Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
~DEX~
After the way she talked to me and looked at me last night, I’m feeling very encouraged as I walk into the Blaze stadium that houses my office.
My steps are a bit lighter knowing that I get to spend time with her in the training room and I didn’t even need to make up a reason to do it.
She said that I could check out her knee.
She even seemed worried that I wasn’t going to be working at the Blaze anymore.
She might have been worried about me. I liked that.
I stayed awake for longer than I’m proud of reliving the way she spoke to me, the way her eyes watched me and how she looked. Which was pretty fucking hot, but I couldn’t say that to her, considering she is probably still angry at me. Not to mention we had a very lose and attentive audience.
“Good morning,” Lucas says as he enters the training room.
“Hey, man,” I reply. I clear my throat and walk over to him. “I’ll be checking out Amelia when she comes in today and I can do the therapy with her too.”
“Oh, okay, sure. Did I do something to cause the switch?” Lucas asks me.
I shake my head, “No, man, not at all. I asked if I could take a look is all to evaluate her progress. You can have her back after today.” Unless she takes me back, but I keep that part to myself.
“Okay,” he says slowly.
“It’s okay, Lucas, you’re doing a great job here. Relax, man, I want to check on her. In the meantime, can you please check on Carrie’s hamstring? Coach Watts said she’s been sluggish lately in her runs and that’s unlike her. I’m worried there’s some pain there.”
He grins wide and lets out a breath. “Sure, I can do that.”
“Thanks, man.” I tell him.
Lucas leaves, and I review the notes that he left from her last session. A knock at the door pulls me from my reading. There she stands. Looking like an angel. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She’s wearing her Blaze jersey; number thirty-one prominently displayed on her chest.
I grin as soon as I see her. “Hey there, come on in.”
She smiles back and makes her way into the training room. “Hi.” Amelia’s brown eyes are shining brightly at me. Slowly, she makes her way over to me. “Where would you like to start?”
It’s a simple question and an appropriate one, but my thoughts are anything but. I want to tell her that I’d like to start by taking her into my arms and kissing her gently. Gentle is how our kisses always started but they ended up being fierce and frantic.
I look her over and say, “Please hop up on the table if you can. If not, I can help you.”
She nods and slowly turns so that her back is to the table. Pushing herself up, she sits and turns her body so that her legs are stretched out. “Would you like me to lie back or am I good like this?”
I take a moment to take in her body. I have to get my thoughts out of the gutter because the only thing I want to do is take her in my arms and show her how much she means to me. But I don’t.
“You’re good like that,” I stammer.
She grins at me and says, “Okay, I can do that.”
I step up to the table. I can smell the scent of her perfume; it’s flowery and sweet like she is.
My palms begin to sweat, and my hands shake as I reach for the brace and being to unstrap it.
The sound of my breathing picking up and the sounds of the Velcro coming loose are the only sounds in the room. I sigh and examine the knee.
“Is everything okay with it?” she asks, her voice low in the quiet room.
My eyes turn and meet hers. I see the trepidation there and I shake my head. “It looks a bit swollen, but that is to be expected. Other than that, it looks good.”
“That’s good.” Amelia leans forward so that her shoulder is touching my arm. “Do you think I can try walking without the crutches soon?”
I turn my attention from her knee and look her in the eyes. “I’m not sure where we’re there yet. But you’re on the right track, peach.” The nickname slips out without me even thinking of it. I watch her face, waiting for a reaction to it. She smiles.
“Well, football, I hope we can get there soon,” she uses my nickname, and her voice is full of innuendo.
I turn so that my body is facing her, resting my hip on the side of the table. “Are you doing your exercises at home?”
She grins at me. “Yes, I am.”
I smirk. “Good, that’s good. I’m glad you’re keeping up with our plan.”
“I wouldn’t stop it because the wife showed up,” she admits.
I nod. It’s a fair point and I can’t blame her for calling me on it. “Good, I’m glad.” I stammer out.
“You said that already.” She laughs and watches me.
I look away from the heat of her stare and laugh uncomfortably. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Are you uncomfortable being here with me, Dex? Because I can ask Lucas to come back in here and check me out.” Her voice has a sexy, sultry tone to it.
I think that means that she felt the pull last night too.
So, I go for it. “No, I can do it, Amelia. I wanted to check you out and make sure things were going well. I know that Dr. Haldman wants to do a repeat scan when the swelling has gone down to make sure we aren’t missing anything.
And to make sure he’s right to not move forward with surgery at this time. ”
She nods slowly. “Surgery would really impact my career with the Blaze, so if he wants to do that, I need to know as soon as possible. So that I can tell the coaches and August.” She begins to wring her hands in her lap; her eyes are wide and darting around the area of her knee.
I take her hands in mine, “Relax, I need you to relax. No one is looking to change anything with you and your standing with the team. I know that’s what you’re worried about.
” It’s what every injure athlete fears. “If you need surgery we will cross the bridge when we come to it. But as long as you do your part and listen to my instructions, you’ll be fine. I promise you that.”
She watches me for a moment, her eyes warm. “Are you going to keep this one?”
I sigh and concede, “I deserved that one.”
She nods and says, “You do.”
“I’m sorry for all of it, you know. I’ve wanted to apologize to you for so long, but I didn’t have the courage to face you.
” I say scrubbing a hand down my face. “I wish I had done a lot of things differently. “But nothing that has to do with you or saying I love you. I should have told you why I got a divorce, that wasn’t fair to you. I should have told you about my past, but I was afraid to. I was ashamed of my behavior and how I treated Elise. I figured you would assume I would treat you the same way.”
Amelia stares at me for a while, no longer than I’m comfortable with. She gets ready to speak, Coach Andie comes into the room.
“Hey, is she ready to come on out to the field? We’re getting ready to roll out there,” she tells us.
“Yeah, I’m all done, right?” Amelia turns me smiles.
“She’s all done,” I confirm.
“Good, I’ve got the cart out here, let’s get you a ride onto that sideline,” Andie says, smiling at her.
I pick the brace up and place it back on her knee. “You’re all set to head out there.”
She reaches up to touch my shoulder. “I’ll see you on the sideline, right?”
“Yeah, you will.” I tell her as I help her off the table and hand over her crutches. “Go Blaze.”
She scoots away from me and says, “Go Blaze.”
Andie waits until she’s out of sight to speak. “You know, I don’t think you two are terminal. Maybe if you communicated a bit better, things could go back to the way they were.” She winks at me before turning to leave.
“You knew?” I ask her.
She turns back to me and says, “Yeah, I know. So many of us know. One thing about this place is that it’s like high school; everyone knows everything about everyone.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I tell her, shaking my head and laughing.
I grab the snacks that I bought for the game from my desk and head out to the field.
I have to wait to join her after the anthem plays.
I watch her standing over there, doing her best to stabilize herself on her crutches as it plays.
I grin, watching her small frame, standing a bit away from the rest of the team.
I can’t wait to join her. Once it finishes, I make my way over to the bench.
I see she’s sitting there, down by Lucas, but he’s giving her space.
There’s plenty of room beside her for me. That fact puts a bit of pep in my step.
I walk over to her. “Is this seat taken?” I ask her playfully.
“Look at you with the cheesy lines. I would have never pegged you for the type,” she says, looking up at me and grinning at her own attempt at humor.
I chuckle. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know what else to say to you.”
“Do you feel awkward around me now, football?”
“I do,” I admit.
Her head snaps in my direction. “I get it. I felt the same way about seeing you or even being near you. But now I’m not sure why I waited. I might have saved myself some pain.”
“What are you saying?” It takes everything I have to keep my eyes on the field because that’s where hers are. Apparently, we are going to have this conversation, we’re not going to have it face to face.
“I’m saying I miss you,” she admits sheepishly.
My face turns to hers so quickly but she’s not looking at me. She’s smiling, though, so I know she must feel my eyes on her. “I miss you too. I didn’t expect you to say that you miss me,” I admit.
“I didn’t expect myself to admit to that either. And I wasn’t sure if that’s what I was feeling until I saw you last night. I thought about it, you had no idea that you were still married. It wasn’t like you set out to deceive me.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“What’s in the bag?” she asks, completely changing our conversation. But I go with it. Hell, I’d bend down and kiss her feet if she asked me to. Anything to be near her.
“I have your Reese’s pumpkins that I promised, and I thought you might like some sour gummy peaches.” I hold the bag out to her.
“Can you hand me the pumpkins?”
I pull the bag of pumpkins out and open them. I hand her a pumpkin. She turns and looks at me, her eyes shining bright like a star. The grin she gives me makes me want to run out and buy this candy by the truckload because if it makes her this happy, then I must own all of it.
She tears open the chocolate and peanut butter pumpkin and examines it.
“You know this is a sad representation of a pumpkin. It looks like a blob, or like an egg that they barely tweaked to make it a pumpkin. Considering how much people love them, you would think that they would try harder.” She takes a bite and lets out a moan.
A moan that reminds me of the nights we spent in her bedroom.
The way she sounded when she came around my cock, on my fingertips or on my tongue. I have missed that sound.
I clear my throat, and she looks over and laughs at me. “Sorry,” she says with a wink, like she knows exactly what I was thinking. “Have one.”
I take one out and open it, examining it. “I know what you mean, these don’t really look like pumpkins.”
“Yeah, they don’t. But at least they tried,” she says with a shrug. “And I think you were trying with me.”
“I was, really hard because you were different. I didn’t want you to know why I was getting a divorce because I didn’t want you to think I would do something like that to you.
You weren’t Elise. She and I weren’t right for each other.
Ask anyone, ask August; we were complete and total opposites,” I beg her.
“He mentioned that,” she replies, taking another bite of the chocolate.
Suddenly, the sound of the crowd gets deafening, and our attention is turned to the field. I see Mac running down the field, waiting for the ball to come from Cassie. Cassie is dribbling down in a rare area of free space.
“What do you see?” I hear Coach Watts call.
“Mac is covered, that’s what I see,” Amelia says from beside me. “Shoot it, Cas, freaking shoot the ball! You’ve got the shot!”
I grin and look over at her. Her little feet are hanging there, kicking along with Cassie. God, she’s adorable.
Cassie takes the shot, and it finds the back of the net. The Blaze are on the board.
The players go wild, grabbing and hugging Cassie. The whole bench is on their feet, including Amelia and me. Everyone is shouting praise at Cassie and the rest of the Blaze as they line up at the start.
I pull Amelia into a hug and place a kiss on the top of her forehead. “That was amazing.”
“Was it better than your kind of football?” she teases me.
“It’s different, which is exactly what I’m looking for,” I tell her.
Her eyes soften and she leans up and kisses me on my lips, light and quick. “We did find something pretty special there.”
“I think we still might have it,” I tell her, as we sit down and prepare to watch the rest of the match.
“You might be right about that, football. We’ll have to see.” She winks at me and turns her attention back to the game.
“I’ll do anything for you, peach. Just know that. Whatever hoops you’ve got, bring them. I’m in this for the long haul,” I say, knowing it’s time to stop worrying she might not like what I have to say, but she has the right to hear it. I lay my feelings out bare for her.
She turns and says, “I’m pretty sure I could think of some fun ways to test that theory.” She looks around and then turns her attention back to me. “But not here, not now. I want you in private for all those tests.”
I drop the bag of candy on my foot and find myself unable to speak.