I remember vividly watching the game, watching blood pour down Gavin’s face, while he blankly stared ahead and they shoved cotton up his shattered nose. Like he felt nothing, like pain was the same as existing.
“Still feel okay?” I ask.
He nods slowly.
For a while, I keep my mouth shut and watch him for signs of what feels great and what doesn’t. When it seems like I’ve exhausted all the places I can make him feel good without touching what will feel bad, I give his shoulders one last squeeze. “There.”
Just when I’m about to pull away, his hand snaps up and wraps around my wrist, freezing me.
Time stretches. Our gazes hold. My pulse pounds in my ears.
His thumb strokes my wrist. “Thank you,” he says quietly.
I need to leave. I need to run and keep running. But instead, Gavin’s holding my wrist, then he’s tugging me closer, and then my hand is cupping his face, my head bending.
Our mouths brush—soft, tentative. Light dances behind my eyes as I sigh against his mouth, as he sighs against mine. The sound of contentment. Sweet relief. Coming home.
His lips are firm and warm, his beard soft as I sip his mouth, as he releases my wrist and sinks a hand into my hair. A rough, deep moan leaves him as I sweep my tongue against his, wet, hot. I taste him and feel like I’ve swallowed sunlight. I need more. I need everything.
As if he’s read my mind, Gavin wraps an arm around me, hauling me against him, pulling us close. He hisses in a breath as he turns fully and bends his knee.
I pull away worried, glancing down at his leg. “Are you—”
“Shut up,” he says hoarsely, cupping my head, drawing me tight inside his arms. “I’m fine.”
I wrap my hand around his waist, up his bare back, my fingertips dancing over the terrain of hard, powerful muscles and smooth, warm skin. He shivers and exhales roughly in my mouth as I kiss him again, warm and slick, warring for control.
He kisses like I knew he would—harsh and hard one moment, then another, slow and tender. I kiss him back like he must have known I would too, sweet and teasing, the next demanding and fierce. Gavin’s hand slips down my waist and grips my ass, holding me against him. Our chests crush together, our hips move as we rub against each other, as our kisses build in speed and rhythm.
“Just this once,” he says.
I nod. “Just once.”
“Then tomorrow,” he says between kisses, biting my lip, chasing it with his tongue, before he begins kissing my jaw, my neck. “At practice, we’ll be what we were.”
I moan as he grips my ass hard and moves me against him. “Day after tomorrow—”
“God,” he says roughly, hauling me so tight against him I can barely breathe. “God, you feel so good, taste so good. So much better than I—” He kisses me harder, stopping himself, but it’s not difficult to fill in the rest of that sentence.
I smile against his mouth. “Been thinking about this, huh, Hayes?”
“Piss off.” He cups my jaw, and holds it while he fucks my mouth with his tongue. “Like you haven’t, too.”
“Maybe just a little bit.”
Groaning, he presses his mouth to mine, this time hard and slow. He holds my face, my hips. And that’s when I realize what this is. A last kiss. A goodbye kiss. A no-more kiss.
On a slow, unsteady exhale, he cups my cheek, slides his thumb along my bottom lip as he stares into my eyes. And then he leans in, as if impulsively, for one more kiss, a bite of my bottom lip that he drags between his teeth, before he lets go.
I stare at him, hearing my uneven breathing, feeling heat flame in my cheeks. “Why did you—”
His finger stops my mouth. His eyes hold mine. “You’re going to go home now. And I’m going to stay here.”
“But—”
“And I will be fine.”
I swallow against the knot of something in my throat, a bittersweet pang smarting against my ribs.
“And when I see you in two days,” he says, “this will be behind us.”
I stare at him. Hating that he’s right. That as incredible as this was, it’s the worst possible thing I could do. I have to be wise. I can’t get sucked into caring about someone on the team and repeating the same mistake I made with Bryce.
Even though I know Gavin’s not Bryce, it’s too much of a risk. So what if we make out like champs? So what if at some point it snuck up on me—the mutual needling and provoking and smack-downs turning into something that turned me on? Even if we kept it to only off-hours, in our homes, even if we tried everything to keep it out of our minds and awareness when we practiced and trained and played games and did promotional stints, it could get away from us and compromise our captaincies, the team, the season. One of us could lose interest; the other could want more. We might slip up in front of the team and have to answer for breaking what I’m not even sure are the rules about players being together.
So much could go wrong. Gavin’s right. This has to stop.
“C’mon.” He sits up slowly, blanching with the pain as he swings his legs off the bed and stands. I scramble off his bed, following as he limps only slightly down the hallway, before he turns into his kitchen and opens the back door.
I don’t know how to exit this situation well. My insides are a blender of countless emotions, shredded by my anxiety until they’re a messy, inextricable blur.
“Go on, then,” he says quietly, slipping his hand around my back, low and gentle. “Go.”
I glance from the view of his backyard, back to him, recognizing the moment as a threshold in more than one sense of the word. I want to stay and kiss him and ice his knee and draw him a bath and make him laugh and take care of him.
And I want to push him far away and pretend like none of this ever happened, like he didn’t show me a side of the sharp, harsh man he’s been and reveal what’s beneath that brutally cold façade:
Someone who cares. Who bleeds and hurts and fears.
Just like me.
I stare at him for a long moment. And he stares right back at me, his hand warm on my back, its pressure building every second that I stand there, pushing me where I know I need to go.
Finally, I force myself to do what I promised myself I would. I walk away. As I step onto his porch, I mentally congratulate myself. I’ve done what I failed to do before. I drew a boundary, put a firm stop to going where I shouldn’t with a teammate.
I should be proud of myself. I should be relieved.
But when Gavin’s door quietly slips shut behind me, I don’t feel proud or relieved at all.
15
GAVIN
Playlist: “Lonely Boy,” The Black Keys
“Well, that was an experience,” I tell Mitch. “Cough up the keys, old man. And let’s pray the next time I fuck up my knee and need a steroid injection, it’s the left one and not my gas leg again.”
“You don’t like my driving, that’s your problem,” Mitch says, slapping the keys into my palm.
I snort. “It’s not a matter of liking. It was a matter of not wanting to die before I even got to the doctor’s.”
He waves his hand dismissively, helping himself to a glass of water from my kitchen. “Serves you right. You should have asked Oliver.”