Page 78 of Double Play

The tap on my door is a surprise until I peek through the security hole and open it on a rush.

“Declan?” He shouldn’t be here, and I shouldn’t be stepping back to let him in. I also shouldn’t be hurt when he doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t kiss me.

In fact, when I open my mouth to speak, he covers it with two fingers, and I recall the last time his two fingers were near my lips like this. How I sucked the essence of myself off him. After he’d had those same fingers inside me.

I’ve missed him more than I’ve been willing to admit.

“I’m not here to talk,” he states, shrugging off his jacket.

“O-kay?” My brows hitch upward as I close the door.

“I just want to hold you.”

I chew my lower lip before accepting his proposal and stepping toward the bed. I’d already pulled back the sheets. I’d been ready to slip between them and hope for sleep.

Declan follows behind me after removing his dress shirt, shoes and socks but not his pants. With his arms wrapped around my middle, pulling my back to his chest, he nuzzles his nose in my hair.

“I heard you talking to Penn.”

I knew it. “Stalker much?”

“Not as much as I’d like to be.” His smile warms the back of my neck. “But every time someone mentions your feelings, I worry.”

I tickle my fingertips over his forearm. “Don’t worry,” I whisper, while it’s nice to think he’s concerned about me. He cares about me, which is on another level than loving me.

“That’s the problem, wildfire. I can’t seem to turn off the flame.”

I nestle deeper into his embrace, melting at the heat of his chest against my back.

Then don’t turn it off. Not yet.

“Being in Vegas cannot be easy for you,” he mumbles to my hair.

He has no idea, and yet he has every fact. My father. Malakai. Declan Wylde knows me better than anyone. And I trust him more than anyone. He’d never hurt me. He might even love me. I deserve that love as much as he deserves love from me.

I’ve had a lot to reconsider today, and I have one final thing to say before I want us both to be quiet and soak in this moment.

“Dare,” I whisper, offering him what he once offered me. “Wait until the end of the season?”

“Truth,” he grunts against the back of my head. “I’d wait forever for you.”

thirty-one

. . .

[Declan]

After our final home game, ending the official season, I enter the media room for another blasted interview. A post-game debrief where I’m certain to be asked about the season and what my hopes are for the month of October.

A team in April is very different from a team seven months later.

As I field questions from various sports reporters from newspaper columns to podcasts, I finally call on India, who isn’t generally in the small, cramped room after the games.

“Tough loss,” she says, her voice loud and clear but off from her typically distant tone. She smiles.

“They all are. Some more than others.” I keep my eyes on her. She’s been my biggest loss this season. The hardest one.

It’s been another ten days since our Vegas reunion. A night where I simply held her in my arms and then repeated our silent sleeping arrangement for two more nights before she flew back to Nashville and I headed to Wisconsin. We didn’t talk again about the future, just basked in the present.