Page 33 of Offside

“Hi.”

“I just—” She shifted her coffee to her other hand. “Two seconds. I wanted to say something.”

“Okay. Are you all right?” She was incredibly fidgety, and all I wanted to do was tell her whatever it was would be fine. And drag her into my arms, but that was a whole other problem.

“About Saturday.” Oh no.

“Okay.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Stared at the ceiling briefly. She was buying herself time, a tell I’d noticed weeks ago and noted alongside the way she tucked her pen behind her ear and the way she laughed with her whole face when something landed. “I was—” A small hand gesture as if she were presenting. “I’d had a lot to drink and I was being—” Another gesture, bigger this time.

She was flustered. It was cute as fuck, the color in her cheeks, words coming out in pieces, and I found it so endearing I had to work to keep my face neutral.

“You really don’t need to⁠—”

“No, let me just—” She interrupted me and took a breath. “I said what I said and then I was clearly about to—” She stopped. “I just want you to know that I’m aware of how that probably looked and it’s not going to be a thing and we’re completely⁠—”

“Maren.”

“Fine, we’re completely fine, I’m a professional and you’re Griffin’s⁠—”

“Maren.”

She stopped and met my gaze.

I watched her. The coffee in her left hand, the color high on her cheeks, the way a strand of dark hair had fallen against the side of her neck and she hadn’t noticed. I wanted, with a specificity that was becoming a real problem, to tuck it back. I kept my hands where they were.

“Nothing happened,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I basically came on to you.”

“You told me you’d been professional about me.” I paused. “Those aren’t the same thing.”

She stared at me. “You know what I meant though.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.” I held her gaze ensuring she’d hear and understand every word carefully. “I didn’t exactly leave the room or put up any arguments, did I?”

She stared at me for a long moment. I watched her take that in, watched her decide what to do with it, the color still in her cheeks and her jaw set in a way like she wasn’t sure what to say, so I kept going.

“We’re fine,” I said. “You’re right that we’re fine.”

“Good.” She nodded. “Great.”

“Good.”

We stood there in the narrow corridor. Somewhere down the hall a door opened and the sound of the ice carried through briefly and shut again. She was close enough I could smell whatever she used in her hair and the corridor was narrow and I was acutely aware of every inch of the distance between us and what it would take to close it. Again.

“I’m… Uh… I’m going to go do my job now,” she said. Clearly she was still flustered, but she also sounded relieved to have said her piece, which was fucking adorable. Everything she did was adorable. Or sexy. Or smart. Fuck.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

“Okay then. Uh, have a great rest of your day.”

She went left. So I went right. I couldn’t even remember where I was headed when she grabbed me.

I made it to the end of the corridor before I stopped and braced my hand on the wall. I stood there for a long moment looking at nothing.

She’d pulled me around a corner in a service corridor and fumbled through an apology with her hands and her ceiling-checks and the color in her face, and I had stood there and said nothing happened like a man with functioning self-control. Which I was apparently still capable of performing even when every instinct I had was pointed in a completely different direction.