Chapter 23
Wet-Weather Rugby: A style of rugby played during a rainy match that focuses on safer options—short kicks, keeping the ball tight, fewer risky
passes.
Translation: The calm before the storm.
Wolf
It’s pouring when I get off the bus in Boulder to find Everly’s white SUV parked and waiting for me, wipers whipping back
and forth at rapid speed. Bracing myself, I sprint across the flooded parking lot and jump into her car, sliding into the
passenger seat, out of breath and soaked from that short distance.
“Jeez, it’s really coming down out there,” Everly says, her eyes moving down over my damp shirt and shorts, her gaze lingering
on my thigh where my tattoo is etched. Every time she does it, I’m tempted to get us both naked and show her every last inch
of ink on my body.
I push my dripping hair back and can’t help but notice her own hair is slightly damp, as if she was caught in the rain earlier
as well.
The last thing I need to see is this girl wet in her car.
I look forward and say nothing as she pulls out of the bus station parking lot, unsure what would come out of my mouth if I did.
I was distracted at practice. My mind was irritatingly consumed with Everly while doing drills, lunch with my team, icing my shoulder, pretending to listen to Fergie ramble on about his weekend plans.
I thought about her so much my fucking head hurts.
The silence that follows is thick and damp as we breathe heavily, our chests rising and falling in unison, both clearly feeling
a level of tension that wasn’t here this morning.
It’s painful sitting here and pretending I don’t know the shape of her nipples through a thin white tank top. Or how incredible
she tastes when she comes on my tongue.
God, I want to fuck her.
“Hey, do you think any of your teammates would be interested in participating in quarterly matchmaking clinics?” Everly’s
sunshiny voice interrupts my inner brooding, and I turn to frown at her like she’s speaking another language.
“What?”
“Like the ones I used to host at Trinity,” she elaborates as if that will answer my question.
“Why would you host matchmaking clinics?”
“Because so many of your teammates wanted to help with the auction, and I can’t use them all. This would be a good way to
connect them to people. Most aren’t from the area, and they seemed interested in the idea when I mentioned it. I’m sure Judy
would let me host them at the Mercantile. Claire has some friends that might be up for joining too. Could be really fun.”
My eyes blink in disbelief. “You literally can’t help yourself, can you?”
“What?”
“Meddling in other people’s lives.”
“It’s not meddling. It’s matchmaking.” She rolls her eyes like the difference is so obvious.
“Don’t you have enough going on in your own life to worry about?” I bite, my tone harsh as I feel like she’s regressing back
to the childish busybody she was at college.
Her eyes snap to mine. “What do you have against me helping people find love?”
“Why on earth do you care so much about other people’s love lives?”
“I like to believe that there’s a right person out there for everyone. There’s a comfort I find in that.”
I shake my head dismissively. “Utter shite.”
“Says you,” she snaps, her voice rising in pitch. “Not me. I love love. I need love. I need to believe it’s possible for others, or I’ll feel hopeless. I’ll just . . .” Her voice trails off
as she sighs heavily. “If I don’t believe in love, then who even am I?”
“Normal? Fuck. What’s so bad about just being normal?”
“I don’t want to be normal. I want to be extraordinary,” she exclaims, her hands tight on the wheel. “Even at the expense
of my own love life.”
I shake my head and mutter, “You’re too much.”
She jerks her head to look at me for a moment before turning back to face the road as rain pounds on the windshield and the
wipers thrash back and forth.
After a long, heated moment, she says softly, “You don’t need to tell me I’m too much. I’m already fully aware.” She sniffs
loudly, and I look over to see her chin trembling slightly. “I’m too much. Too dramatic. I overwhelm people, and I push them
to an uncomfortable place where the only thing they want from me is distance. Like you.”
“That’s not what—”
“This has nothing to do with you and me,” she cuts me off and continues, “but it’s a perfect example of why I shouldn’t have
even tried to be your friend. Friends are expendable. They can distance themselves at a moment’s notice. Or they can decide
to one-star review me on Instagram. Or betray my trust, like Taya. They can decide when my too much becomes insufferable and cut and run. Thank God I have my family, or I’d truly be alone in this world.”
I stare back at her, my heart pounding in my chest at the sense of defeat in her voice. It rips right through me, and I hate
that she feels expendable. She’s not expendable. She’s more extraordinary than she realizes.
I open my mouth to say that, but my words are cut off when the car jolts hard to the left and a sickening pop-hiss vibrates
under our feet.
“What the hell?” Everly gasps, her eyes moving to the dash of her car to figure out what’s wrong with her vehicle.
“Pull over,” I exclaim, my voice tense as my head jerks back and forth to look for oncoming vehicles. “Over there. You need
to get out of the road.”
“I’m trying,” Everly argues, turning her wheel with great effort as she moves toward a pull-off area that overlooks a cliff.
“You blew a tire,” I state when I see the tire pressure reading on her digital screen light up. I blow out a long breath to
calm myself down once we’re safe and off the road.
“Shit,” she gasps as she puts the car in Park and moves to open her door.
I reach across her lap to pull it shut. “Stay here. And stay buckled up. I’ll deal with it.”
Her eyes narrow on me. “I know how to change a tire, Wolf.”
“Please, Everly, just listen to me for once. It is fucking dangerous out here,” I repeat, cutting her a sharp look of warning
as I open my side and step out into sheets of rain that soak me almost instantly.
My hands tremble as I glance down at the back tire on my side and discover a shard of metal lodged into the wheelbase. I look around, grateful for the lack of traffic on this road as I hustle around to open the back of her Range Rover to hunt for a spare.
Just as I reach down to grab it under the floorboard, a hazy blonde figure comes running around the bumper. “Everly, get back
in the car,” I growl as she huddles under the tailgate for shelter. The rain is deafening as it hammers above us in loud,
metallic thuds.
She pins me with a challenging look. “My dad and three very overprotective uncles made sure I knew how to change a flat, so
I’m changing this flat.” She shoves me out of her way and begins to unlatch the jack clamped beside the tire as rain drips
down her temples. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment.”
My blood pressure spikes as she stubbornly shivers in the cold and struggles to lift both the tire and the jack. I glance
up to see if this rain is going to pass anytime soon, but the clouds are dark and ominous, one stacked on top of another,
looking very much like the war going on inside my head.
“Would you please just let me do it?” I grind out, feeling like my head is going to explode if I stand here for one more second.
What is she trying to prove by doing this herself?
“I know how to do this,” she argues back, deciding to grab the jack first. She moves past me to head over to the afflicted
area, and when I reach for the spare, she growls. Literally growls at me as she squats down in the pouring rain to begin lifting
the vehicle.
“Please, Everly,” I beg, standing in the rain beside her. “I know you know how to do this. But you have to know . . .” My
voice trails off, my breath steamy in the summer storm.
“What?” Everly asks, stopping what she’s doing to stand up and glower at me. She shoves her hair out of her face, her jean
jacket soaked through as she wraps her arms around herself in the rain. “Tell me, Conri. What do I have to know?”
My eyes rove over her whole face—the mascara lines running down her cheeks, her red, runny nose, the way her lush lips drip with rainwater as she shrugs back at me like this is who she is, take it or leave it.
“I like how you’re too much,” I state, my voice raw and ragged as rain cascades between us. “It’s refreshing.”
“Refreshingly annoying.” She squints back at me.
“No, it’s not,” I state firmly, my eyes fixed on hers. “It takes a lot of confidence to be so utterly yourself all the time.
Don’t ever be less. You’re exactly enough.”
Her mouth falls open, confusion in her eyes as she stares back at me and struggles with how to respond to that.
I’m playing with fire.
But fuck me, she already said she wants to burn, and now I want to burn with her.
I don’t give her time to collect her thoughts. Instead, I grab her by her jacket and haul her against me to crush my mouth
to hers. She gasps, lips soft and warm against the cold slickness of the rain, and I groan in satisfaction when I kiss her
like I’m dying of thirst and only the taste of rain on her lips could quench me.
In the few days since I had her in my bed, I haven’t stopped thinking about her. Craving her. Wanting her. Walking away from
her in the hay mound took every ounce of strength I had.
And I’m done being strong.
She makes me fucking weak.
I know there are a lot of unknown variables here. My lack of permanence in Colorado, the fact that she’s my sister’s best
friend, the fact that I can’t think straight when I’m near her and that I’m certain she could ruin me. But Christ help me,
in this moment, I don’t give a damn anymore.
Her hands wrap around my neck as she arches into me, her tongue gliding against mine with delicious savagery, like we’re trying to climb inside each other and never come out.
I press her back against the side of her SUV, not caring that the rain is running down our faces, not caring that passing cars could see.
This isn’t careful. This isn’t friendly. This is everything I swore I’d never do.
She tastes like mint, rain, and every bad decision I ever wanted to make. My hands move up to her face, gripping her by the
neck to tip her head back so I can kiss her deeper, harder, until she’s trembling against me, and I can’t tell if it’s from
the cold or me.
I break the kiss, my breath ragged against her raw lips, swollen from the pressure of our embrace.
“What are you doing?” she gasps, her body arched into mine, her belly rubbing against the ridge of my cock.
“I’m going to change this fucking tire, take you up the mountain, strip you bare, and fuck you until neither of us can think
anymore.”
Her lips part.
“Any objections?”
She shakes her head, stunned into rare silence. Without a word, I grab her arm and shuffle her over to the passenger side,
open it, and use my hand to protect her head as she slides into the seat.
I reach in and buckle her. “Don’t fucking move,” I warn, my tone lethal. “And don’t help me with the tire.”
The corner of her mouth quirks, but thankfully, she lets me shut the door.
When I turn around, I run my hands through my hair, flicking the excess water off as I stare up at the sky and try to get
my head on straight to finish the task at hand. “Focus, Wolf. Get the tire changed, and then . . . and then . . .”