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“Because you curse like a sailor.”
I laughed at her reasoning. “Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”
She laughed right along with me, but quickly stopped and groaned, clutching her temples.
Regret soared inside of me.
“I am sorry,” I told her, tone gruff now and thick.
“For what?” she whispered, seeming to lean closer as she chewed on her bottom lip.
“Hurting you,” I replied honestly.
Christ, my voice didn’t even sound like it belonged to me. It was strained…raw.
I cleared my throat and added, “It won’t happen again.”
“You promise?”
There she went with the promises again.
“Yeah,” I said, tone thick now. “I promise.”
“God,” she groaned, grimacing now. “Everyone’s going to be laughing at me.”
Those words, that small fucking sentence, brought to life some weird fucking emotion I hadn’t experienced before.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she continued to mumble, eyes cast downward. “I’ll be the talk of the school.”
“Look at me.”
She didn’t.
“Hey—” I paused and tipped her chin up with my thumb and forefinger. Once I was satisfied I had her attention again, I carried on. “No one is going to say a word about you.”
“But they all saw me—”
“Nobody is going to open their mouth about it.” Realizing my tone was bordering on angry, I brought it down a notch and tried again. “Not the team, Coach, or anyone else. I won’t let them.”
She blinked her confusion. “You won’t let them?”
“That’s right,” I confirmed with a nod. “I won’t let them.”
“You promise?” she whispered, a tiny smile pulling at her swollen lips.
“Yeah,” I replied gruffly, feeling like I would promise all the fucking promises in the world just to make this girl feel better. “I’ve got your back.”
“No, you got my head,” she croaked out. She glanced down at her body and sighed. “Actually, I think you ruined all of me.”
Thank fuck for that, because you’re ruining all of me right now, I thought to myself.
Jesus, where the hell did that come from?
Blinking away the thought, I settled on a safer “I’ll have my people call your people to work out the bill” comment instead.
That drew a smile out of her, a proper smile, not a shy one or a small one.
It was an honest-to-god megawatt smile.
