Page 62 of Offside

“That works.” She smiled at the table, warm and general, her eyes not landing on me any longer than they landed on anyone else. “Night, guys.”

I dropped cash on the table, knocked the back of Griffin’s chair. Cole watched me go with an expression of profound interest I chose not to acknowledge; in fact, I actively ignored him.

We walked out together. Two people leaving at the same time. I’d taken the Audi tonight instead of the truck. Cleaner lines, better for the city, a recent concession to Phoenix I hadn’t announced to anyone. I opened the door for her, trying not to stare at her ass, and she got in without commenting on it, and I pulled out of the lot and headed toward my apartment.

I kept both hands on the wheel.

The truth was this was all new. Being this into someone, pulled like we had an invisible string between us, was wildly different than any way I’d ever felt before. I’d been in relationships, real ones, not just the early-career situations that mostly existed because I was twenty-three and away from home and bad at saying no, and they wanted to be with a hockey player on the rise. None of them had lasted because hockey always came first. They didn’t understand what being with a professional athlete was like. Not being home half the year.

I’d made my peace with it.

Maren was different. She knew exactly what this life was. Hell, she was living it too. The pull to her was undeniable, and just as strong—no, stronger—than when we’d first met in college nine years ago. I did not understand this. I’d had one night with Maren Callahan, one night plus a morning in her kitchen and a conversation that had rearranged my DNA, and I had spent the last twelve hours in a state of low-grade starvation that had no precedent in my experience. I’d sat next to her at a bar table for two hours. She’d touched my arm for four seconds. I’d thought about nothing else for the remaining hour and fifty-nine minutes.

She was looking out the window at the city going by, her profile lit in the glow of the streetlights, perfectly relaxed. Like she wasn’t aware of what she did to me by existing in the same space.

I made myself look back at the road.

We didn’t talk much on the drive. We didn’t need to.

I reached across the console and took her hand. When she wove her fingers between mine and squeezed, I relaxed. She wanted this; me and her.

My building was in Arcadia. Not showy. Clean lines and nice glass, private. That was why I’d taken it. The lobby was all stone and low lighting and a front desk attendant who nodded at me without comment. We rode the elevator up in silence, standing close enough that I could keep her hand tucked into mine as we waited to reach my floor. In our reflection on the elevator door, I could see her small grin and knew she wasn’t worried about this. The other part of my brain, the part that practically drooled over her every time she was within my sights, was absolutely dying to get my hands on her. I was running out of patience on the slowest fucking elevator I’d ever ridden in my life.

As we reached the twelfth floor and the elevator was still on its way to mine, two floors above, she turned to look at me and I was already staring down at her like a dog with a steak and that was the end of waiting. I backed her into the wall of the elevator and kissed her. Not careful, not tentative, like the kiss had been sitting in the back of my throat since she’d touched my arm at the table and pretended it was nothing. She made a sound against my mouth that did significant damage to my self-control and got her hands in my hair and kissed me back with the same urgency, and by the time the doors opened on fourteen, I had one hand flat on the wall beside her head and the other on her ass and we were both breathing harder than strictly necessary.

“This is my floor,” I said against her mouth.

“Okay,” she said, and didn’t move.

I pulled back, took her hand, and walked her down the hallway.

At my door I got my key in the lock one-handed, which I was quietly grateful for. I pushed it open and stepped back, and instead of letting her go I kept her hand and walked her in.

She stopped just inside.

I watched her take it in. The open layout, the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the city and the dark ribbon of the canal, the Phoenix skyline lit against a sky that never got fully dark. The kitchen was real, a cook’s kitchen, with an island and good lighting and organized by someone who actually cooked in it. Everything where it would be needed. Bookshelves along one wall, two deep in places, paperbacks stacked horizontally on top of hardcovers where I’d run out of room. A worn leather couch angled toward the windows. On the coffee table, a copy of The Innkeeper’s Terrible Idea face-down, which she found immediately.

“You’re reading that,” she said.

“Rereading.”

“That’s the third Cal Beckett.” She turned it over in her hands. “You’ve read all of them.”

“I have opinions about the ending of the second one.”

She glanced around the apartment again, slower this time, taking in the details with the expression she wore when she was revising a conclusion she’d already drawn. I let her look.

“This is not what I expected,” she said.

“What did you expect?” I grinned expectantly, wondering what she had envisioned my place would be like.

She thought about it. “I don’t know. More captain energy. Less—” She gestured at the bookshelves. “This.”

“Quiet book nerd?” I offered. She grinned broadly at me, and her kiss-swollen lips were stealing my attention.

“I’m not captain energy at home.”

She turned to look at me, and whatever she saw in my face made her face go soft at the edges. “No,” she said, quietly. “I don’t think you are.”