2. My Knight In Shining Hockey Pads #2
If I wasn’t already immobilized by the walking smoke show in front of me—one that definitely should come with a warning label—then I am now for an entirely different reason.
My fear is like a bloody, suppurating wound that refuses to be cauterized. “Shit. I have to clean all of this up.”
Before I got my senses lightly knocked into me by Buford’s teammate, I was all for leaving his house to be the next breeding ground for cricket generations to come.
But actions have consequences, and I’ve already given my mother one too many heart attacks this year.
She doesn’t like this impulsive side of me.
I do things without thinking. I lead by emotion.
I set a terrible example for my little brother, who, according to her, will grow up to follow in his degenerate sister’s footsteps.
“No, you don’t. Leave it. We need to get you home,” Sutton says.
“What? No! This is my mess. I need to cl—”
“For the love of God, Lake, just let me help you. Buford is a douche on good days. I’m not going let you take the blame for something that he deserved.”
He said my name. I would swoon if we weren’t actively working against a ticking time bomb.
Shunning this man’s help would be an idiotic decision, and I’m fresh out of those given my nightly rap sheet.
Siphoning a centering breath, I run over to the window to attempt to liberate my dress once again. “I think my friend went to go get help, but my car should still be here.”
Sutton joins me, choosing to refrain from commenting on my sad display of strength when his arm rises over my head and bangs squarely on the glass.
The window flings all the way open with ease, releasing my rightful possession like I hadn’t just spent the better half of the night trying to uproot it. The scrap falls into my arms.
I don’t think this guy can get any hotter.
And that’s saying something, seeing as I got a whiff of his bergamot cologne when he blew the hinges wide open.
Male hygiene is hot. Buford just used to let everything crust in the shower until it flaked off.
No wiping. No soap. It was a crime against humanity—and my olfactory senses.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna walk you to your car, and you’re gonna get the hell out of here.”
I blink ten times in a row. People don’t usually go out of their way to help me. Call it tough love or an epidemic rise in self-interest, but I’m not used to someone taking accountability for my fuckups.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I blurt out, trying to wrestle my guilt back into submission.
Sutton begins to usher me downstairs with an alarming lack of effort. “Good thing you’re not asking.”
So much for army-crawling past the invisible lasers that I thought Buford might have installed in his snotty rich-person house.
I dig my heels into the ground, flailing. “I’m inconveniencing you! You were an innocent bystander that I dragged into my mess!”
Without warning, Sutton bends down to swoop me into his arms, presumably deciding that carrying me bridal-style would reap the best outcome without much outward rebellion from me.
With his towel still equipped somehow, I yelp and cling to his muscular torso, unsure if I should be reacting appropriately given the situation or rolling myself in his natural man musk like a house cat with a catnip addiction.
He glances down at our close proximity—me sprawled over his naked chest as the damsel I am, him saving me from my impending doom. “If you think this is an inconvenience, then you need to inconvenience me more often.”
Oh, this is a bad week for me to be ovulating. I usually admit defeat if a night ends in me fully clothed, but I think I can make an exception this time.
Once we navigate through Buford’s labyrinth of a house, Sutton sets me down outside, a few feet away from my crappy Mazda that taunts me from the other side of the road.
“Thank you, but my legs aren’t broken. I could’ve walked,” I insist.
“You could’ve, but I’m faster.”
He’s not wrong about that.
As I start to head toward my getaway car, Sutton’s beast of a shadow trails after me with the subtlety of a grizzly bear. It takes a second for my brain to connect to the local server before I realize what he’s doing.
“Oh, you don’t need to walk me to my car,” I rush out, hoping I don’t sound ungrateful.
I think I’ve gotten over my irrational fear of someone hiding underneath my vehicle and waiting for me to get into the driver’s seat before slicing my Achilles’ heel.
Sutton snorts. “Yeah, that’s a nonnegotiable for me. Cute that you think it isn’t, though.”
The stygian sky harbors a fugitive storm overhead, its cumulonimbus clouds engorged with rain.
Darkness spills over the quaint street of Crescent Boulevard like liquor from a flask, diffusing into the immediate surroundings of naked sugar maples.
The lone streetlight above us buzzes with a voltage fluctuation, dipping Sutton’s hewn features in a chiaroscuro that kickstarts my already fickle hormones.
Once we make it over to Ol’ Reliable, I lean against the carapace of my car. “Well, thank you for saving my ass tonight.”
Even though it’s cold as balls out, Sutton doesn’t seem fazed. He’s still gloriously half-naked, and the hem of his towel has dropped even lower from all the movement. That steel-wool happy trail of his leads to a happy meal, and all that revenge plotting has left me with quite an appetite.
“Hope it won’t be the last time.”
When a gale of wind makes me shiver uncontrollably, I remember that my lack of coverage is due to his selfless loan. “I don’t think it will. I need to return your clothes to you.”
A self-satisfied smile unravels over his mouth, his eyes skipping over me like he’s committing this exact still frame to memory. “Keep them. They’re something to remember me by.”
I can’t tell if he’s joking.
I hug my ripped dress to my body, and something I never thought I’d experience again—butterflies, love’s lackey—whirl in my belly with a healthy dose of adoration. Fluttering wings, paresthesia flooding me from head to toe, the overwhelming urge to attack his mouth with mine.
“Trust me, I’ll remember you.”