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I see his smirk from the side of my eye.
“I am.”
I stop when he does, and we face each other. It’s strangely intimate as he stares at me with an intensity I’ve never felt before. We’re on an empty sidewalk, under the dim lighting of a streetlamp. My stomach is in knots from the rush of his undivided attention. I feel my cheeks start to heat as his meaning sinks in.
His hand reaches up until he’s palming the side of my face. I lean into his touch instinctively. The spicy smell of his cologne wraps around us.
“Why is it that you don’t realize how stunning you are?” he murmurs. “Did your boyfriend never tell you?”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I whisper.
“Ex- boyfriend,” he clarifies with a crooked smile. “Because you have to know that you were the most intoxicating, most beautiful woman in the room tonight. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.”
My mind has cleared some on the walk home, and I’m glad that I’ll remember this tomorrow. I don’t want to forget the way Sam’s looking at me right now. The way that my stomach flipped with his latest confession. Or knowing that every woman at that bar was dying for Sam’s stormy eyes to be focused on them tonight, including my sister, but here he is, staring at me. I feel like I’ve won a prize. But he’s right; I probably won’t be able to handle his truth in the light of day without a drink to numb my emotions. And somehow, everything that has happened tonight feels like a dream. It doesn’t feel real.
Our eyes are still connected. He’s standing so close that his breath warms my face. My hands slide up his chest until I’m fisting his shirt. He’s leaning in. There’s no one around to interrupt this time. Not my sister. Not the thoughts in my head. Not rational thinking.
And then he kisses me.
It’s slow at first, almost a teasing touch. I’m not expecting Sam to be as gentle as he is. He nips my lower lip and tugs, licking it in the next instant. I open wider and really taste him as he dives deeper, his tongue sliding against mine. I don’t know if it’s the haze of alcohol or the surprising twists of the night, but I find myself getting lost in our kiss. Lost in him. Someone I never had an interest in before. And someone I never thought would notice a girl like me.
When he finally pulls back, I take a deep breath, and my forehead falls to his chest. I’m elated and terrified, all at once. Because way down deep, in the depths of my chest and stomach, I felt them for the first time.
Butterflies. Hundreds of them.
They were followed by fireworks.
And now that I know that they really exist, nothing will ever be the same. I’ll never be able to settle for comfortable again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SAM
“Are you flying solo this trip?” Ollie pauses next to me, noticing that Emerson wasn’t on the plane and didn’t check in to the hotel earlier.
“Yep,” I confirm with a grin, balancing on my skates. It’s funny how the moment Emerson became my handler, I went from me to a we, like we’re a couple or something. It’s even funnier how I don’t mind it. “But I’m a big boy. I think I can handle a little alone time.”
“I have no doubt that you can,” Ollie agrees.
The image of Emerson standing under the streetlamp with her lips connected to mine and my arms around her waist flashes into my head, like it’s done dozens of times since it happened. The way her soft breasts molded to my chest …
Cruz glides around us.
After our kiss the other night, I walked Emerson the rest of the way home. She could barely keep her eyes open by the time we pushed through the front door. She passed out when her head hit the pillow before changing out of her clothes. I slept in my bed alone.
Emerson awoke the next morning, feeling awful. I wasn’t surprised though, not with the amount of alcohol she had drunk the night before. For such a small woman, she’d really put it away. I watched her for most of the night from across the room.
She stayed in bed all morning and was still there when I went to practice later in the day. We both thought her head and body aches were a result of too many drinks. Turned out, we were wrong, which we found out when she spiked a fever later in the day. She went to the doctor, and he confirmed she had the flu. So, while I boarded a plane for our next away game alone, Emerson stayed nestled in her bed while intermittently downing cold medicine, surrounded by used tissues, and sleeping the day away.
“Em is sad not to be here though,” I add. “She really wanted to see Oakley.”
Ollie studies me with a smirk for a moment, and I resist the urge to flip him off. “Oakley will be disappointed not to see Em either, I’m sure.”
Ollie’s making fun of me. He noticed the way I was watching Emerson the other night at the bar, and he’s mentioned it more than once, digging for information I’m never going to give him. Who knew our winger was a gossipy little girl? I guess he could see the chemistry brewing between us though. He would rib me even more if he knew that I had her taste all over my tongue after our kiss that night.
“Come to dinner with us later,” he says, more as a command than a suggestion.
We’re in St. Louis today for a road game to play Chase’s team. Oakley lives here too. Ollie’s sister. My ex.
