit."
"Because of Salem?"
"No. Well, sort of. But it's my fault, really. I just need to manage my time better and use my weekends to catch up."
My heart sinks. Because if she isn't getting her work done, it doesn't matter how good she is with my daughter, or even how comfortable and happy Salem is with her. This was only ever a favor. It was never meant to be permanent, and even though, at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have given a shit that it was compromising her social media work, I care now.
I don't want her to give up something important to her just to make my life easier.
"If this isn't working for you, I can figure something out," I offer quietly, though it kills me to do it.
I told her when she agreed to be Salem's nanny that I'd be looking for a replacement as soon as possible. And I wasn't lying, not intentionally. I just never got around to doing it.
Never thought about it again after that, actually.
"What?" She blinks. "No, I didn't mean it like that."
"I know. But you have your own life, and if you aren't able to live it just so you can help me out, then I wouldn't blame you if you took a step back."
Her smile is gentle, grateful, and heart-stopping. "I'm okay for now, I promise. But I'll let you know if anything changes."
But I don't feel relieved.
There's a tightening in my chest that lingers long after she has wished me goodnight and padded down the hall to her bedroom. It keeps me frozen on the couch until the early hours of the morning, even knowing how much I'll regret staying up so late tomorrow when Salem wakes me up at the asscrack of dawn.
All I know is I need to do something. I don't want to lose her. For Salem's sake, obviously.
But maybe...a little bit for mine too.