Chapter 11 #2
“Yeah.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet on my floor, my tee on his skin. Christ. “I get that.”
“I like my own bed,” I told him.
True enough. Just not the whole truth.
He kneeled by my side, close enough that I could smell my shower gel on him. “Well,” he said, light as a balloon. “I’m sure your bed is already looking forward to having you back. Counting down the days. Pining.”
Amusement cracked out of me in a huff of breath. “Asshole.”
“Yeah, hey.” His fingers brushed my wrist. “And yet you keep me around.”
The words sat on the tip of my tongue, stupid and unearned, cutting too close. Don’t meet someone else while I’m gone.
Insane. Nothing I could ask of him. Nothing I had any right to want.
I locked it down and reached for a smile instead.
“You should probably get ready for those meetings.”
He glanced at the clock on the nightstand and grimaced. “Yeah, you’re right. Mind if I keep the tee for now?”
“No, course not.” I shot him a grin. “Don’t think yours would send the right signal.”
He laughed, short and bright. “Not quite, no.”
I watched him, and he met my eyes, mouth tilting upward just enough that I noticed. Then he reached for his jeans.
“Send me some photos,” he said. “I want to see your luxury hotel rooms.”
“Trying to live vicariously through me?” I asked, and he leaned in and kissed me, brief and warm, familiar enough to make something in my chest twist.
“Exactly,” he said.
Then he was gone, heading down the hall to collect his things, silence trailing after him.
Twelve days. Plenty of time to get my head straight.
The place charged twelve bucks for olives in a bowl.
Low lights, brass details, expensive whiskey, and the kind of velvet seating that said you were paying triple to feel like you’d found an authentic Prohibition-era speakeasy.
We’d won, though, so the mood was good, loose.
Guys talking over each other, some dressed up a little, everyone ready to blow off steam after two games in three nights.
I hadn’t felt like coming. Wanted a shower, my piano playlist, and maybe a text from Stellan that would calm the quiet storm inside my head.
But with great power came great responsibility, apparently.
As captain, I had to show my face because that was the thing about wearing the C: Even on a good night, guys read my mood like weather.
If I stayed too quiet, left too early, checked out for a second too long, somebody noticed.
That was how I’d ended up on a velvet banquette with Cole and Wes, a beer in Wes’s hand, whiskey in Cole’s, and water sweating against my palm.
“Seriously,” Wes was saying. “If we keep making them pay like this when they’re down a guy, we can go a long fucking way.”
Cole raised his glass. “To the road ahead.”
We clinked because yeah, all right. I could raise a glass of sparkling water to that.
Across from us, Marco was already deep into a story about some fan who’d tried to hand him a baby on the way out of the arena for a photo—“My own sister doesn’t trust me with my nephew, and dude just goes, ‘Here, hold that, look sharp!’” Everyone was laughing, and for a minute, I settled into it all.
The win, the retro jazz, the noise that still hummed in my body.
Then Wes nudged my arm. “Nine o’clock.”
I followed his line of sight and found a woman a few stools down, dark hair and neat black dress, one elbow on the bar. She looked away just before I met her eyes—smooth, subtle.
Here we go again.
I turned back to Wes. “What?”
“Cap.” He made a face at me. “Come on.”
“Come on what?” I asked, while Cole sipped his whiskey and stayed quiet.
“You’re single,” Wes said. “Most of us aren’t. It’s your civic duty to venture where the rest of us can’t. Take one for the team.”
“Do you hear yourself?” I asked, smiling through it because yeah, normal. Just the usual straight line. Just guys assuming the world worked the way it always had for them, and that the same was true for me. A world where what if I’m not actually into women? was not a sentence I could say out loud.
It shouldn’t touch me. Mostly, it didn’t.
Marco barked a laugh. “Yeah, man. The dick’s a muscle, right? Needs to be trained, or it’ll fall off.”
I shook my head. “Pretty sure that’s not actual biology.”
Someone else jumped in to comment, dropping some line about regularly cleaning the pipes, the kind of stuff you’d expect from guys drunk on a recent win and mildly cabin-feverish after nine days on the road. I checked my phone instead. No new messages.
Earlier, between the game and the bus back, Stellan had sent me a photo of himself holding the new issue of Men’s Health with the caption, it’s a consolation prize, but what can you do?
So maybe he hadn’t gone out to find someone.
Having an eight-pack is a character trait, I’d replied. In case you were wondering.
His reply had come in before we hit the hotel. Then please thank yours for its service. Also, met one more donor today who wants to come by next week. Look at me using capitalism for the greater good.
“Matt,” Cole said, purposefully light. “Earth to captain.”
When I looked up, it was to find five expectant pairs of eyes on me. Right. I still had my phone in hand, their attention on me, and sitting there much longer would’ve started exactly the kind of conversation I didn’t want. So, whatever. Fine.
I pushed up from the banquette. “Anyone give me shit after this, I’m trading you.”
“Not your call,” Marco yelled after me.
I flipped him off without looking back.
The woman glanced up when I approached, with a quick smile that turned her even prettier—gold hoops, clear skin, eight regular hours of sleep, possibly Pilates.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey.” One side of her mouth tilted higher. “Sorry if I was a little obvious there. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot with your friends.”
Huh.
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Body language.” She held out a hand. “Matt, right? I’m Rama.”
Nothing fake about her. That helped. “Unusual name,” I said.
“Unusual mom,” was the reply. “She’d decided destiny would choose it for her. Destiny, apparently, chose an imported margarine brand.”
I laughed—wasn’t even trying, not that hard. “Makes for a fun origin story, at least.”
“That it does,” she said. “It’s a crowd pleaser.”
Nice eyes. Nice voice. Generally nice, really, and that was how things with Talia had started, too: a beautiful woman, a room full of guys watching, and me stepping into it because it was expected. Only I’d still been able to lie to myself then.
Now—well, fuck. I knew with immediate, sinking clarity that I was way past pretending I might be interested. Not in any real way. I could do the lines, the easy questions, let the guys see me talking to a woman at a bar so they’d leave it alone for another couple of weeks. Optics.
But it wouldn’t be fair to her.
She must have seen it click in my face, because her expression shifted, shoulders rolling back just slightly, eyes alert. “You don’t actually want to flirt with me,” she said.
All right. Straight to it, then.
I leaned a shoulder against the bar. “I know this sounds like a cop-out, but it honestly isn’t you.”
Her gaze stayed on me for a beat before she smiled, a little softer but real. “Weirdly enough, I believe you. Now, here’s a shocking piece of news: You’re allowed to simply have a conversation with a woman.”
I felt my stance loosen. “Good to know.”
Why the hell not. We talked for a couple of minutes, long enough to learn a few things, definitely long enough to look like I was trying to anyone in the team who cared to track it.
She was here for work, fresh into her first job with a healthcare company, and asked if the two things she’d heard about Seattle were true: rain and good coffee. I said they were.
Easy enough. But nothing in me leaned toward her, and nothing would. Instead, what I tasted on my tongue was the sharp, bright memory of Stellan on my bed in my T-shirt, talking shit about fitness trends.
Rama might have caught a hint of it, because she tilted her head at me. “Ah. I see how it is.”
I frowned. “What?”
“The someone-else face.” The corners of her lips tugged up, eyes clear, friendly. “Don’t worry, I’m not psychic. It’s just that you looked right at me for the past three minutes, and then suddenly you were far away.”
That…
Well.