Rowan
“You know what I just realized?” Milo asked as he laid on his back, looking up at the ceiling of my room in our Savannah hotel.
I turned my head to study him. His hands were resting behind his head. His cheeks were flushed red, and his hair was sweat soaked and slicked down onto his forehead. His lips were swollen from kissing, and his breathing was still unsteady. But somehow, despite how debauched he looked, he was the picture of relaxation. I was sure it all had to do with the smirk on his lips.
“What did you just realize?” I asked, curious as to what thought popped into his head in the first blissful moments of post-nut clarity.
Knowing Milo, it could be anything.
“We’ve won every game since we started hooking up.”
Well, that wasn’t the thought I was expecting. Except, now that I thought back, he was right. We’d won when we played the Dolphins at home. We’d beat the Louisville Lions. Last week, we’d beat the Roanoke Eagles. Three hookups. Three wins. “I don’t know if three wins counts as enough of a coincidence to make a pattern.”
He cocked his head to the side, his face scrunching in thought. I wondered if he was trying to think of some kind of counter argument, but the most he came up with was: “I bet you we win tomorrow.”
“Because we hooked up tonight?”
He nodded. “Yup.”
“Not because we have a better team than the Dolphins?”
“They have a better record than we do,” he pointed out.
That wasn’t hard. We were 4-5 after last week’s victory. They were 6-4, due to having a later bye week. “At least twenty other teams have better records than we do.”
“And I bet you if we playedanyof them tomorrow, we’d win.”
I sighed. I was starting to recognize the stubborn set to his jaw and the way his eyes hardened. It wouldn’t matter what counterarguments I made. His mind was completely made up, and he was going to operate under the principle that he was right until the end of time.
Or until he was proven wrong.
“But since we don’t play justanyteam tomorrow, I bet you that we win tomorrow’s game against the Dolphins.”
Milo’s reissued challenge was accompanied by a glint in his eye that had my curiosity piqued. Against my better judgment, I nodded. “What do you bet?”
He rolled over to his side, propping his head up to get a better look at me. I did the same, my position automatically mirroring his. He hummed appreciatively as his eyes moved down my torso. I could feel his gaze like a tangible caress. Heat slid down my spine like he’d actually touched me. “Should I go sexy bet?” Milo asked as he leaned in, planting a kiss along the column of my neck. My eyes drifted shut. “Or should I go with something embarrassing?” He nipped at the skin he’d just kissed and soothed the sting of pain with his tongue. “Or should I make you eat my baking?”
I jerked away from him, my eyes shooting open. “Not the baking,” I declared with a laugh. I could still remember the taste of those cookies. It was a memory I would take with me to my grave, and I did not need a repeat performance. “If you make itthe baking, I’m going to play terribly tomorrow just to prove you wrong and save myself.”
He laughed as he reached out for my waist and tried to tug me closer. I went willingly, stopping when our bodies were pressed tight against one another’s.
“If I win, then when we get back to Tucson, I get to keep you until our next practice,” he declared. “You can drop your stuff off at your place, grab some clothes, and then you come over to my place, and you stay until our next practice.”
“And if I win, then…” I thought for a moment. If I won the bet, I didn’t think either of us would be in the mood to do anything fun. Well Milo might be. Losing games never seemed to get him down. I would probably be the one in bad spirits. I needed to take that into consideration when I made my offer. “If I win, then you have to bring me baked goods from that bakery down the street every day next week.”
His jaw dropped. “You want me to wake upearlyto get you baked goods?”
“I’ll need cheering up!”
“Well, since we’re not going to lose, deal.” He gave me another kiss. “But just to make sure…”
When he finally went back to his room two hours later, we were both relaxed.
The game against the Savannah Dolphins was close.
Their offense was good, but our defense was slightly better. Our offense was great, but their defense was slightly better.
It was an aggressive game, but the Dolphins didn’t play dirty. I’d noticed that in our first game against them. No matter howaggressively either team played, the Dolphins were good at not pulling additional fouls. I watched from the sidelines as one of their linebackers took down Milo after a damn good run and then immediately offered a hand to help him up, clapping him on the shoulder, before they both ran back to the line of scrimmage.
