CHAPTER 32 BEN
“Are you following me to try to convince me?” Kaylee asks, and I chuckle.
“Nah,” I say, shaking my head as I tug behind my neck at the bill of my ballcap. She bends over into the fridge for something, and goddamn there’s that peachy ass again just perched up in the air for me. It’s like she’s showing it off. Presenting it to me for the taking.
Yeah, I’m interested in taking it. All of it.
She straightens and turns toward me.
I blow out a breath as I try to tame the monster.
“You’re going to do whatever’s right for you, and I’m not here to influence you either way.
But I will say I was just talking to Ellie about this same sort of thing the other day.
Would you be open to the Instagram thing if some of the sponsorship proceeds went to charity? ”
She lifts a shoulder and pops the top of her soda can. “I mean that would be a way to try to leave a positive mark. But what charity?”
I shake my head. “Could be anything. But I’m thinking something we can work on together. As my publicist has told me, working with women or kids is one good way to help with my image.”
“So then you’d be working with me, a woman, and we could work together on raising money for kids since I’ve always wanted to work with them. I just never really knew in what capacity. Clearly not as a middle school teacher.”
I chuckle. “I’ve always wanted to do something with kids and sports or fitness.”
“Sometimes I wish I would’ve majored in Health Science instead of English. I think being a physical education teacher to little kids would’ve been so much fun.”
“Dude, remember the parachute day in PE when you were little?” I ask.
She laughs and nods. “It was the best day. The worst was wall sits.”
I chuckle. “I feel like it doesn’t matter where you went to school, everyone did the same thing in PE.”
She nods. “How fun would it be to just run around letting little kids burn their energy all day?”
“Exhausting,” I say. “But it’s not too late to go back to school. You’re still young.”
She takes a sip of soda. “I tried teaching, and I just feel like it wasn’t for me. But I do like the idea of getting kids active and making it fun.”
I nod. “You know, I hear so often from guys on the team how their kids just want to sit on their electronics all day. Making exercise fun for kids is important to you, and getting kids involved in athletics is important to me as we create the next generation of football superstars. Could we combine those ideas and create a foundation that promotes health and fitness for kids?”
She shrugs. “We could do whatever we want. But how would this relate to the Instagram thing?”
“That’s why we have Ellie. She can figure out the logistics, but that could be just one of the ways we’d raise money.”
She chuckles. “You think we could just give this to her and let her figure it out?”
I wink at her. “Pretty sure that’s what I’m paying her to do.”
She nods. “Okay. I’ll think about it. This is just…
a lot. I never wanted football to be the center of my adult life since it’s been the center of my world since I was born.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the game. I just always dreamed my adult life would be the time I could focus more on my own interests, you know? ”
“I get that,” I say, my voice a little raspy as I think about how she must feel about having football forced upon her from every angle. “And our focus on this doesn’t have to have anything to do with football at all if we don’t want it to.”
She nods and snags her bottom lip between her teeth, and fuck do I want to suck on that lip.
Voices carry from the next room, though. It’s an open floor plan, so they can see us even though they’re focused on their kids.
Now’s not the time.
I blow out a breath. “I need to get outside. I’m here to work out with your brothers.
” I lower my voice so the ladies in the other room don’t overhear even though JJ’s playing with some loud-ass toy that would surely drown out our conversation even at normal volume.
“Can I meet you in your bedroom when I’m done?
We’ll just tell everyone I’m helping you pack. ”
She raises a brow. “Definitely.” And then she wrinkles her nose in this adorable way and what the fuck…did I just call a woman who I want to fuck adorable? “Just make sure you shower first.”
I laugh and raise my voice back to normal volume. “On a separate note, I have an event tomorrow night if you’d like to come."
She raises a brow and sets a hand on her hip, and I have the sudden urge to lick that hip as that gold ring bikini flashes through my mind again. “Did you just ask me out on a date?”
“You’ve got to make your debut on my arm sometime, right? Our first date. It’ll be magical.”
She giggles. “What’s the event?”
“A new club is opening in a few weeks and the owners are wining and dining a select group of celebrities ahead of the opening to try to get us to commit to making an appearance in the first week. There’s a tour, the whole works.”
“Are you planning to make an appearance?” she asks.
“Probably,” I admit with a shrug. “But it depends how good the wining and dining is. And, of course, whether my girlfriend approves.”
She laughs, and there’s nothing quite as satisfying as making her laugh. Except fucking her. That’s definitely more satisfying.
And when I make her come.
Jesus Christ, when did I get in so damn deep with her?
Alarm bells ring in my head as they signal danger ahead.
I need to back off a little. We’ve agreed to keeping this thing casual, and that’s all I can do anyway.
But how can I back off when she’s supposed to be my new girlfriend—at least in the public eye? When she’s moving in with me soon? When we’re talking about creating a charity together?
The more time I spend with her, the more I see our lives starting to merge together.
And that scares the fuck out of me.