Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
My cell phone rattled on the table beside my bed, jolting me awake. I looked first at the name on the screen and then at the time.
Why was she calling me at this hour?
I swiped the screen to accept the call. “Dani?” My voice sounded groggy and confused, even to my ears. “Is everything okay?”
I heard her quiet curse. “Shit. I thought you’d still be awake.”
“It’s after one in the morning,” I pointed out.
I wasn’t an early- or a late-to-bed person. My sleep schedule tended to follow whether I had an evening broadcast.
“It’s just after ten out here.”
Vancouver, I recalled. The team was on a West Coast road trip. They played Seattle next.
“The game wrapped up a little while ago, so I’m back at the hotel,” she told me. “Unfortunately, I didn’t find you stalking me in the lobby.”
I was too tired to feign offense. “I wasn’t stalking you. I was working on a story.”
“I know you were,” she allowed. “It was a very good story, too.”
“You read it?”
“I read everything you write,” she said softly. “Although,” she noted, her original volume returning, “I was a little offended you didn’t include a review of the hotel’s room service.”
I didn’t want to linger on that.
“Where’s Cat?” I asked, recalling that they were roommates for road trips.
“She’s out with some of the other girls,” she said. “You know how much she likes her Canadian beer.”
“So you’re in your room … alone?”
“I guess so.”
“What are you wearing?” I choked out a short laugh. “Just kidding.”
Dani fell silent.
“Right,” she said after a long, torturous moment. “I know that.”
A longer awkward silence followed.
“But if you weren’t kidding,” she said carefully, “I’d tell you I’m wearing a tank top and boxers.”
I cleared my throat. My thoughts too easily rearranged themselves into the shape of Dani Callahan, stretched out on a hotel bed.
Would she be wearing a bra beneath that tank top?
And how thin was the material? Would the shirt make visible the hard lines of her abdomen and obliques? Or maybe her hardening nipples?
I squirmed in my own bed, thousands of miles away.
“And if you still weren’t kidding,” she continued, her voice noticeably lower, “I’d tell you that I’m lying here, all alone in this big bed. And that my hand is under the elastic of my shorts. Just kind of …” she trailed off. “… there.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.
“Just … there?” I echoed.
“Yeah.” There was a soft rustle on her end, the sheets shifting. “Like I said. Not doing anything. Just … present.”
I shifted onto my back and stared at the ceiling, suddenly hyper-aware of the way my own body felt against the hide-a-bed’s thin mattress. Too warm. Too awake.
“Reese?” she pressed. “You’re being really quiet.”
“I’m thinking,” came my excuse.
“About my hand?”
I exhaled a shaky breath. “Maybe.”
Definitely.
“If you weren’t kidding,” she prompted, softer now, “what would you say you’re wearing?”
I closed my eyes.
“You can say you’re kidding, too,” she added quickly. “We’re clearly very committed to the bit.”
Right. The bit.
“Okay,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “If I wasn’t kidding, I’d say I’m wearing an old t-shirt—” I hesitated, suddenly aware of how far I was about to go. “—and not much else.”
Her inhale was quiet, but I heard it.
“Not much else?” she repeated.
I shifted again, dragging a hand down over my face. This was ridiculous. Harmless. A joke.
Except it didn’t feel harmless anymore.
“Just underwear,” I said finally.
“Oh.”
The word landed differently than anything she’d said so far.
I pressed my lips together, suddenly aware of my pulse in my throat. “We’re really bad at this whole kidding thing.”
“Yeah,” Dani agreed. “We kind of are.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward anymore. It was charged.
“And if we weren’t really kidding?” she ventured.
“That’s not—that’s not the game,” I protested, even though my voice had dropped to match hers.
“We can change the rules.”
I stared at the ceiling, my chest rising and falling a little too fast. “You’re dangerous, you know that?”
“Only when I’m bored,” she said lightly. “And I’m really bored right now.”
There was another rustle on her end, like she’d rolled onto her side. She sounded closer somehow, even through a phone line.
“If we weren’t kidding …” I let out a slow breath, “then I’d say I can’t stop picturing you right now.”
Her breath hitched—barely, but enough that I heard it.
“Lying in that bed,” I went on, the words coming easier now. “Relaxed, but somehow still wired from tonight’s game. Maybe needing … some kind of release.”
She didn’t respond right away. When she did, her voice had changed again—stripped of the earlier humor. “What else?”
I swallowed.
“I’d say I hate that I’m not there,” I cautiously admitted. “That you’re across the country, and I’m stuck here imagining it instead.”
Another soft rustle.
“I think we stopped kidding.”
I let out a shaky exhale. “Yep. I think we did.”
“I should probably hang up,” she said after a moment. She didn’t sound like she meant it though.
“Probably,” I agreed.
Neither of us made a move to end the call.
“I’m really glad you answered, Reese.”
My throat tightened. “Yeah,” I said softly. “Me, too.”
She exhaled. Even the breath sounded reluctant. “Okay. I’m going to—”
“Yeah.”
“… yeah.”
The call went silent a second later, leaving me staring up at the ceiling again. My entire body was keyed up, like the conversation hadn’t ended so much as it had just abruptly stopped.
And somehow, that felt worse.
“Thanks for coming out tonight,” I overheard her say.
She took her time signing replica player jerseys and posters.
The game had been a blowout—Dani had even notched a hat trick—but all I could focus on was the growing crowd by the locker room exit.
Not the reporters or fans clamoring for autographs, but the ones waiting for her.
They stuck out in a way that was too obvious for my comfort: glossy hair, flawless makeup, perfectly chosen jerseys just tight enough to flaunt their assets.
A few held Sharpies and game programs, but I wasn’t fooled.
They weren’t here for her autograph.
They were here to slip her their numbers, their hotel keys, or whatever it was women handed over to professional athletes like Dani.
As a woman myself in a male-dominated field, I’d long railed against the disparaging labels men had assigned to women like them. But as I observed these carefully coiffed women in their designer heels and manicured nails jostle for the attention of my–my… Dani, the phrase burned bright in my mind:
Puck bunnies.
They’d seemed less aggressive when we were in our early twenties. Dani hadn’t been publicly Out in college, though. And she hadn’t been Dani Callahan–multi-Olympic gold medalist, generational talent, ESPN Body Issue thirst trap.
And I’d told her we needed to go slow.
When one of those girls leaned in a little too close, her laugh spilling out like syrup as she handed Dani a folded piece of paper, I felt something red and molten bubble up inside me.
We hadn’t spoken in person since she’d returned from the team’s West Coast road trip. They’d split the pair of games, losing to Vancouver, but picking up the win against Seattle.
I hadn’t taken offense to her silence, but standing there, watching strangers reach for her like they had a right to, I felt like I was losing ground on something I hadn’t even had the chance to hold.
By the time she rounded the corner toward the media room, I was already waiting.
“Can I talk to you?” I requested. “In private?”
Dani hefted her duffle bag over her shoulder. “Sure.”
I hadn’t spent enough time in the arena to know all of its secrets, but I did know some of the quiet places where we wouldn’t be disturbed.
I led her down a side hallway I half-recognized, past a stack of folding chairs and a door propped open with a trash can.
I entered the room and leaned back against a folding table, arms braced behind me, trying to steady the adrenaline and anxiety pulsing through my body.
Dani seemed to sweep the room once, surveying our humble surroundings, before her gaze landed on me. “What’s up?”
“Do you want me?” I asked. “Like, want me, want me?”
I watched the concern on her features turn to confusion. “Is this a trick question?”
I didn’t answer. My fingers went straight to the top button of my blouse, working it loose before I could overthink my decision.
Dani’s eyes widened, almost comically, as I loosened one button after another. “What-what happened to slow?”
“I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
I curled my lip. “Do I need a reason?”
Dani’s body language seemed to shift. “Yeah. You do.”
My fingers stilled on the next button. “I saw you talking to those girls.”
Dani stepped forward, eliminating the distance between us. My pulse jumped when her warm hands settled on top of mine. “Not here,” she said quietly. “Not like this.”
I tried to pull away, but she anticipated my reaction. The fingers at my wrists subtly tightened.
“I’m not rejecting you, Reese,” she said. “I want you. I want this. So fucking much.” She exhaled like the breath caused her pain. “But not because you got jealous.”