For all of about ten minutes after I got home, I felt really damn good about my day. The Sports Illustrated cover, my interactions with Ava, Jack, and Luke, and the social media stuff we’d worked on afterward.
After letting myself into the house, I dumped my purse on the kitchen counter and made a beeline for my bedroom, where I stripped unceremoniously out of my jeans and top and changed into soft sleep shorts, a blue lace bralette, and a threadbare t-shirt that proclaimed my favorite color was pizza. The wine I poured in my stemless glass was plentiful, and the sigh that escaped when I sank onto the couch came from the depths of my very soul.
I was exhausted but exhilarated. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a really, really long time. It was like … like when you pull a couture dress down your body and realize that it fits you perfectly. Like the silk was made to fit you precisely, and the seams were measured for all your curves and edges.
That was when my phone buzzed with a Google news alert.
Against Ava’s suggestion, I’d set up a news alert with my name and the team’s name. Now I understood why she thought it was a shit idea.
Wolves veteran QB sick of ‘distraction’ of the new owner, wants to focus on football.
The news outlet was legitimate enough that I couldn’t dismiss it. But oh, how I wanted to.
I wasn’t someone who got angry. Upset, yes. Annoyed, frequently. But anger was not an emotion that I could easily label when I felt a strange, hot thrumming through my blood. From the top of my head to the tips of my fingers, I felt a fuzzy, indistinct sensation crawl through me.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t understand what compelled me to stomp down my steps into the lower level of my house, through the slider, across the patio in bare feet, and through that damn hedge into Luke’s backyard. It’d been about three hours after I’d last seen him and well past the point when the sun had disappeared out of the sky.
So many thoughts went through my head; many combinations of four letter words that I’d never strung together in one sentence in all my twenty-six years. All because I had the sticky, messy sense that I’d been duped.
As a branch scratched my arm, I hissed under my breath. “Football truce, my ass.”
The lower level was dark, so it was enough to make me hesitate before making my way up the steps to his deck. My anger, or whatever it was, ebbed with my indecision.
When I lifted my phone, the article was staring back at me, all ridiculous and infuriating. My eyes narrowed as my definitely unnamed emotion whipped back up like an icy wind. Just as I started across the patio toward the slider, a light turned on beyond the glass, and Luke came down the stairs with his own phone in hand and a frown over his chiseled face.
There was enough light on the porch that I slowed down, spread my legs, folded my arms across my chest, and waited for his traitorous ass to see me. He glanced up, then did an instant double take, but there wasn’t a moment of surprise anywhere in his eyes or the set of his wide, unsmiling mouth. I saw his broad chest expand on a sigh, almost as if he’d been expecting me.
From across his backyard patio, through the double slider, to where he stood at the bottom of his stairs, we stared at each other. A weird, crackling stalemate that I could feel through all those barriers between us. Then he was moving, swift and silent until he pulled open the slider.
“I did not say that you were a distraction,” he said hurriedly.
I lifted my phone as if it alone could prove him wrong, being all the damning evidence I could possibly need. The way he glanced warily at it did nothing to soothe my raised hackles. It was a look of guilt. “Well, you said something, Luke.”
To my utter surprise, he growled and threw his arms out, muscles popping in his biceps as he did. “This is why I hate dealing with the media. They twist everything. This is why I don’t want to do that stupid Sports Illustrated article.”
“Stupid because they want to talk about me?” I snapped. “They’re journalists. Journalists cover the big stories, and whether you like it or not, this is a big story.”
His eyes darkened, and his jaw tightened, a pop of muscle where it took a sharp turn under his skin. “Oh, trust me, I’m aware.”
That tone. The way his lips curled around the words like they tasted bad, sour on his tongue, made everything inside me erupt, named or not.
“I didn’t choose this,” I yelled. He blinked in surprise, the heat in my tone knocking him back a step. “I didn’t know that any of this would happen, okay? I came home to bury my father, and all of a sudden, I’m in this place where … where people like you hate me instantly, and I have to worry whether my suit shows too much cleavage before I talk to the team because someone might think I’m a whore if I do, and all it takes is one thing like this, and I …” My breath was coming faster, shallow little puffs of air that didn’t inflate my lungs to the capacity that they should have, and it made my vision narrow dangerously with lines of black around the edges.
I placed a shaking hand over my mouth when hysterical laughter escaped past my unwilling lips, which were cold and disconnected from the rest of my body. Or that was what it felt like. All the pieces of me were separate, split apart from the panic pushing at my seams.
“Allie, stop,” Luke commanded, grabbing my shoulders with hard, hot hands. My head snapped up in surprise, and all I could see were his eyes, a lighter brown than I thought they were from this close to him. “Take a deep breath.”
Inexplicably, I complied. Just once.
He nodded. “Another.”
Sweet, lake-scented air filled my lungs to capacity, and his face relaxed when I blew it out through my lips.
“Good.” His hands loosened but stayed on my upper arms. “One more for me.”
My eyes burned at the way his fingers curled over my skin. In the past two weeks, I’d shaken countless hands, but no one had hugged me since Paige, since the day I left Milan after receiving the news of my father’s heart attack.
I was closer to Luke now, by a single step, and clutching my hands in tight fists between us, but the soft cotton of his shirt brushed against the skin of my knuckles. Through that flimsy layer, I could feel the heat of him, warmth projecting outward from his body as if he was his own furnace.
And he was tall. Luke was so much taller than I was when I wasn’t wearing shoes. Tilting my chin up, I looked into his face while he watched me breathe again. Slowly, my limbs snapped back into place, woven together by each deep pull of oxygen. Each block of sanity stacked back where it was supposed to go.
“It’s okay to be pissed,” he said in a low, soothing voice. “I’m pissed at him too. I hate that guy, and he twisted what I said into something I did not mean.”
Looking away from him proved impossible, so I stood there in the dark, with his hands on my arms and his eyes trained on mine with unwavering intensity.
What in the fresh hell was happening right now?
He spoke again when I didn’t. It was all I could do to keep breathing. “I’m sorry, Allie. All I said to him was that unless he asked me about football, I wasn’t interested in any other distractions.” He pinched his eyes shut. “Or something. I can’t even remember. But it was more about him than you.”
In the wake of his apology, which felt honest and direct with no wasted words or flowery excuses, I felt the frantic energy drain from me completely as if someone had siphoned it out.
“I can’t have you making this any harder than it already is,” I told him wearily. “And trust me when I say this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
His entire frame moved closer, tiny fractions with each movement of his feet, but the space all but disappeared. Underneath his massive palms and long fingers, my skin was warm and dry. When his hands moved an inch up, down, that heat spread everywhere.
I wanted him to fold me up in his arms, which made no sense. But his steady instructions, the way he snipped off the wild edge of my panic with only a few words, and the smell of him all around me made me want to curl into him like a milk-sated kitten and sleep against the warmth of his skin.
“I wasn’t thinking,” he admitted, even closer yet. If I tilted my forehead down an inch or two, it would be resting against his chest. I’d feel his heartbeat. “Which is very unlike me, I can promise you that.”
I shifted my shoulders, only the slightest wiggle, and his fingers were more fully on my back.
“Luke,” I whispered, unsure of what I wanted, what I was asking, what I was even feeling. I lifted my eyes and met his, and he must have read the blur of my thoughts as it pinged back and forth between confusion and yearning, frustration and desire.
Because even in the dark, I could see all those things reflected in the way his eyes zeroed in on my lips. They opened slightly as if he’d used the tip of his finger to drag them open.
Instantly, he dropped his hands and stepped back. My shoulders were cold, despite the heat still clinging to the air around us. As if he was embarrassed, Luke rubbed the back of his neck.
“I know it doesn’t help now, but even if I was furious with you, even if I thought it, I’d never say something like that about you to a reporter. About anyone who’s part of the team.”
Part of the team.
I blinked furiously against the uncomfortable lump of tears at the back of my eyes because it went a small way in warming where he’d held me. With the decision to stay, I was certainly part of something much bigger than myself. And I was just understanding the emotional ramifications of what that meant. What it could mean.
“It helps,” I conceded quietly.
“I’ll be more careful next time.” His mouth curved into a wry smile. “Or I’ll shut up entirely.”
I nodded, appreciative of his attempt at humor even if I wasn’t ready to smile back. “I know you’re aware of the size of this story, but I’m aware of how many people would delight in seeing me fail, Luke.”
He sobered. “I wouldn’t.”
“No?”
With a tightly clenched jaw, he looked over at the lake before he spoke again. “No. Because if you fail, it means we’ve done something wrong too. And that’s not the kind of team we are. We support our own.”
Gratitude was a soothing blanket around my shoulders, warming me to my very soul instead of just the surface of my skin.
I risked a small smile, just to see how it would feel on my face. “Even if that means you have to do the Sports Illustrated thing?”
The hand on his neck dropped, and he shrugged. A tiny movement made by huge, muscular shoulders made my smile grow.
“Owning the Wolves may be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but an interview is that for me. I’ll hate every minute of it.”
“Hate is a strong word,” I told him, studying and weighing the honesty of what he’d just said.
His mouth relaxed, but he didn’t smile. “It’s the right word. Unfortunately, I have a bit of a reputation when it comes to dealing with the media.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Because I don’t.” When I didn’t say anything, he sighed. “Deal with the media. I just don’t.”
“How come?” I risked asking. The likelihood that Luke would answer me felt about as slim as me fitting into a size zero. But this man, so big and strong, sweet with his daughter and cold when he thought someone was infringing on his life with her, was one of the most fascinating people I’d ever met.
After a few moments, Luke gave me a guarded look. “I’ve been burned before, let’s just say that. Whether I answered or not wouldn’t have made a difference; it only would’ve made things worse.”
I tilted my head. “You didn’t want to defend yourself?”
“You reach a point in this industry,” he answered carefully, “when you realize that hitting back at the people who say shit about you is a really easy way to waste your time. I’d rather use my time to be a better player. A better father. Everything else is just noise.”
My heart turned over, the fascination growing in erratic pulses that stretched along my skin.
Of course, I kept that off my face when I spoke again, all cool and casual. “Even with all that, you’re still willing to do the interview?”
His eyes traced my face. Just a quick glance, but it touched every part twice. It lingered longest on my mouth, and I struggled to breathe properly.
“Hopefully it doesn’t kill me,” he said quietly.
Stepping back but still facing him, I pursed my lips and embraced the fragile sense of playfulness between us. As if I’d caught the edge of a butterfly with the tips of my fingers, and it was desperately trying to fly away. “Well, then you just leave it to me. I’ll make it bearable.”
Without waiting for his reaction, I spun toward the hedge, but not before I heard his muted reply.
“I guess we’ll see about that.”
