18. CHAPTER 18 #2
Around me the team has closed in. I don’t register it happening, but it has—Rome is on my left, Arch materializes on my right, and a half dozen players have formed a loose perimeter that puts me at the center and Grant definitively on the outside.
Nobody pulls Locke off. Nobody says a word.
They saw what happened and they closed ranks, the way a team does.
Grant’s eyes are wild now, moving between Locke’s face and the wall of players behind him. I can see him doing the math and he knows he’s got no leverage.
“Someone should call the cops,” Rome says.
Locke’s eyes cut to me over his shoulder and the question is clear as he waits for my answer.
I open my mouth, but I’m not sure what will come out.
Grant makes his decision for me. He gets a hand free, shoves hard against Locke’s arm at an angle that breaks the hold for one second, and that’s all it takes. He twists out of Locke’s grip and sprints off down the block, his jacket flapping.
Locke moves before I can think.
“Locke.” My hand finds his arm. I feel every muscle in it pulled toward forward motion, ready to hunt Grant down. “Let him go.”
He stops and turns back to me slowly. The expression on his face is not one I’ve seen before—controlled rage tempered with restraint. Had I not stopped him, I know he would have caught Grant and… well, there’s no telling what he would have done, and I can’t have him getting in trouble.
“Livia.” Rome’s voice, careful. “You want us to call someone? Police can pick him up. He’s drunk and disorderly at a minimum—”
“No.” The word comes out quickly, and I know it’s the right decision. Filing a police report means statements and questions and a paper trail and my name connected to a scene outside a team hotel. Locke will be drawn into it and it’s a mess no one needs. “No. Just—let it go. He’s gone.”
Rome looks at me briefly before nodding in agreement. The group of players disperses, quiet and efficient, filtering through the hotel entrance and taking the whole situation with them. Arch squeezes my shoulder once as he passes, a small sign of silent support.
Locke doesn’t move though. He’s still standing in front of me on an empty sidewalk. In the distance, I hear a siren and take a deep breath. I let it out, telling myself it’s over and everything is okay. That there wasn’t a man who just assaulted me in public, in front of my co-workers… my team.
I glance down and note my hands trembling slightly at my sides. The adrenaline is leaking out through my fingers now that it’s all over.
Locke sees it. He looks down, sees my weakness. “I’ll walk you to your room,” he says.
I nod, falling into step beside him, my brain still whirring on what just happened.
Grant has been long-distance stalking me with calls, texts and cards but to show up like this has rattled me hard.
That means he knows where I work, which I didn’t share with him, and he had to do some digging to find out where the team would be staying.
Not impossible pieces of information to glean, but it took effort, which means he’s focused on me.
But maybe Locke scared him off for good. Or I can at least hope for that.
The elevator ride up is silent.
I watch the numbers climb, forcing even breaths with my eyes forward. I try not to think about the way Grant sounded when he leaned in close on that sidewalk. The soft certainty of it that I belonged to him.
Nope. I can’t think about that. It’s too creepy.
The doors open and I move down the hall on autopilot, key card already in my hand. I reach my door, tap the card to the reader and the light goes green. I push through the door and walk in and let the cool air of the room settle around me.
Grant found me in this huge city.
That’s the thing I can’t shake. He looked up the schedule and found the hotel. He stood on that sidewalk and forced me to talk to him. Will he come back? We have another game here in LA against the Dragons. Or what if he shows up in another city? Or back in Portland?
I’m so lost in these thoughts that I don’t hear Locke come in behind me.
“You okay?” he asks and I spin around so fast, I nearly lose my footing. I utter a sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, one hand going to my chest to quell my thumping heart.
Locke’s standing just inside the room, the door shut behind him. He’s watching me with quiet intensity, hands loose at his sides, taking up a lot of space.
“God.” I flatten my palm against my sternum and feel my own heartbeat galloping. “I didn’t hear you follow me in.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s—” I shake my head and force an overly bright smile. “I’m fine. You don’t have to stay, I’m perfectly—”
“You okay?” he asks again, taking a few steps toward me, head dipping slightly as if he’s trying to see through to my soul.
I open my mouth to say yes.
Instead, I let out a laugh that has a slightly unhinged quality to it. “I mean.” I hold up my tremoring hands between us, palms facing me, and we both look at them. “Not totally fine. I guess he scared the shit out of me.”
I look at my own hands like they’re alien appendages.
“Yeah,” I say as if it’s almost an epiphany.
“He scared the shit out of me.” The words are louder than I intended, and the edge to them makes me sound like somebody else.
“Which is… I mean… he was drunk, so obviously he was going to be unreasonable. I’ve dealt with Grant being unreasonable before, I know exactly what that looks like and I still—” I stop, holding my hands up before my face to look at them.
“I can’t stop shaking. That’s ridiculous.
He’s gone, you’re here, I’m in a locked hotel room twelve floors up and my hands are—”
“Livia.”
“I’m fine,” I blurt out in a squeaky tone. “I’m sorry, I don’t do this. I’m not a person who falls apart over things already finished. I’m sure it’s just the adrenaline and—”
Locke crosses the room and pulls me into him.
No request. No hesitation. His arms wrap around me, and one hand goes to the back of my head to press my face to his chest. It’s solid, and he’s warm and safe.
I go still for one second.
Then the tightly wound coil of tension that formed as soon as I saw Grant’s silhouette through the bus window breaks free and I let out a quavering, breathy moan of release.
Locke’s hand moves slowly across my back, making large, soothing circles. He doesn’t say a word.
I don’t know how long we stand there but it’s long enough for my pulse to calm and my hands to steady. Certainly long enough for me to become aware of other things, like the warmth of Locke’s body and how good he smells after his shower at the arena.
I lift my head and find him staring down at me. Our faces are very close, and I have approximately one more second to back away.
Instead, I go to my tiptoes and kiss him.
As I expected, he kisses me back. It’s immediate and with zero reluctance, almost as if he had been waiting for this.
There are no thoughts of Grant, and certainly not about my job and how this is crossing a line. It’s just my hands finding the front of his shirt and my mouth finding his.
Locke’s arms come around me and he kisses me back with such ferocity that my brain short-circuits before emptying out entirely.
I fall into the kiss, the feel of his tongue against mine, and a tiny thought is almost grateful that Grant showed up because it set into motion a sequence I’m not sure either one of us would have initiated ourselves.
But… there’s a small wave of doubt. I pull back first.
We’re both breathing hard as we stare at each other.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I whisper, because I’m apparently required by some deep professional instinct to say it out loud.
Locke’s mouth curves. “You just kissed me, Livia.”
“I’m aware.”
“So the bad idea was yours,” he points out.
“I’m aware of that as well,” I mutter, my hands flexing in his shirt that I’ve yet to release.
Locke doesn’t move, refusing to press the advantage. The fact that he’s not is very dangerous, because it makes me respect him more.
“I don’t do this,” I say, feeling like I should justify myself. “I need you to know that.”
“Do what?”
“Kiss mysterious men who want nothing to do with me,” I grumble. “I certainly don’t kiss men I work with. Ever.”
He studies me. “I know that.”
“You understand why I’m—”
“Livia.” His voice drops slightly. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t want you.
And I’m not going to make it easy for you to talk yourself out of this.
If you want to stop, tell me to stop. I’ll walk out that door and we won’t talk about it again.
” His eyes stay on mine. “But if you don’t want to, stop looking for a justifiable reason. ”
My heart hammers with fear, indecision, excitement and need. The emotions are overwhelming and I know he’s right.
But I watched him put himself between me and danger tonight without a single moment of hesitation. My resolve was already weakening on that sidewalk and now that it’s come undone, I don’t think I want it to be put back together.
I uncurl my fingers and slide my palms up his chest, over his shoulders, and clasp my hands behind his neck.
I have to exert zero pressure as Locke finds my mouth again.
This kiss is different from the first one.
It’s deeper and so much slower. It’s as if time has no meaning and we have nowhere else to be.
His hand slides to the back of my neck and the other finds my waist and pulls me flush against his body.
I feel exactly what this is doing to him and it devastates every rational thought I have left.
I make a sound against his mouth that’s unavoidable, causing his hand to flex at my waist. Locke moves me backward, slow and deliberate, and I go with zero resistance. The backs of my knees find the edge of the bed and we stop there, mouths still connected, his hands at the hem of my shirt.