Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 122514 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122514 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
“No. Not like this.” He indicated me. “I can tell. You’re off from your usual weird shit.” He scowled. “I don’t like it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “My usual weird shit?”
A smile ghosted over his face. “You don’t think I didn’t know you were watching me that first night?”
Oh. I squirmed. This hallway suddenly got really hot.
“Or the next morning when I jogged past with Juan?”
I’d been a creeper both times, standing and hiding against the wall.
And really. I glanced at the back end of the hallway. Keith didn’t believe in using an air conditioner for the indoor gym, said all the windows were enough for the ventilation, but maybe we needed to add more windows.
My voice came out strained. “You knew I was there those times?”
“One of the guys heard you freaking out the first night they got here, told me about it last night after he saw us talking by the courts. Figured I needed a warning.”
I could’ve been a puddle by now.
“Oh, God.”
A slight chuckle from him. “I don’t give a shit about that. You about to start creeping outside my cabin window?”
Yes. Maybe. I mean, no.
“What cabin are you in?”
The corner of his mouth tugged upwards. “Yeah, right. I’m half-tempted to tell you. I want you back to how you were.”
“How I was what?”
“Being weird.” He raked me up and down. “You’re being normal. I don’t like it.”
I frowned a little. “You’re very vocal and demanding.”
“I know what I want.”
And apparently, he wanted me weird. Well, I could so out-weird him.
I mean—where’d that come from?
Now my eyebrows went up. “I don’t get a lot of requests to go back to being crazy.”
He grinned, but then shrugged and readjusted his leaning stance against the wall. His hands went into his pockets. “I don’t know. Just doesn’t feel right.” Then that grin came back. It was teasing now. “Or maybe I thought I was getting my own ball girl for a second, and before you run with that one, I mean as in someone to retrieve my balls for me so I don’t have to stop shooting hoops.”
I almost cooed at him, all the embarrassment shifting to more comfortable terrain here. “That’s cute. You want an errand girl.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” His eyes darkened.
“No, seriously. Think of it this way,” I told him. “Now you don’t have to be scared you’ll find me in your bed one night with a knife and hot wax.”
Someone walked past the hallway, then backtracked.
“Reese.” It was Aiden. He was frowning at us. “Coach wants you back.”
Reese nodded to him, and after a questioning look at me, Aiden returned to the courts.
I started to go back, but Reese caught my elbow.
I stiffened, my insides shrieking. Code Red, people! He was touching me!
Reese was saying over my internal tornado alarms, “Just tell me. Does it have to do with a guy?”
Oh.
Damian.
And just like that, the tornado alarms switched off. A whole different form of storm was tearing me up inside, one that was way too fucking real for this conversation.
I gentled my tone, but I needed to let him know I meant business. “Look.” Fuck. I sighed, biting my lip. “Yes. It’s part of the tragically stupid thing from before, but I don’t even talk to my friends about it.”
Technically, I didn’t talk to anyone about it. The therapist had been a little over six months ago.
His hand was still on my elbow. He was leaning closer.
I gave him a little bit more. “It’s taken a full year for me to get where I am now, so…”
He nodded, new understanding dawning in his eyes. He held his hands up, and I tried to ignore how I protested the loss of his touch.
He straightened away from me. “Back off?”
Something shifted.
I felt it. I saw that he felt it too, and I didn’t think it was my delusional side imagining it. I nodded. “Back off.”
“No need to say anything more.”
He meant it, bypassing me.
He was almost to the courts when I followed him back into the gym. Someone tossed him the ball, and he was dribbling for his team within seconds, calling out the play as he went.
I stopped in my tracks, though.
God.
That look. His touch. The slight concern that I was just now realizing I had heard when he questioned me in the hallway. I didn’t know how it happened, when it happened, but there was something there.
Something real.
His shirt was flapping in the wind, showcasing a good amount of skin and a tattoo running vertically under his arm, and my heart just did a backflip.
All those flutters exploded in my stomach.
My head spun. I wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but I think, just maybe, someone had understood me without me saying a word about it? Maybe? I was in trouble, very real and serious trouble.
Over the rest of the week, I fell into a routine.