Chapter 7
seven
INDIGO
I’m straddling Sebastian Navarro.
“Indie. Hi.” Sweat glistens across his forehead, his chest, his back.
His tawny skin is warm beneath my palms, and his body is hard and muscular.
The boy I once knew shines out through the familiar tilt of his smile, but he’s all man now.
A decade of professional conditioning and hockey has honed him into something broader, more confident.
More devastating to my heart. “Are you okay?”
“What are you doing here, Bash?” The words come out harsher than I mean them to, slicing through the thick air between us. In my defense, I wasn’t expecting to see him, let alone end up in his lap. Scrambling off him, I stand and put some much-needed distance between us.
Sebastian is slower to rise. Each muscle flexes and shifts as he stands, and soon I’m looking up at him in a way I never had to at seventeen.
How is it fair that he’s only grown taller, more muscular, and more handsome in the last ten years, and I’ve stayed the same short five-foot-five inches?
The only growing I’ve done has been in my tits, hips, thighs, and ass.
Wrapping my arms around my middle, I angle my body so he won’t notice the weight I’ve put on.
Who am I kidding? Of course, he notices. I was always curvy, but my adult body is a bit more exaggerated than my teenage body was. And I spend my days writing, while he spends his working out.
I hate the thoughts running through my head and the way I curl in on myself.
I’ve worked hard to love myself and my body.
So what if I’m not tall and thin like my mom?
So what if Hollywood relegates women with bodies like mine to character work and comedic relief?
Hollywood isn’t real. I know that all too well.
And I’m pretty. I’m also smart, talented, and creative. I’m more than the size of my jeans.
When he doesn’t immediately answer, I clear my throat and ask again. “Why are you here?”
“Just out for a jog.” He takes a small step toward me, a hand going to the back of his neck. His warm brown eyes take me in, strong jaw ticking as he traces my curves with his gaze.
I shiver, and it’s not from the chill of the wind. “Out for a jog. So you live around here?”
He shrugs. “Not far.”
I have no reason not to believe him. Lola said she ran into him and another player on the team at the grocery store nearby, but we’ve been here for over a month, and I’ve never seen him around. “And you just happened to be running past my house?”
“Is this your house?” he asks.
It’s not convincing, and I’m unsure how to feel about that. What game is he playing?
“I, uh, ran into your friend the other day. Did she tell you?”
“Uh-huh.”
He rubs the back of his neck and flinches. “Oh. Did she happen to give you my number?”
“She did.” I swallow hard. I’ve debated what to do with that number every single day. When I finally decided to open up my contact list and add it, seeing that it was the same number from all those years ago nearly knocked the wind from my lungs.
I never deleted his number, but I always assumed it had changed. Bash is famous in hockey circles, and I’ve had to change my number multiple times since I was eighteen because people leaked it. It would make sense that he’s had similar experiences.
“I never changed it,” he says softly, taking another half a step toward me. He’s close enough that I can smell the musk of his sweat and feel the radiating heat of his skin. “I had to be sure you could reach me if you needed me.”
Oh.
My heart flips, stutters, then picks up speed. He kept the same number for ten years in case I ever needed him? What the hell am I supposed to do with that information? It makes me ache, but it doesn’t change the fact that, ten years ago, he chose someone else.
So what was it? Guilt?
When I don’t say anything in response, Bash clears his throat. “You look good. Really good.” He lifts a hand to my face before thinking better of it and letting it drop back to his side. “I love the hair. It suits you, Rosebud.”
Rosebud. I wasn’t sure about the nickname at first. But after a few days of a fourteen-year-old Bash calling me that with an affectionate little smile, it didn’t feel like he was teasing me. No, it felt special. A secret endearment no one else had ever used.
It’s been ten years since I’ve heard the nickname, and it still launches a familiar flutter of butterflies to flight.
“Thanks.”
“Do you, um, do you have plans right now? I’d love to catch up. I could take you out to lunch or for a coffee?”
My knee-jerk reaction is to say no. To run away, barricade myself in the house, and demand Lola send him away.
Because standing here with him now? It’s very clear that I was lying to myself about being desensitized to Sebastian Navarro.
But he looks at me with such naked hope that the denial dies in my throat.
“Not sure any place is going to let you in like that.” I motion to his bare chest. His very toned, very sexy, bare chest.
Do not start drooling, Indie.
Sebastian glances down at himself and chuckles. “I have a hoodie in my car.”
Okay. I had hoped that would give me an easy way out. “Don’t you have practice or something today?”
That makes him smile brightly, and oh my god. It’s devastating. Ten years had dulled the memory of his smile and what it felt like to bear the full force of it. “You following my schedule, Rosebud?”
“What? No. But I know it’s the end of the regular season, and I’m not living under a rock. I know you guys are headed to the playoffs. I’m sure you’re busy.”
When he pulls his full lower lip between his teeth, I can’t help staring. I always wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips. And I thought—well, I’d hoped—the summer after senior year I’d get to find out.
“Don’t give me that look. You made sure I knew all about hockey after being friends for years.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you still followed it. Which is why I was so surprised to see you in the stands at my game.”
I knew I’d surprised him. And I blame myself for the hit he took. If I hadn’t distracted him with my presence, he never would have missed the defenseman careening toward him.
Sebastian rarely lets anything get past him.
I know because, despite what I told him, I do follow his schedule.
And his stats and his interviews. I watch every game from the solitary comfort of my living room and cheer him on like he didn’t once break my heart into a million pieces. I can’t seem to help myself.
Ryland always hated when I had one of Sebastian’s games on. And he wasn’t even aware of our shared past.
“I’m sorry about that hit. Are you… Are you okay?”
Sebastian smiles softly at me. “Yeah. I’m fine. It looked worse than it was.”
Goalies rarely take hits the same way the rest of the team does, so it’s more shocking when they do. The few times a season when Bash took hits always made me sick to my stomach with worry, despite our history.
“Anyway, what do you say? Can I treat you to a coffee?”
Shifting my laptop case on my back, I consider it.
Part of me wants to say yes. To bask in his presence for an afternoon.
Let myself forget that I wasn’t good enough for him and ignore the growing realization that I haven’t felt this kind of connection with a single man outside of him.
I don’t want to let myself look too hard at what that means for me and the rest of my life.
“I have work to do. I’m sorry.”
His face falls for a moment before the smile reappears. “That’s okay. Can I take you out another time? We’re flying out for an away series tonight, but I’ll be back on Thursday. I could treat you to dinner?”
I came here to be close to Sebastian, but I never expected to actually run into him. Even after the game and Lola’s run-in with him, I figured the Twin Cities were big enough that I could avoid him and simply enjoy the idea of our proximity.
This puts a kink in that plan.
“I…”
“Please, Indie. It’s just food. Or coffee. Whatever you want, really, I just…” Sebastian clears his throat, his gaze flicking to the side before returning to settle on me. “I’ve missed you.”
That statement—spoken with so much earnestness—sucks all the air from my lungs. How can I say no to that?
Damn it.
“Okay. Fine. We can get dinner or something.”
The brightness of his smile pushes me off-kilter. “Great. Yeah. Okay.”
We stand there, staring at each other for a moment, before he digs his phone out of his pocket.
He unlocks it, opens his contact list, then hands it to me.
It takes me a second to process what I’m seeing.
A photo of me when I was seventeen, the name Rosebud, and my old phone number.
All these years, and he never deleted my number, even though he had to realize it was no longer mine?
He flashes me a gentle smile, like he knows what I’m thinking. “Could you put your number in?”
He says it so easily. Like the ground isn’t shifting beneath my feet. Because for ten years, he’s held on to his old number, and mine. I don’t know how to take that. I don’t know what it means.
“Yeah. Sure, of course.” My hands tremble as I type in my current number and hit save. They tremble as I pass the phone back to Sebastian.
“Thanks, Indie.”
I can’t hold his gaze, so I drop mine to my feet as I scuff them across the sidewalk. “Sure. Listen, I should go. I really do need to get some work done.”
“Right. I’m sorry, I’ll let you go, it’s just, can I…” He sucks in a deep breath, drawing my attention back to him. “Can I hug you?”
The decision to nod isn’t a conscious one, and before I can process it, Sebastian Navarro, the boy I secretly loved through most of my teenage years and beyond, is pulling me against his warm chest and wrapping his strong arms around me.
It feels familiar and foreign at the same time. He doesn’t hesitate, and he rests his chin on the crown of my head the way he always did. But he’s bigger now. Broader and harder and more somehow. He holds me until my muscles relax. Then he keeps holding me.
“Don’t disappear again,” he whispers. The words are so soft, I’m not sure I’d hear them if I wasn’t completely attuned to him. “Please.”
“I won’t,” I promise. Even though I’m sure I’ll regret it.
Because Sebastian Navarro has always had a power over my heart that no one else did. I thought the last decade had eroded that. That I’d taught myself to be indifferent toward him.
It’s taken one hug to prove me wrong.