Chapter 11 #2
Sarah nods immediately, like she already knows where this is going. “Yeah, of course.”
“But I think I’m gonna keep it low-key tonight,” I add. “Got some stuff I need to figure out before I head out.”
“Totally fair,” Taylor says without missing a beat, slipping her phone back into her bag.
“Honestly, we’ll probably be asleep by ten anyway. We’re not that exciting.”
Sarah laughs softly. “Speak for yourself. James is going to make me go to the club tonight, and I’m not sure I can handle it.” She laughs, then looks back at me. “Good luck this season, though. Seriously. We’ll be watching.”
“Yeah,” Taylor adds. “Don’t make her regret that jersey.”
I huff out a quiet laugh. “I’ll try not to.”
They both give me a small wave.
“Enjoy the rest of your vacation,” Sarah says.
“You too,” I reply, slumping back against the lounger.
Honey starts to walk around the deck, so I pull my hat down, trying to be inconspicuous. Kind of hard when I’m wearing my honeybee shorts, but hopefully, she’ll be too busy looking for a lounger to notice me.
I track her under my sunglasses as she crosses the deck, and when she finds a lounger near the pool steps, she sets her book down and then reaches up and shrugs the robe off her shoulders.
I stop reading the contract.
I think I also stop breathing.
She’s wearing a white bandeau bikini with a top that is shoving her tits together, creating a deep, inviting line of cleavage that I want to bury my face in. I’ve done it before. I still remember how they felt in my hands as I’d watch her throw her head back in pleasure.
The bright white makes her tanned skin glow, and I can’t swallow. My mouth is suddenly desert-dry while the rest of me is burning hot.
When she’s fully out of the robe, she turns and tosses it over the lounger, showing off the back of her bikini. The bottoms are wedged between the full, round cheeks of her heart-shaped ass.
My hands twitch on the phone. I can still remember exactly how those curves fit into my palms, how soft they felt when I kneaded them while she gasped my name.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, earning a few mutterings from the guests beside me.
I shrink further down the lounger, not only in embarrassment but because my dick is once again betraying me and getting hard at the mere sight of her.
She steps out of her flip-flops and walks down the pool steps. I pull my knee up because the structural problem I have is not resolving itself and after my accidental curse; I don’t want to be banned from the pool.
My dick is now painfully hard, straining against my shorts like it has a personal vendetta against me.
I flip the phone screen-down on my chest, tip my head back, and stare at the empty sky as though it might grant me mercy.
It doesn’t. Every detail is burned in my memory anyway: the white fabric against her skin, the way the bikini rides up just enough to show the dimples above her ass, the slow sway as she descends the first step into the water.
I need her under me.
Right now.
Again.
And again.
Until neither of us can walk straight.
Was that shower last night not enough?
Get it together, Evans.
You’re the first overall pick. You are a fully functioning adult. You have spent every single day of the last five years wanting her. Your dick should be used to that by now.
She’s waist deep already, and that white suit is doing nothing to hide her pebbling nipples from the cold. I can’t help but watch a droplet of water slide down the valley between her breasts, tracing paths I want to follow with my tongue.
She pushes off the edge and starts swimming, so I pick up my phone and manage, through what can only be described as a heroic act of discipline, to read through the Ascent contract. Then I check the Raptors group chat, which is mostly Dax sending memes about being the new guy.
Honey does her laps while I sort through the rest of my emails and even though this is how she probably wants it, it’s slowly killing me.
She’s right there.
She does a few more laps, and when she pulls herself up over the edge, I’m not going to describe it.
Not because I’m noble, but because if I let myself catalog the way the wet fabric molds to her, the way droplets trace the dip of her spine straight down to where the string disappears between those cheeks, or the way her thighs tense and release as she swings a leg over the lip of the pool, I will lose what’s left of my goddamn mind right here on this lounger.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper just to keep from groaning.
Thankfully, she wraps the robe back around herself, picks up her book, and walks back toward the glass doors without looking in my direction once.
The doors close behind her, and I metaphorically pat myself on the back. She swam and I sat and watched. I didn’t follow her down the hallway when she left. It’s not much, but it’s better than yesterday, so I’m going to call it progress.
I look down at my phone, then at the honeycomb on my forearm, studying the design as I think about all the times Honey has worried she’s going to get lost in who I am.
Meanwhile, I’m wearing honeybee shorts and have inked her in more than one place, trying to prove that I’ve already lost myself in her, like that somehow fixes the fact she’s scared of doing the same.
That’s my problem. I've been running the same play since the beginning and expecting a different outcome.
Come here. Be mine. Choose this.
And every time I do, she looks at me like I’m asking her to disappear.
I scrub a hand over my jaw, staring down at the ink on my arm like it might spell out something different this time. It doesn’t. It’s still her. It’s always been her. That hasn’t changed.
What has—and I’ve been too stubborn to admit—is that loving her like this...isn’t working.
Not for her, and maybe not for me either.
I lean back and let out a long sigh as realization settles in.
She doesn’t need more of me.
She needs less.
The thought sits with me as I stare out over the deck, my grip tightening slightly around my phone. Every cell in my body tries to push against it and close the distance before it turns into something permanent.
I loosen my grip, and although I stare at the door, for the first time, I don’t move.