It was a feeding frenzy after that.
Gone was my restraint when it came to keeping my hands off Riley based on where we were or who was around. It felt like there was a bomb ticking just under the surface of my rib cage, and I was hell-bent on making the most of whatever time I had left before it exploded.
I pulled her into a dark supply closet one morning after practice, both of us laughing and trying to be quiet as I peeled her clothes off and fucked her against the shelves of balls and shoulder pads and cold weather gear. Riley wrapped her legs around my waist, hands gripping the shelves behind her as practice jerseys slipped out of place and onto the ground at our feet. But we didn’t stop, not until both of us caught our release and sagged into each other, smiling and kissing and planning our exit so we wouldn’t draw attention.
And the next night, Riley texted me as the locker room started to clear.
Meet me in the shower.
It wasn’t enough to have each other in our dorm. Any minute that passed without my hands on her or her mouth on mine was too long. And while the rest of the team was none the wiser, while we kept up our charade of hating each other — or, at the very best, tolerating each other — when it was just the two of us?
We were on fire.
Hours bled into days and days into weeks as I lost myself in Riley and football. I devoured her until she came on my tongue in the athletic training office, and she rode me torturously slow and quiet in the back study room of the library. When we went to the movies with the team, we both snuck out at different times and met in the family bathroom, locking the door before I had to cover Riley’s mouth to subdue her screams.
And while I was a mad man for those stolen moments, for the way my heart would race with the risk each and every time she gave me that knowing smile — it was when we were home that I savored time the most.
Her bedroom door never slammed shut anymore, and the labels on what was whose disappeared. It was like we really lived together, like we shared a home.
What was mine was hers, and what was hers was mine.
I reveled in her lying on my chest after a long night of practice, my fingers dancing in her hair as she slowly fell asleep. My chest ached when we sat on her bed in the middle of the afternoon, her massaging my calves as I smiled and listened to her talk about her classes. Even studying was more fun, especially when she’d bait me with the best reward of all.
Finish this assignment and you can have me in the kitchen.
Get a page of that paper done and you can take me to bed.
Just an hour of studying, and then this mouth is yours to claim.
There was no way to avoid the cold, hard truth of it all.
I was addicted.
And like any addict will tell you, it didn’t matter that I knew in the back of my mind that we were playing with fire. It didn’t matter that one day it all would have to end, that one day I’d have to go through withdrawals and peel myself off the floor.
Right now, I had her.
And though she told me she couldn’t give me more, I pretended like this would always be enough.
Coach gave us the Sunday after our seventh win off. Win number seven was a big one in college football — it meant we’d clinched a bowl game. How the rest of the season played out would determine which bowl game, but right now, we were seven and one — and that was something to celebrate.
Gavin had been busy with classes and basketball practice, the season in full swing now for him, too. So when we all found ourselves with the same day free, we decided to spend it together.
“So, you think you’ll make it to the ship?” Gavin asked me as I slowly pushed his chair through an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It had been Riley’s idea, of course, and as much as it wasn’t my favorite way to spend a day off, there was no way in hell I could ever say no to that girl.
And after just an hour of walking behind her, of watching her eyes light up when a piece struck her — I wanted to take her to every museum in the world just to see her this way forever.
“I don’t know,” I confessed, stopping us at an impressive portrait of an African king. It was part of the Dutch and Flemish exhibition, the whole reason Riley wanted to come, and Gavin and I both let our eyes wander the canvas as I spoke. “We’re good. Best in our conference without a doubt. But…” I scratched the back of my neck. “The toughest part of our schedule is here at the end. Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia Atlantic…”
Gavin whistled. “Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“At least you know for sure you have a bowl game.”
I smiled, shaking my head as his words sank in. “I’m going to play in a bowl game, Gav. A fucking college bowl game.”
Gavin looked up at me with a shit-eating grin. “Better not blow it like you did when we played that season of NCAA on Xbox.”
He made a choking sound then, eyes going wide as he wrapped his hands around his throat and exaggerated the theatrics.
I nudged him forward, making the foot of his chair cross over the line that alarmed he was too close to the painting. He cursed when it went off, backing up as I walked away from his chair with my hands in my pockets, whistling like I had nothing to do with it.
He rammed the chair into my heels, laughing when I yelped before I took over pushing him again.
“What about you? How’s the season going?” I asked him.
Gavin sighed, pointing at a painting in the next gallery. I rolled him over to it, acutely aware of Riley as we passed her, of how I caught the scent of her hair as she glanced at me over one shoulder.
“I don’t know, man. It’s… tough. I mean, just when I think I’ve got the hang of it, there’s a new challenge. And some of these teams we’re playing? These guys aren’t just good. They’re fucking good.” He gave me a look to communicate the difference, and then he shook his head, frowning. “It sounds insane when I say it out loud, but most of them have been in a chair all their lives, you know? They’re more polished than I am. Not that I wish for anything different, it’s just…”
“It’s a strange situation to be in.”
He nodded. “Yeah. And I’m thankful I have this at all, but sometimes…” He swallowed, both of us pretending to read the plaque beside the painting we viewed now. “Sometimes, I’m just sad. And I miss football. And I don’t want to look at everything I have to be thankful for. I want to think about everything I’ve lost.”
My throat tightened so fiercely I couldn’t suck down another breath, not even when Gavin turned to look up at me and slugged me in the arm.
“Hey, don’t do that,” he said, and he didn’t even have to specify what that was. “It’s in the past. I’m allowed to be sad sometimes without it meaning I have any ill will toward you.”
I nodded, but couldn’t erase the frown bending my brows, or the guilt permeating my chest.
“She’s such a geek at these places,” Gavin said, the strange outburst stirring me from my thoughts. I followed his gaze to where Riley stood admiring a small, dark painting.
One arm folded across the middle of her rib cage while the elbow of the opposite balanced in the crook, her fingertips softly hovering over her parted lips. Her eyes were wide and glossed, crawling slowly over the canvas like she couldn’t possibly see all the artist had to offer even if she stared forever.
To me, she was the art more than the portrait that held her attention.
“Oh, shit,” Gavin breathed, elbowing me in the thigh. He nodded toward a blonde girl that had just walked into the gallery we were in. “That’s her. That’s the girl from my Psych class.”
The way he swallowed after that statement made me arch a brow. Before I could question his obvious nerves, he murmured that he’d be back, and he rolled straight toward her.
I tucked my hands in my pockets, smiling as I watched the girl flush a little when he approached her. He said something that made her laugh, and then she tucked her hair behind one ear, answering whatever question he’d asked.
Riley was still standing in front of the dark little painting.
Clearing my throat, I ambled over to her, keeping my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t reach out for her by force of habit.
“Artist in His Studio,” I read from the plaque beside the painting.
Riley jumped a bit, like she’d been lost in her own world and just realized she was in a museum full of people again. She flushed, peeking up at me before she pointed at the corner of the painting, careful not to get too close.
“See how he chose to focus on the easel here, on the cracks in the floorboard of the studio and the lighting, rather than on the artist himself?”
I let my eyes wander the length of the painting as she spoke, nodding. “I do.”
“It’s such a small painting, likely one that hundreds, or even thousands, of people walk by without looking twice at every single day,” she said, her voice soft and laced with awe. She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “But it’s brilliant. The drama, the lighting, the way he captured something seemingly unremarkable in a delicate, interesting way. It’s Rembrandt’s message that art isn’t just technical, but… intellectual. It’s more than just paint on a canvas. It’s a dream, a vision, a moment brought to life.”
I smiled, but I was no longer looking at the painting. I was looking at Riley looking at the painting, at how her eyes glossed over yet again, brimming with unshed tears.
“It makes you sad,” I said.
“No,” she said immediately, shaking her head. But then, she rolled her lips together and nodded. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. I… There’s no reason for it to have conjured this feeling in me, but when I look at it, I… I think about football.”
I almost laughed, except that the way she wore heartbreak like a mask in that moment kept me from it. “How so?”
She glanced up at me, then back at the painting. “I love it so much, Zeke.”
The way the whisper was pained as it left her nearly sent me to my knees.
“I love it, and I feel guilty for loving it, like it’s not mine to love, like I’m in an affair with someone already promised to another.”
“Because of Gavin?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I can uphold my promise to him,” she said. “But, past that? I can’t… I can’t take his dream.”
“It can be your dream, too.”
“I don’t know that it can,” she whispered, and her eyes found mine once more. “Not without hurting him.”
I frowned, but didn’t have the chance to argue that point before Gavin joined us, rolling up between us with a wide smile.
“Guess who’s got a date Tuesday night with the hot blonde in the corner?”
Riley and I both snapped our attention to said hot blonde, who was laughing and flushing because she had very much heard his declaration.
He didn’t look even a bit remorseful. He just tipped an imaginary hat in her direction before leading us toward the next gallery as Riley and I fell into step behind him with laughs of our own.
But the laugh faded quickly from Riley, and I could see how she was retreating into herself, how there was a battle warring inside her that her brother couldn’t see.
So I reached out and wrapped my hand around hers, letting her know that someone did.
Riley blinked, looking at where our hands touched before she found my gaze. A half smile bloomed on her lips, and she squeezed my hand where it held hers.
Then, Gavin stopped abruptly, whipping around as Riley tore her hand from mine and pretended to admire a wooden ship inside a large glass case.
“I’m hungry. Who’s ready to study the art of the lobster roll?”
