Focused: A hate to love sports romance(36)

"Calm down?" he roared.

My hand reached out and almost settled on his chest. He snatched my wrist before it made contact.

His fingers were so, so warm.

"I took an Uber, you psycho," I murmured. "Your hand is so much bigger than mine. Isn't that funny?"

Noah sighed, eyes falling shut as he dropped my hand. Boo. "Why didn't you say so?"

"You were kind of busy yelling at me." I turned and hummed in appreciation when I saw the kitchen. "And you had your thundercloud face on, which makes it hard to interrupt you."

"My … what?"

Walking along the length of the island, I let my palm glide just above the surface of the granite. "When you get mad, you look like a thundercloud."

Noah was quiet, and I felt his eyes on my back as I opened a few cabinets.

"Where's the listing agent?"

His footsteps started following mine as I wandered through the dining area and into the main living space, staring through the sprawl of glass windows facing the water even though I couldn't see anything other than the moon glinting off the far side of the bay.

"We convinced her to give us a couple of hours to film."

I smiled over my shoulder. "And she said yes?"

"She was very willing to accommodate, given my offer."

My smile felt brittle. "Ahh."

"Ahh, what?"

I shrugged. "Nothing."

He let it slide, and I was oh, so thankful for that.

"How was hanging out with your sisters?"

The laughter that escaped my lips was harsh and tired and all sorts of tangled emotions. Amazing how much you could wrap up in one puff of air. The argument about Claire's paper was easier to ignore when I was trying to escape it, when their voices overlapped each other and I just wanted it to stop, stop, stop.

But it was quiet in Noah's house, and he wasn't searching to fill the silence with meaningless words. Behind me, he was a solid, steady presence, and it was exactly what I needed.

There was just enough wine in my system, loosening my brain and allowing honest words to roll from my tongue.

"We fought," I told him. "Or they did, I guess."

"What about?"

"Family structure," I answered with a sad smile. His eyebrows bent in, but he didn't say anything. The arm of the couch was close enough that I could sit back on it and still stare out the window into the inky darkness. "Ours is nontraditional even though I'm told by my sister who's minoring in sociology that's not a term you should throw around lightly. And the structure we had before this one was sort of traditional but incredibly dysfunctional."

Noah shifted so he could see my face, his big shoulder braced on the wall just on the other side of the window.

"Claire—the one in school—has to write a paper on maternal influences in nontraditional family structures," I explained.

"Logan's wife?" he guessed.

"That's where we started the discussion, but ..." My voice trailed off. How much of this did he actually want to hear? "Where's Marty?" I asked, suddenly very aware that we were alone in the big family room.

He tilted his head. "On the phone downstairs. I think it's Rick, but I'm not sure."

I nodded.

"The paper," he prompted.

"Are you asking to avoid your yoga lesson?"

"Absolutely." His face was all harsh lines and angles in the dimly lit room, and I laughed at his answer. Another flash of a grin appeared, but it was gone just as quickly.

I moved off the arm of the couch and onto one of the end cushions, my hands clasped lightly in my lap. This didn't feel like the kind of conversation you had while sitting in a pseudo-seat. "Paige is the obvious answer," I said quietly. "She and Logan got married when I was sixteen, the twins were twelve, Iz was fourteen, and since then, she's been our mother in every way that matters."

With each word, and each moment of precious quiet he gave me to process, I felt the effect of the wine drain slowly from my body.

"I remember when she showed up," he said.

"I'll bet," I said wryly. "You know it's really her fault that I climbed through your window."

His eyes sharpened. "Is it?"

I wondered how long we'd tiptoe around this, and now seemed like as good a time as any.

"Of course, she didn't know how literally I'd take her advice, but at that time, I had such a desperate craving for a person like her in my life. To hear her tell me to take the bull by the horns and go for what I wanted—someone I viewed as smart and strong and feisty and successful and beautiful and just ... everything I wanted to be as a sixteen-year-old. Her words were as good as gospel, you know?"

He took in a slow breath and let it out before he walked toward me and took a seat on the coffee table that faced the couch. Somehow, he didn't doubt it could hold his weight, but it did, and he spread his legs so that his hands dangled between them.

"I always wondered what prompted it." His eyes never wavered from mine.

I grinned. "Besides a raging crush on the boy next door?"

He exhaled a laugh. "That part was clear enough," he forced out. I had to close my eyes at the sound of his voice, rough and raw and low.