Page 96 of Her Player

Composure first. Always composure first.

"Your shoulder," I said. My voice came out rough from sleep.

"It's fine."

"You're lying."

"Only a little."

I pushed myself up onto one elbow and looked at him properly. His shoulder was bruised to hell. Deep purple spreading from the joint down toward his chest, the kind of bruise that looked worse the second day. His neck had a stiffness to it that he was trying to hide by not turning his head too quickly. He was a mess. A six-foot-seven, ice-blue-eyed, stubborn mess who had taken a hit that should have ended his season three days ago and was lying in my bed looking at me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing.

Goddamn it.

"You need ice," I said.

"I need coffee."

"Ice first."

"Victoria."

"Rhett."

He looked at me. I looked at him. I gave him the flat, immovable expression that had ended negotiations with men twice his age, and I watched the exact moment he decided it wasn't worth the fight.

"Fine," he said. "Ice first."

I felt the corner of my mouth move. I got up before he could see it become a real smile.

I found my robe on the chair where I'd left it. Pulled my hair over one shoulder and caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror on my way out. No makeup. No heels. Glasses bent on the nightstand. Hair that looked like someone had spent an hour with their hands in it, which someone had. A crease from the pillow running the length of my left cheek.

I looked like a woman who had been thoroughly, completely, unapologetically loved.

I looked away before I could think too hard about that.

The kitchen was quiet. I pulled the ice pack from the freezer, wrapped it in the good dish towel (the linen one, not the cotton, because cotton got too cold too fast) and set the coffee maker going. Two mugs. His black. Mine with one sugar, which I'd started taking again last week because Rhett had said you don't have to drink it black just because Ryan did and I'd wanted to throw my mug at his head and also burst into tears and also kiss him, all at the same time. So I'd started putting sugar in it.

No heels. No armor. No clipboard.

Just me, in my own kitchen, in the early morning. Making coffee for a man who was in my bed.

You're allowed to be happy, Vee.

I carried everything back to the bedroom and set it on the nightstand with the efficiency of a woman who had decided to take care of something and was damn well going to do it right.

"Sit up," I said.

He sat up.

I pressed the ice pack to his shoulder and held it there. He wrapped his hand around his coffee mug and didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything, and for a few minutes there was nothing in the room except the warmth of him against my side and the cold of the ice through the dish towel and the sound of Las Vegas waking up outside the window.

This was what I'd been afraid of.

Not him. Not the age gap. Not the press or the PHL or the conduct committee or the foundation board. This. The quiet. The ordinary. The terrifying, mundane intimacy of sitting in bed with someone and holding ice to their shoulder while the coffee went warm between their hands.

Ryan and I used to have mornings like this. Not identical (Ryan's mornings involved burnt toast and a sports section he refused to read on his phone), but the shape of it. The weight of it. Two people in a room with nothing to prove and nowhere to be and no performance required.

I hadn't had a morning like this in fourteen years.