She grips my shirt with both fists and pulls, and I walk her backward until her shoulders hit the door. I press into her, and she gasps against my mouth, which I swallow. Her hips arch into mine, and my hand finds her waist, sliding under the hem of her shirt until my fingers hit bare skin, and she shivers.
“Archer.” My name in her mouth, breathless and half-wrecked.
“Yeah.” I’m kissing her neck now, the soft spot under her jaw. She tilts her head back against the door, her fingers dragging through my hair, and I’m shaking. “I don’t have all the answers, Syd. I’m still figuring out what this is. But I’m not pretending anymore.”
Her hand rests on my chest, right over my heart, and I can feel every beat pushing against her palm.
“I need time,” she says. “Not a lot. Just—I need to sit with this, Archer. I’ve wanted this for so long that I don’t trust it yet.”
“Take whatever time you need.”
She nods and steps back. Her hand slides off my chest, and the absence is immediate.
“Goodnight,” she says.
“Night, Syd.”
I walk to the door, my hand on the knob when she says my name.
“Arch.”
I turn.
She’s standing in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes still wet, and her lips still flushed from my mouth.
“Thank you for telling me,” she says. “About it being your first time too. I, uh—I wish I’d known that a long time ago.”
I nod because my throat has closed, and I walk out, closing the door behind me. I press my back against the hallway wall and look up at the ceiling.
She kissed me back. After fifteen years of telling myself that Sydney would only ever be my friend. And now she’s asked for time, because she’s smarter than me, and she always has been.
I go to my room and sit on the edge of the bed.
I can still feel her mouth on mine.
She kissed me back. I have no idea what it means or what happens next, but right now, that’s enough.
Chapter Twenty-One
On the Road
Archer
The timing is brutal.
Two days after I kissed Sydney—two days of careful mornings and loaded eye contact in a house that feels like it’s holding its breath—I have to get on a plane and fly to Chicago for a three-game road trip.
I don’t want to go. I want to stay in this house and figure out what the hell is happening between us, because we haven’t talked about the kiss, we haven’t discussed the conversation, and we’ve been moving around each other with a charged, fragile energy that makes every accidental brush of hands feel like grabbing a live wire.
But I can’t skip a road trip just because I kissed my best friend and now don’t know how to function. I’m the starting goalie, and twenty-two guys are counting on me to be in that crease tomorrow night. My personal life can’t interfere with that. It never has.
I pack my bag early the next morning. Sydney is already up—I can hear her in the kitchen, the coffee maker going. I come downstairs with my duffel, and she’s at the counter pouring two mugs. She looks up when I walk in.
“Morning,” she says.
“Morning.”
She slides my coffee across the island. Our fingers don’t touch. They haven’t touched since Thursday night, which is insane because that night my hands were in her hair, her mouth was on mine, and I could feel her heartbeat through her shirt. Now we can’t manage a simple coffee handoff without treating it like a hostage negotiation.
