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“How’s your knee feeling?” he asks after several minutes. “Any pain after the other day?”
“Nope. I’m fit as a fiddle. Maybe we could go back to the field next week when you’re home from Seattle.”
“I’d like that.”
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No.” He brings his cup to his mouth and grins. His friendship bracelet slides down his wrist, and I didn’t realizehe still wears it like I wear mine. “I have a lot on my mind, and coffee at midnight seems to be the only antidote to overthinking.”
“This is my first time indulging in your method, but so far, I like it. Is there anything you want to talk about? You know I’m happy to listen.”
“What isn’t there to talk about? We lost again last week. I’m boarding a plane and flying across the country in six hours.” His eyes cut over to me, and he pops a shoulder, something left unsaid.You. “There’s a lot going on upstairs, but being out here helps.”
I hum and tilt my chin up to admire the twinkling stars. “I can see why this is your secret spot. It’s beautiful, and I feel like there’s a sense of clarity out here. I could stay forever and never get sick of it.”
“Yeah,” Dallas says. I turn my head to look at him, and he’s already staring at me. A torn expression takes over his face and the late night moonlight bathes his bare torso in shades of silver and gray. His goofy grin is gone, and it’s replaced with a soft smile I feel behind my ribs. My fingers itch to trace the column of his throat. The lines of his body and the sculpted slopes of a physique perfectly crafted from hours of exercise and exertion. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Me.
He's talking aboutme.
His eyes twinkle, and he keeps his gaze locked in place, a sure thing in a world full of maybes. That pressure behind my ribs expands, a weight on my chest the longer I look at him, and it’s hard to take a deep breath.
“My view isn’t so bad either,” I reply.
It’s quiet enough for him to shrug it off and pretend like he didn’t hear me. I expect him to ignore it, to let it slip by, anotheradmission from a silly girl with a silly crush on the man she can’t have.
Instead, he steps closer.
I can hear his breathing—slow and steady until it changes to rough and ragged when the cotton of my shirt presses into his tan, bare skin. A nearly silent gasp falls from his mouth when neither one of us pulls away, and I wonder what else I could do to hear that sound again.
“Maven,” he murmurs, sweet like honey.
I wish he’d find a way to whisper my name like that every second of every day.
It’s reverent. Secret.Loving.
He doesn’t talk to anyone else like that, and I know I’m the lucky one.
I tip my head back. He reaches out and cups my cheek with his free hand. His thumb is warm as it runs down my jaw and hooks around my chin, a spot I think might be his favorite. I sigh and close my eyes, trying to find more of his touch, if only for a second.
“Fuck,” he says around an exhale before it gets snatched up by the breeze.
“I wish you would,” I say, turning my cheek and biting the pad of his thumb.
His laugh is made of pure delight, a beautiful, wicked thing I feel deep in my belly.
“Seeing you like this makes me lose my mind. It makes me want you in all the ways I can’t have you.”
“Would it really be so bad if you lost your mind?” I ask. “If you lost it with me?”
“You’re the only person I’d want to lose it with.” Dallas takes a step to his left and puts distance between us. His sigh is heavy and anguished, as if space is the last thing on his mind. “But I have to think of someone other than myself.”
“Youalwaysput others before yourself, Dallas. What would you do if you could be selfish for once? This is your secret spot—tell me a secret.”
“Sometimes I can’t remember what my life was like before you were in it,” he whispers. “Everything about you has been unintentional and the biggest surprise. I’d go through eight hundred nannies if it meant finding you again.”
“Eight hundred?” I whisper back. “That’s too many. Imagine all the pictures of your dick the internet would have.”
