Maybe he just doesn’t feel it back.
Chapter 25
Speed Demon
LILA
It’s a Wednesday evening and we’re on the couch after dinner, the candles burned low, Lucky asleep on the rug. Slade is reading next to me on the couch. He’s got an actual physical book in his hand, one ankle crossed over his knee, completely absorbed. He’s wearing a black henley and grey sweatpants, unintentionally sexy in his version of athlete off-duty mode. To me, it doesn’t matter whether he’s dressed in a cowboy hat and Wranglers or athletic gear—he’s always fine as hell.
The sexiest thing of all? No matter what clothes he has on, he always wears his wedding ring. Even if no one else is around to see it.
I try not to read into that too much.
I’m supposed to be sketching out furniture layouts for his office but mostly I’ve been sneaking glances at him in between staring at the fire. The fire that he chopped thewood for, kindled by himself, and that we’re now sitting in front of on a rainy autumn evening.
After leaning over to take a sip of bourbon from the glasses Slade poured for us, I take a closer look at the spine of his book. “Is that Lord of the Rings?”
He glances up. “Return of the King. It’s a re-read.”
“How many times have you read it?”
“Six. Seven maybe. First time was in high school.”
I tuck my feet under me and turn to look at him properly. “Slade Rhodes. Just casually reading Tolkien between hockey games.”
“I was a nerd in high school,” he confirms, not even slightly embarrassed. “I mean, yeah, I was good at hockey. It was clear early on I had a shot at going pro. But the locker room stuff, the parties… not really my thing. I preferred my D&D group.”
“D&D,” I repeat.
“Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a tabletop role-playing game.” He pushes a hand through his hair. At this admission, he does give me a slightly embarrassed look.
“I know what D&D is,” I say, which is only partially true. “I just… you played that?”
“Every Friday night at Kyle Martin’s house. I was usually a paladin—that’s a warrior, kind of. Lawful good. Anyway. Kyle’s a software engineer in Seattle now. Anders, our third, he’s a wildlife biologist in Colorado. His kid is old enough to play D&D himself now. Time flies.”
Oh my God, he’s so cute. As if I needed more confirmation.
A guy like Slade could have easily gone the other way. How many gorgeous, athletic guys are also toxic, arrogant assholes? They party hard with their equally malignant bro crowd. Use and discard the girls like worthless trash. They pursue no hobby or interest that would mark them as weird or different from the mainstream.
Iknow that culture. It’s the same shit, different font, whether it’s happening at elite boarding schools or in small town locker rooms.
But Slade did his own thing from the time he was a teenager. Just like me.
I’d bet anything people tried to pull him toward the typical jock version of himself, and instead he spent his teenaged Friday nights playing Dungeons and Dragons, completely unbothered.
He’s still that person. Fifteen years of playing professional sports and he’s still completely himself.
Lucky chooses this moment to heave herself up from the rug and collapse directly onto the couch. Slade shifts to make room without thinking and I end up closer to him, my shoulder pressed against his arm.
He shifts and puts his arm along the back of the couch. Not quite around me.
“I didn’t really fit in school either,” I say, gazing into the firelight. “My family’s world has very specific rules and it starts from birth. You summer in the right places. You join the right clubs. You don’t get excited about things or dress too differently or have opinions that make people uncomfortable at dinner. The pressure to conform is crushing.”
“It didn’t crush you.”
At the admiring look he gives me, my whole body floods with pleasant warmth. And then I laugh as a memory comes bubbling to the surface. “I came down to one of our stuffy holiday parties once dressed in torn fishnets, Doc Martins, and a gigantic thrifted Greenpeace t-shirt I wore as a dress. My mother didn’t dare say a word in front of all our family friends but she just about dragged me out by my hair, hissed at me that I was a ‘hostile dissident’ and grounded me for a month.” I smile. “Worth it.”
Slade’s fingers find my hair, stroking gently like he’s trying to make up for my mother yanking on it. “You got that outlaw spirit, baby. Can’t be crushed by nothing. But I’m real glad you got out of there.”
