Chapter Eighteen Danny
? Chapter Eighteen
? Danny
T he hurt in Taryn’s voice last spring when she’d called me after her dipshit boyfriend had ended it with her had made all the difference in my future plans. Instead of burying my own pain and disappointment at losing her to a redeployment in the Air Force, thereby following right in the captain’s narrow and unhappy footsteps, I’d made up my mind to go after what I truly wanted.
Taryn Hamilton.
After I enrolled in Mountain State, I’d always made sure to touch her as often as I could when we were together. Hold her hand, slide my arm across the back of her chair, bump her shoulder with mine then stay close. Mainly I wanted my hands on her, but I was also trying to gauge where she was with us. Asking her outright would have been the grown-up thing to do. The honest thing. But if she’d said she only saw me as a friend, I’d probably do something stupid like head back to the military.
Two years ago, I’d taken a chance and kissed her—I could still feel her soft lips on mine—but my timing had sucked. If I’d kissed her before I’d been on my way out of town, I might have moved us out of the friend zone then. But it wouldn’t have been fair. I was headed to Germany for a year. Asking her to wait for me when I wasn’t even in the country would have been a dick move, and I knew it. Honestly, kissing her was a dick move, but she was so pretty standing there with that light snow falling in her hair, her cheeks bright with the cold, and I’d wanted her for so damn long.
Seeing her this afternoon with that preppy asshole flipped a switch inside of me. Taryn was my girl—had been my girl from the minute we met. It was only a matter of time before we found our way to each other. After nearly blowing it by being the grown-up and not asking her to wait four years ago, I’d be damned if I blew it now when we had a real chance.
Except I blew it.
There’s blowing kisses and then there’s blowing kisses . After all the careful buildup to our first kiss as a couple, I’d lost it. Kissed the hell out of her without any warning. Without any conversation. Without telling her how I truly felt about her—about us. How the hell had I let myself turn into a Neanderthal—the type who staked his claim on his woman by dragging her into the bushes and kissing her senseless?
Oh. Yeah. Seeing her smiling and horsing around with someone who wasn’t bothering to hide his interest tipped me right over the edge. The plan had been to catch up with her between classes, maybe grab a coffee, cajole her into smiling and horsing around with me . Instead, I’d hurt her. Never mind she’d kissed me back as if she’d been waiting all her life to kiss me. Soft, sweet, tentative at first, and then so wild she’d left me as hard as a brick. Which explained why when she ran away from me I couldn’t catch her.
By the time I’d followed her to the Union, she’d disappeared. I’d spent the next hour wandering around searching the place inside and out, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Though I texted her about twenty times, she didn’t respond. That was when I knew I was in real trouble.
Finn caught up with me as I was making one last pass around the cafeteria and dragged my ass to practice. If not for his timely arrival, I probably would have fucked up that part of my life too.
As it was, my head was not in the game.
“What’s going on with you, man?” Callahan asked as he drove us home from the facility. “In the two months since you joined the team, I think I’ve maybe seen you drop five passes total.” He shot me a side-eye. “Today I’m not sure I saw you catch even that many. I’m surprised Wiley doesn’t have your ass doing an hour of burpees right now.”
I waved a hand in front of my face. “Whatever.” Turning my head, I stared unseeingly out the side window. At the moment I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about football.
“The fuck? What happened today? You fail a test or something?” He wheeled his truck around the roundabout near our place and turned it for home.
“You could call it that.”
“Anything I can help with? Marketing isn’t as math-oriented as engineering, but I’ve taken some calculus,” he offered as he parked his rig in the driveway at the house.
“School’s fine, all right? It’s not a school problem.” I reached behind the seat for my duffel bag and stepped out of his ride.
“Oh, fuck. It’s a girl, isn’t it? The girl,” he amended.
“What are you talking about?” I asked as I unlocked the front door, walked inside, and kicked my shoes off in the foyer.
“The girl you hang out with most nights of the week. The one you skip team parties for.” ’Han drew his hoodie over his head and hung it on a peg by the door before following me into the kitchen.
Yeah, my heart ached, my head was a scrambled mess, and my body didn’t feel like it belonged to me—hadn’t since Finn dragged my ass to practice when all I’d wanted to do was find my girl and make things right with her. Apologize for my colossal dick move. Have an adult conversation about the clusterfuck of not being together for the past five years. But I’d just spent the past three hours running my ass off, and in spite of everything I was starving.
Having a post-practice empty belly was an unfortunate circumstance considering it meant I was going to face the third degree from my roommate before I’d be allowed to eat. Since it was my turn to cook, I couldn’t disappear into my room, come out when the food was ready, and take it back upstairs away from prying questions.
Doing my best not to engage, I kept my back to Callahan as I pulled stir-fry ingredients from the fridge. At least I’d had the foresight to buy pre-cut meat and veggies, which would cut down on cook time (read: time he had to interrogate me).
“What happened? You guys having a fight?” he asked as he prepped a protein shake.
“You mind fixing me one of those too?” I asked, nodding to his shaker bottle.
As I pulled a massive frying pan from the drawer under the oven and set it on the stove, ’Han measured protein powder and water into another shaker bottle, then he leaned against the sink with a bottle in each hand.
“Are you practicing to play in a mariachi band, ’Han?” Finn asked, a grin in his voice as he walked into the kitchen.
Callahan accompanied his bottle-shaking with a ridiculous little booty dance that managed to twitch a grin out of me until Finn opened his mouth again.
“Hey, Danny, what the hell was up with you in practice today? Someone grease your gloves or something?” he asked on his way to the fridge to grab a gallon of milk.
“Exactly what I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of since we left the facility,” ’Han helpfully chimed in.
“I know this might come as a shock to two rock stars such as yourselves, but occasionally people have bad days.” I shot Callahan a look over my shoulder as I stirred chunks of stew meat around in hot oil to brown them. “Maybe Coach Wiley recognized that after two straight months of nothing but good days, I was having a one-off. Maybe that’s why he didn’t wear me out with burpees after practice.” I unwrapped two enormous packages of vegetables and dumped them into the pan with the meat, stirring them to coat them with oil. After filling a pot with hot water and setting it on the stove to boil, I went back to stirring dinner.
“Damn, it smells good enough to eat in here,” Bax said as he strolled into the kitchen to join the rest of us. “What’s for dinner, Flyboy?”
“Stir-fry over rice. Someone wanna set the table?” I finished off my protein shake while I continued stirring the meal.
“At least getting in a fight with your girlfriend only impedes your ball-catching abilities,” Callahan said as he pulled some plates from the cupboard.
“You’re in a fight with your girlfriend?” Finn asked as he added silverware to the table settings.
Blowing a breath at the ceiling, I reached for patience. Ignoring his question, I measured rice into the boiling water and set the pot on a trivet in the middle of the table. After checking the flavoring of the food frying in the pan, I stirred more teriyaki and soy into the mix.
“You gonna answer Finn?” A hint of irritation colored Bax’s voice.
“It’s none of your business.”
“It is when you’re our roommate and teammate,” Callahan said as he set another trivet on the table.
Cautiously, I lowered the hot frying pan full of food onto the trivet then I grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat at the table.
“I might have done something boneheaded today.” I spooned rice onto my plate and covered it in savory meat and veg. “And now I have to figure out how to fix it.” Putting a hand up, I added, “But I’m not looking for advice.”
“Maybe you need it though,” Finn said as he loaded his plate.
I snorted a laugh. “Do you even date, Finnegan?”
Color tinged his high cheekbones. “Working on it,” he mumbled.
“Jersey chasers don’t count,” Bax said before he tipped back a long swig of beer.
“Well, whatever happened, you’d better figure out how to fix it or not let it mess with your head.” Callahan exchanged a look with Bax and Finn before returning his attention to me. “Wiley may have given you a break today, but I wouldn’t count on it happening twice.”
“Got it, Coach,” I said—though my words held no heat.
After dinner I leaned back against the headboard on my bed and pulled out my phone. Taryn still hadn’t replied to any of my texts, so out of desperation, I tried calling her. When her phone went straight to voicemail, I said, “Fuck it,” and headed out to my car.
When I arrived at her place, I could see from the street that her apartment was dark. Checking the time, I saw it was only 8 p.m.. I didn’t think she was working tonight, but just in case, I headed over to the Coffee Kiosk. I didn’t even need to make a pass through the puny parking lot to see her little ride wasn’t there. Wheeling my ’Stang back onto the street, I headed over to Zoe’s place, where I came up empty again.
Out of options, I tried texting again.
Me: The time and place were all wrong and not what I planned, but that kiss was all kinds of right. Please, T. We need to talk. Don’t shut me out.
I tossed my phone onto the seat and leaned my head against the headrest.
A few minutes later I tried one more time at her place and slammed my fists on the steering wheel after parking outside a still darkened apartment.
“Where the fuck could she be?” I asked the air.
At last I headed back to my place. Finn was in the living room immersed in COD with someone online, and Bax and Callahan must have been in their rooms since their trucks were parked in the driveway but they weren’t downstairs. I headed up to my room too and forced myself to do some homework before spending a long, restless night alternately reliving the most glorious kiss of my life and checking my phone in the hopes Taryn would relent and throw me even the tiniest bone of hope.
When my alarm went off in the morning, it was with superhuman effort that I didn’t throw my damn phone against the wall.
She still hadn’t responded.
I stared at the ceiling and wondered what kind of asshole I was to have woken up with the mother of all hard-ons from dreaming about that kiss leading to other things. Instead of jerking off to visions of the most beautiful girl in the world finally being mine, I shot off another text.
Me: Good morning, T. In case you missed it, I want to be more than your friend. Please talk to me.
I rolled out of bed and padded to the head for a cold shower to shut myself down before going to morning lift. As usual I was the last one to the kitchen to grab my breakfast burrito on the way out the door. Not for the first time did I thank Bax and Callahan for cooking up a batch of breakfast every Sunday so I’d get more than only a protein shake each day before we lifted.
Since I knew Taryn’s schedule and she knew mine, I figured she wouldn’t be expecting me to show up outside Reed Hall when she finished class since I should be headed to class in Roberts on the opposite side of campus. Her wide-eyed surprise when she caught sight of me leaning against a planter waiting for her confirmed it.
“Good morning, T.”
Her pale skin and slumped shoulders said she’d slept about as well as I had.
“Danny, I meant it when I said we shouldn’t spend so much time together.” Her eyes darted to the doors of the building, and I had the distinct idea she was going to run again.
“Taryn, we haven’t spent nearly enough time together.”
Her eyes widened and filled with tears. Tipping her head back, she stared at the endless blue of the early November sky, sucked in a long breath, swallowed hard, and dropped her gaze back to me. Seeing those tears would have gutted me anyway, but it hurt even more to know what they meant. I was pretty sure I had my answer as to where she stood about us being just friends.
“Whatever game you’re playing—”
“The only game I play is football. This”—I waved a hand between us—“is serious. And real. And what I’ve wanted for as long as I’ve known you.”
“But—”
“Walk with me. Please.”
It must have been the plea in my voice that did it, because she gave in.
As we ambled along in the general direction of the gym, I asked, “Did you read any of my texts?”
She walked with her arms crossed protectively over her chest. “Um, I was afraid of what excuse you were going to give for what you did.”
I shut my eyes tight against the pain of her admission. “Taryn, the only woman I’ve kissed in the past five years is you. I may have mentioned that in one of those texts. Between the ones from when I was frantically trying to find you.” Turning my head, I caught her stunned expression. “Where were you last night anyway? I looked all over for you and couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“I went for a drive and ended up out by the lake.”
That didn’t sit well, but I had to let it go.
“Do you have time to talk now?”
“What do you mean? Aren’t we talking?”
“The conversation we need to have is going to take more than a minute.” I glanced around at the other people walking past us on the sidewalk. “And it needs to be in private.”
“My next class isn’t until later this afternoon.”
Taking a chance, I slid my arm around her shoulders. “Good. Then we’re going to my place.”