I should have known that something would go wrong. That I’d start to slip.
It started on Tuesday morning when I drank my smoothie at the kitchen counter and found myself staring at the sliders leading into Allie’s home. Behind the glass, I saw no movement, no sign she was awake and starting her day.
Instead of thinking about which films I would study that day, or how badly I needed to work on my quads, which felt tight after Sunday’s game, I was wondering what her bedroom looked like, and how she looked in it.
While I was doing that, I missed a call from Randall about a new endorsement deal from a shoe company who’d loved my SI cover. By the time I called him back, he was in another meeting.
Distraction.
It was understandable, I told myself, that someone like Allie would distract me. At least, that was what I kept repeating to myself on Wednesday when I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye as I barked out a play while we practiced first down sequences against the practice squad.
But I called the wrong play, so when I heaved the ball to my tight end, the ball sailed ten yards past him, bouncing ineffectually on the ground. He gave me a curious look, but when I stayed quiet, he knew that the fault was mine.
“Keep your focus, Piers,” Coach yelled from the sidelines.
My eyes burned hot from the effort to stay zeroed in on anything but her, even when I walked to the drink table and I could have taken a quick glance. It was the thinnest version of control I was able to master when it came to her, something I’d honed over my career.
Discipline.
That was what I needed. To counteract the distraction of Allie, I needed to keep a tight-fisted grip on the discipline that I was known for.
Demand.
Thursday night, I lifted weights in my basement and made demands of my body that I normally wouldn’t during a game week. I pushed my muscles to the point of shaking and wondered if I’d lost my mind for doing just one more set of reps.
Since we were nearing the midpoint of the season, my aches and pains were taking longer to disappear, and I was moving slower on Mondays and Tuesdays, praying that I could make it through another week without anything more serious than that and some bruises on my body from unrelenting linemen.
And then, desire.
Friday was when I should have heard the blaring sirens in my head, warning me at ear-piercing levels that Allie was becoming a problem. Because after I bid my mom farewell and thanked her for making dinner for Faith, and after I read four books to my daughter who so desperately needed some of my attention, I found myself sitting on the couch, staring at my phone.
I could text her. See what she was doing.
Friday was close enough to Sunday, right? Sunday night was a night game anyway—our first of the season—which meant high pressure, more people watching, and a late night before needing to be back at work Monday morning.
But the desire to see Allie, to try to capture what we’d only had moments of the past two weeks was growing larger than any concern I might have about what this distraction was doing to me.
It was only a distraction, but I was unable to harness it by discipline, it became impossible to demand from my head, and I was completely driven by desire. Desire I’d never, ever experienced.
I’d had good sex before. I’d had great sex before.
But there was something with her, something indefinable, something that had dug its fist root-deep inside me and was growing beyond my control.
Which was why I clenched my teeth, put my phone down, and forced myself to go to bed at a good time on Friday night.
Alone.
Saturday was a little bit better. The game walkthrough was seamless, even if Jack commented on how tense I was, and the team arrived at our usual hotel with little fanfare. Some guys went out, usually the younger ones, but the veterans knew to keep our heads down, get good sleep, and wake refreshed.
I barely noticed the room around me when I woke on Sunday because they all started to look the same after a while. Nondescript lamps and artwork that failed to stand out beyond a few splashes of colors. Sterile sheets folded into tight edges and pillows that were always too soft. Showers that could never accommodate my height, and sinks that were too short for me.
But all those warning signs, one for each day of the week, that I stubbornly ignored, that I refused to properly name, were nothing compared to the disaster of what happened on the field.
Reporters after the game would speculate that maybe there was miscommunication between my receivers and me, which was partially true. Jack ran a ten-yard post route when he was supposed to go fifteen on a fade, resulting in an interception that was only saved from becoming a pick-six when I tackled the jackass myself.
My center blocked left when he was supposed to block right, and I was knocked back so hard that I saw stars for a minute, breath coming slow back into my lungs.
Bottom line, we sucked.
We were off rhythm.
Distracted.
It became such an ugly word in my head, a whisper through the week that grew louder in the deafening quiet of the locker room afterward. Ugly because it was my own damn fault.
Being disappointed in your teammates for not grabbing a perfectly thrown ball wasn’t an easy feeling to swallow, but what was worse was walking into the post-game press conference knowing that I couldn’t pass this off onto anyone else’s shoulders. Not that I ever would.
Making excuses was for the weak and unprepared. And that wasn’t me. Which was why I stood behind the podium and pointed at a reporter in the front row.
“What happened out there, Luke?” she said, glancing up from her notepad.
I lifted my chin. “We lost because we didn’t play well, and our opponents did. Simple as that.”
“Luke,” someone from the other side of the room called, and I nodded. “We’re not used to seeing so much miscommunication on offense. Are the rookies still having a hard time learning the playbook? We know yours is extensive.”
I gritted my teeth, his insinuation clear. Blame the new guys for not doing their homework because it makes for a better headline. Jack was no rookie. He was one of the best receivers in the NFL two years running, and there was no way in hell I’d be throwing him under the bus.
“It’s not on the rookies,” I told him. “If there’s a miscommunication, it’s on me as the quarterback. I’m the one who takes the game plan and puts it into action out on the field, and if they heard something other than what I intended, then we’ll come back next week and practice harder to make sure we’re all on the right page as a team.”
Hands lifted, people yelled my name, and I sighed, squinting into the bright lights aimed at me, pointing somewhere in the middle. “Last one, guys. I’m pretty beat, as you can imagine.”
There was a ripple of laughter, as intended, when someone spoke up. I heard his voice and my back tensed.
“How’s the new owner doing, Luke? She, uhh, still proving to be a bit of distraction for ya?”
Reporters murmured uncomfortably, and I pinned him with a hard look. Ava from PR started up onto the stage, and I held up a hand.
“We’re here to talk about the game,” I answered tightly, trying desperately to soften my face into something less homicidal. “If you have a question about that, I’d be happy to answer.”
He smiled. It was greasy and slick like oil spreading over his face. “I saw a magazine cover at the grocery store yesterday, said she was pregnant with a player’s baby already, but there’s no way to tell whose.”
“Asshole,” someone muttered in the front row.
I kept my eyes pinned on him like I could inflict bodily harm. “Unless you have a question, I suggest you refrain from reporting on crappy tabloid covers,” I said firmly.
He shrugged. “Can’t say I blame you for taking the spotlight off her, though that seems to be her greatest contribution to the team.”
Gloves. Off.
I straightened to my full height as a hush fell over the room. Reporters got fired for so much less than that, and if me giving an answer would make his stupid, sexist sound bite go viral, then so be it.
“I’d like to see you handle that situation with an ounce of the integrity that Al-” I tripped over Allie even though that was what she asked us all to call her, “Miss Sutton has. She was thrown into a huge role unexpectedly, one that is vital to any successful team in this league, and she’s proven herself day in and day out to be committed and intelligent, and there is not one person in the entire Wolves organization who would say otherwise. In just a few short months, she’s earned our respect, and she’s earned that title, talking to a janitor about his job and how it could be better just as she’d talk to Jack or me or the CEO. If you’re insinuating that a woman who happens to be young and happens to be attractive can’t do a damn good job, then you’re living in the wrong century.”
I walked off to some whistles and claps. Ava smiled in the dark area next to the stage, her eyebrows raised in surprise.
My nerves jangled uncomfortably at what I’d just allowed myself to say. To the press. To the people who would love nothing more than to twist and tangle my words into more.
But everything was true.
As I drove home, the headlights of my car cutting bright slices of light through the dark streets, I knew with painful clarity that if Faith was thrust into the same situation as Allie, I’d be so fucking proud of her if she handled herself the way Allie had.
But it didn’t mean we should keep doing what we were doing.
When I pulled my car into the garage and waited for the door to close, I remembered something that Allie had said to me.
Don’t make me look stupid.
And that was what would happen if anyone found out. If anyone knew.
They’d judge her at the precise moment that they slapped me on the back in congratulations.
It felt like a lifetime ago that we’d stood in my backyard and I’d comforted and calmed her with no fucking clue how much she’d end up meaning to me.
I wasn’t even sure I could put a name to it right now. It had taken me long enough to admit I was simply attracted to her. Anything more than that felt akin to scaling Mt. Everest with no preparation.
I couldn’t go there right now. It wouldn’t help anything. Not her. Not me. Over and over in my head, I repeated that as I walked into my dark house.
There was a note for me on the counter from my mom, who usually had Faith sleepover at their house on night games.
Proud of you, son. No matter what.
I rolled my head around on my neck, a few satisfying pops punching through the silence of the kitchen. Would she be proud of me if she knew what I was doing with Allie?
She wouldn’t care if I was sleeping with someone, but she’d care about what could happen as a result of sleeping with this particular person.
“This has to stop,” I said out loud, testing the words on my tongue, feeling the unbearable weight of them as they hit the air. Immediately I wanted to take them back, let them be unheard in the universe, sweep them away because the thought of it had the same effect on my lungs as being sacked by a three-hundred-pound lineman.
I braced my hands on the counter and hung my head, taking a few steadying moments. Firming up what I was about to do, I knew I respected Allie enough to tell her that we couldn’t do this anymore. That I couldn’t do this to her anymore.
Why was my heart racing like that?
Why couldn’t I take in a full breath?
My lungs were banded tight as if someone had wrapped a rubber band one too many times and they couldn’t expand to their regular capacity.
I pinched my eyes shut and saw her in the hotel room last week, naked, standing in front of me and making demands that no woman would have ever made of me because she viewed me as an equal.
Then I was moving, down the steps, toward the slider, knowing with unerring certainty that she was downstairs waiting for me. My skin felt cold with panic, hot with anticipation of seeing her, everything tilted and unsteady, rocking around me like I was afloat and unanchored.
The lights were on over her patio, but she wasn’t there as I looked over the hedge, and the breath whooshed uncomfortably from my mouth.
Just as I was going to push through the ever-widening gap in the hedge, I heard her voice behind me.
“Hey,” she said softly.
I turned slowly, and when I saw her sitting at the edge of my pool—a happy product of an abnormally warm October day—bare legs dangling into the water, hair pulled up off her face, something strange happened.
The cold panic thawed into something warm and smooth. The world around me settled instantly, the horizon straight and flat and right where it should be.
Allie stood slowly, and that was when I saw what was covering her body.
My jersey.
Nothing under it by the looks of it.
Even with the lights from her backyard, her face was hardly visible in the shadows once she was facing away from the pool.
But her eyes on me held me fast in place, the anchor that I couldn’t find just a few moments earlier.
“Hey,” I said back, woefully inadequate for what was churning violently inside me.
I can’t do this was one massive, side-knocking wave of thought.
I have to touch you again was another.
I refuse to be what might ruin you was the last.
Allie lessened the gap between us, unafraid of closing the distance, showing just how much more courageous she was than me with each step over the soft grass.
“I’m sorry about the game,” she said, eyes lit and wicked in her face. No, not wicked. That wasn’t the right word anymore. It didn’t feel right to label this as something wrong even if it was dangerous for both of us.
Those eyes were almost invasive in how much intimacy I saw there. Not wicked at all.
When did this happen?
Was I so lost in the searing pleasure that I missed the frightening shift underneath it?
I once learned about the tectonic plates, deep under the ocean’s surface. Just one fraction of an inch could trigger earthquakes, tsunamis, and unimaginable destruction and chaos.
That was what Allie felt like.
An unimaginable, life-altering change I hadn’t seen coming.
Slowly, I lifted my hand and slid my fingers along her jaw, savoring the silk of her skin over the bone. I was so much stronger, it would take me nothing to break her if that’s what I wanted.
When my other hand came up and traced the line of her nose, spread my fingers along her cheek so I could feel the fan of her eyelashes along my fingertips when she blinked, her delicate brows bent slightly in confusion.
“Are you okay?”
“You are perfect,” I told her, the thing I’d kept swallowed down from our first night together, suddenly needing her to hear the words.
She smiled, but it was a confused smile. “Luke,” she said even as she nuzzled into the warmth of my hand.
I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear saying the words. My hands slid down her shoulders, and I gathered her to me, tight, tight, nowhere nearly tight enough, even as she wrapped her arms around my back.
Blindly, I sought out her mouth, and she let out a breathy, relieved gasp when our lips met, over and over.
Sweet and slow, we kissed, her hands clutching my back, up into my hair, and my fingers digging into the material of my jersey.
Just one more time, I promised myself. Just one more night.
My kisses turned harder, pulling a whimper from her mouth when my hands gripped underneath the jersey, and I found nothing but smooth, endless skin.
“You waiting for me like this is every fantasy come to life, Allie,” I whispered into her ear, pulling on the lobe with my teeth. That made her arch up on tiptoe, gasping loudly. I spoke into her neck next after I licked the length of it. “It feels like it could never be better than this, but it always is, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she moaned. “Luke, please.”
I pulled back and touched my forehead to hers. “Tell me,” I said fiercely, needing something in return, even though she couldn’t possibly know, couldn’t possibly understand what her words would mean to me later.
“Let’s go inside,” she said, her arms wrapped tight around my neck.
“Tell me,” I said again, working my hand slowly up her waist, under the jersey until my hand was filled with soft, warm flesh, her heartbeat wild under my palm. “Tell me and I’ll take you to my bed. I’ll do anything. Anything you want.”
Allie sobbed out a breath, her body winding tighter and tighter against mine, against my seeking fingers between her legs as I contemplated taking her right there on the grass.
“I-I, oh holy shit.” She dropped her head back. “I didn’t know, Luke. I didn’t know it could feel like this. This good, this … this, oh please stop if you expect me to be able to think.”
I chuckled against her skin and slowed my hand. “I can accept that for now.”
She lifted her head, blinking slowly, as I pulled my hands out from underneath the jersey, wound my fingers between hers and led her into my house.
As we ascended the stairs, I felt her questioning look but ignored it. My room was dark when we walked in, and I shut the door behind us. More than anything, I wanted this one memory of Allie in my bed, between my sheets, just one night where maybe she could fall asleep next to me.
“What about Faith?” she asked.
Extracting my fingers from hers, I tucked her silk-soft hair behind one ear, then dragged the edge of my thumb along the arch of her cheekbone. “She’s at my parents’.”
“Luke,” she said, shaking her head slowly as she glanced around my room. “Are you sure?”
In answer, I kissed her softly, only breaking away to pull the jersey off her body. She took my cue, slowly undressing me until I was only in my boxer briefs. Every brush of her fingers, every place she kissed as she uncovered the skin made my hands shake with the need to do the same.
She stood at the edge of my bed and held out her hand, but I stood for a moment and simply stared. Then I spanned her hips with both hands, turning us so that I could stretch fully out on the bed. Allie smiled and pushed me back lightly.
There was only one source of light in the room, but it cut straight across the bed like a blade, and when Allie crawled over me, the moonlight illuminated every inch of her. All I’d had of her was stolen moments like this in the dark, and she deserved so much more than that.
She leaned over me, and we kissed again, the mood so muted and soft as if time had slowed to something elastic and malleable. My hands on her back, hers gripping my face as she moved in small circles over me as if I was already inside her.
“Allie, Allie,” I whispered.
She straightened, bracing her hands on my chest, and suddenly, it felt wrong. She felt too far away, and I rolled us.
On a sharp inhale, she pulled her leg up, tucking her knee tight against my side. I gripped her thigh tightly and held her eyes as I pushed forward into her.
Her chin jerked up, and I could tell she was holding her sounds. But I wanted them. I wanted to take them into me like I was in her.
Together we moved, soft and slow, so slow, that when sweat started to pool on my back, and her hips started to rise against mine restlessly, I knew the time for slow was done.
Faster and faster, more and harder.
It wasn’t enough. It felt like nothing could ever be enough.
I wrapped myself around her as tightly as I could, just short of hurting her, and she gasped into my ear as we came together.
I slumped to the side, so I didn’t crush her, and Allie brushed the hair out of her face with visibly shaking hands. I finished for her, tucking a blond tangle behind her ear again.
Her mouth opened to speak, but I leaned forward and silenced her with a kiss. No tongue. No teeth. Just my lips against hers.
Then I slid an arm under her shoulders and tucked her into my side, reaching blindly with my hand so I could drag the sheet over our bodies.
“Sleep,” I whispered against her forehead.
No longer did I want to question why I was doing the things I was doing. It felt right to speak the word to her with all the subtext beneath it. It felt right for her to curl into my arms and let her boneless body soften even further.
After a moment of loaded silence, her questions almost a tangible presence between us, I felt her relax. Her arm slid across my stomach, and she laid her head on my chest, her breath finally evening out after a few minutes.
Sleep came much later for me as I watched the light slowly move from the bed, leaving us in darkness.
A fitting analogy for what I knew I had to do.
