Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Until recently.
Something about working with Holden had given me purpose, had given me confidence.
Him being released back to practice felt like something worth celebrating — for both of us.
And so, I carried the platter of muffins with my chin held high, knocking on the front door of the Pit on what sounded like a particularly quiet evening for them.
Leo opened the door, and I was thankful it wasn’t Kyle — who had been pretty relentless in his advances since that night of the party.
“Julep,” he said with a surprised smile, opening the door for me to step in. “What’s up?”
“I made muffins,” I said stupidly, holding up the tray. “Thought there might be some hungry football players here who could help me eat them.”
“Oh, you have come to the right place, cariño,” he said, taking the tray out of my hands.
I followed him into the kitchen where he sat them down on the counter, and I looked around, a bit impressed with how clean the place was considering how I’d seen it at the party last time I’d been inside.
Leo groaned when he unwrapped the cloth I’d put over the muffins, and he picked one up, peeling the wrapper off the bottom and shoving half of it in his mouth. “Homahgod,” he said, moaning. “They’re still warm.”
I chuckled, crossing my arms as I looked around. I hated the way I not-so-subtly looked for Holden, wondering why he hadn’t come down when he heard me.
But there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d ask where he was.
“It doesn’t often look like this,” Leo said around another bite of muffin, nodding to where I was looking. “This clean, I mean. Cap has been in a mood since he got home from his last class. He scrubbed these counters like Coach Lee himself was going to come and inspect them after.”
I smirked at the joke, biting back the niggling question in my mind.
Where is he now?
“He’s upstairs in his room,” Leo said, like he could read my mind, and the smirk he wore mirrored the knowing one Mary had given me when I left the house. “If you want to take him a muffin, see if it’ll get him out of his grumpy mood.”
“Grumpy?” I frowned. “He was cleared to practice today. I figured he’d be ecstatic.”
Leo shrugged. “Must have something else going on. But hey, nothing these won’t fix,” he said, holding out one of the muffins. He nodded toward the stairs, and though I narrowed my gaze at the suspicious grin he was giving me, he only pushed the muffin toward me more.
I carefully took it from him, still giving him a look as I conceded.
Leo smiled a little too proudly as he all but skipped back into the living room, and he flopped down onto the couch just like Mary had, putting on his headset and tuning back into the game I’d interrupted. I idly wondered if he and Mary played any of the same games but didn’t muse on it too much before I was climbing the stairs up to the dark hallway of rooms.
Holden’s was on the end, the one that overlooked the side of the garden. I knocked softly but got no response.
“Holden?” I asked, testing the knob. I pushed it open just a crack, peering in to make sure I wasn’t going to storm in on him naked or anything. Music played from a small Bluetooth speaker, something melancholy and beautiful that I didn’t recognize. When I didn’t see anything, I pushed the door open a little wider. “You in here?”
It was humid in his room, warm and wet with the intoxicating smell of a man’s body wash. I heard his bare feet on the floor first, and then Holden rounded the corner out of his en-suite bathroom.
In nothing but a navy-blue towel that was wrapped low around his waist.
I swallowed, standing there in the doorway with a fucking muffin in my hand as my eyes raked over him. I didn’t have a choice, couldn’t have stopped them even if I tried. It was like an irresistible magnet, the way the water dripped from his hair, sluicing over his swollen pectoral muscles, his defined abs, trickling all the way down to where a deep V disappeared under the towel at its apex. With only his bedroom lamp on, he seemed to glow like a Roman god, and I marveled at his chiseled body, at what years and years of being an athlete had sculpted him into.
He was cleaning one ear with a Q-tip, watching me as I watched him, and when I met his gaze, it wasn’t warm or flirty or even the least bit playful. I waited for him to call me out for my blatant scan of him, to make some smart-ass comment, but instead, he turned back toward the bathroom.