Page 50 of Offside

“Griffin tried to set me up at dinner last night,” I said, when she’d finished like a word vomited confession. “In Dallas. There were two women at the bar. He wanted a wingman.”

Silence.

“I stayed twenty minutes.”

“And then?” I couldn’t tell what her reaction was, and I was blurting things out.

“I’m telling you,” I said. “Not reporting in. I don’t do that. I just—I wanted you to know how that went. That I left. That I’ve been back in my room, planning to go over tape and thinking about a parking lot in Tempe.”

There was a pause. Then the small exhale that meant she’d considered what I said and was smiling and trying not to let it be obvious. At least that’s what I was telling myself while I waited for her reply.

“You don’t owe me—” she started.

“Let me stop you right there.” I cut her off. “I meant what I said at the bookstore, and I know we haven’t…sorted anything out, but the seedling here…what’s blooming between us? It matters to me. It’s not about owing anything, it’s about being decent and honest, which is the absolute least you deserve. I’m not that guy, the one who picks up women at bars on the road.”

I heard a long sigh. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. Like it was a question. Like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to be glad about it.

“You’re welcome,” I said. “For the record, the steak in Dallas was good. The company at my end of the table was not.”

She laughed. Warm and real, the laugh that came out when she’d stopped managing herself, and I lay in the dark of a Nashville hotel room and thought about how much I wanted to be wherever that laugh was.

The quiet between us settled. Outside the window the city hummed and glittered, indifferent and alive, and I thought about how strange it was that this room had been every other hotel room until about four minutes ago.

“What are you wearing,” she said, and then immediately, “I cannot believe I said that.”

I smiled at the ceiling. “Say it again.”

“No. I’m blaming the wine.”

“You’ve had wine?”

“One glass. It was a long day.” A beat. “I’m not saying it again.”

“You don’t have to.” I let a moment pass. “I’ll answer anyway. Sweats. Minnesota State shirt. Socks I should have replaced six months ago.” Another pause. “Your turn.”

She made a startled sound, half laugh. “Ryan⁠—”

“You started it.”

“I—that’s fair.” A rustling, the soft sound of her shifting on the couch. “Sleep shirt. It’s gray. Very unsexy.”

“That’s not what I’m picturing.”

The silence on her end went a degree warmer. “What are you picturing?”

I took a breath. This was new territory. Not the wanting—that had been there since September. The saying it. I did not say things carelessly. The press had been writing about my economy of words for years. What I said, I meant, and what I meant, I said plainly, and right now, alone in a hotel room in Nashville with the team three blocks away and her voice in my ear, I meant this.

“You have no idea the things I want to do to you, Maren.”

A sharp intake of breath on her end. I heard it clearly. “Like what?”

“I want to take that sleep shirt off you slowly,” I said, my voice dropping low and unhurried. “And then I want to put my mouth on you until you stop thinking about anything except my name.”

The silence that followed had increasing temperature to it and my dick was already hard.

“What else?” she asked, barely above a whisper. Not a question so much as a door swinging open.

I let the pause stretch exactly as long as I wanted it to. “I’ll have to show you.”