Page 77 of Dirty Fighter

I trail after her, watching the sway of her hips and auburn cascade of soft curls as she pulls her hair up and then shakes it out.

I want to tell her that I’ll send her a jersey. Ask her to wear it to my games. To sit in my seats. To be there after the games and⁠—

Just. Chill.

Yeah, this morning things seem different. I don’t know what it is. Couldn’t say what changed exactly, except that something has. Like maybe Rowan might actually be feeling the same way I am. Or close. Close-ish.

Still, I need to go slow. Start small.

She turns on the faucet in the bathroom and starts to brush her teeth as I prop a shoulder against the open doorframe. “You like hockey?”

“I used to watch with Ed every once in a while when I was home for winter break.”

I slide into the spot beside her at the sink and grab my own toothbrush.

She hands me the paste. “Your dad was bananas about watching you play. He’d tell me stories about what you were like when you were just learning to skate. How they always put you on offense when you were playing club hockey in grade school because you could outscore everyone else… but when they put you on defense, you changed the game.”

I start brushing my molars, watching as she rinses and spits. “Think you’d like to come to a game sometime?” Or all of them?

Jesus, I sound like I’m asking her to prom.

She smiles at me through the mirror with a glop of paste covering the corner of her mouth. God, that little cocked brow shouldn’t be so pretty.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Geah?” I ask slowly around my toothbrush and a mouthful of paste.

“All those gorgeous teammates?” There’s a demon glint in her eyes. “Count me in.”

I drop my toothbrush, but the whole lightning-fast reflexes thing saves me from having to pick it up off the floor… but not from somehow managing to get paste all over my hand, chin, chest, and neck.

Rowan winks, flashing her pearly whites as she skims past, leaving me staring into the mirror with paste dripping down that too…. for three, two, one… I grab the hand towel, dragging it over my face as I tear down the hall after her.

27

Rowan

Jason catches me, and I squeal, laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

I feel free… joyful. Happy like I can’t remember ever feeling before.

Because of Jason with his everywhere-at-once hands and low rumbling laughter underscoring mine. From the start, I’ve been looking at this man like there was a ticking clock on how long I’d get to be with him. On the time we’d have together.

I reminded myself over and again that this couldn’t last. But suddenly it feels like maybe it could. Like it… might.

Surrendering to the greedy pull of his touch, I let him draw me in flush against him. Head tipped back, I look into the mirth-filled eyes.

“What’s that look?” he asks.

It’s you. “Happiness.”

A contented sound rumbles up from low in his chest, and I loop my arms around his neck. His slip around my waist, crossing, holding me even tighter against him so I can feel every breath, every beat of his heart.

I swallow, whispering the words that start us down a path we never agreed to travel. “This is good, Jason.”

His hand stills with the backs of his knuckles light against my cheek. “Yeah, it is.”

I want to tell him that I’m falling for him. That he makes me feel things I didn’t know I could feel, want things I’ve never wanted before. I want to ask him if he’s feeling anything like I am, because the way he looks at me, touches me. I swear he does. I want to ask if he could see something between us existing outside of an escape. In the real world where we have jobs and apartments and power and phones.