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“Who taught you to play soccer like that?”
“Like what?”
From the corner of my eyes, I see his biceps bunch. “So magnificently.”
“What?”
His jaw clamps as he keeps staring at me. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a talent like that.”
I press my back into the bookcase and crane my neck up. “B-but you said all those things and –”
The bookcase shifts again and if he keeps putting pressure on it like this, all the books will fall out.
And dig a hole on the floor and I’ll fall.
I’ll fall and keep falling.
Falling and falling. For him.
He frowns. “I said them because they were true. Talent alone doesn’t mean anything. You have to hone it, make it better, channel it. I could teach you.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I could.”
I don’t even have the time to bask in his compliment, bask in the fact that he used the word magnificently.
My favorite player said that I play magnificently.
Because then he says, “On one condition.”
“What condition?”
He shifts closer then, bending his body even more.
With his arms raised and placed by my sides, it looks like he’s doing a pull-up and his silver chain is swinging in a mesmerizing way.
He tips his razor-sharp jaw at me. “Just tell me if it’s your thing.”
“What’s my thing?”
“Stealing.” Before I can respond to that, he goes on. “Because that’s mine, isn’t it? That t-shirt you’re wearing.”
I freeze.
I practically freeze and combust all at the same time as I become aware – very uncomfortably aware – of what I’m wearing right now.
His old t-shirt.
The one that I stole after he left for California.
And he can see it, the whole world can see it because I don’t have my chunky sweater on like I usually do.
Because ever since he humiliated me on the soccer field a day ago, I’ve been feeling so warm and heated that I haven’t been wearing it. I even put up my hair and tied it into a top knot so as to let my neck breathe.
“I… I don’t…”
“It is mine, isn’t it?” He nails me with his eyes, pins me down like he did back at the bar, as if I’m a bird. “I remember throwing it away or something a long time ago. But maybe I didn’t throw it far enough. Far enough away from your sticky fingers. So, is that your thing? Stealing? T-shirts. Money. I wonder, what else have you stolen? Not that I mind. I mean, it’s an old t-shirt and some chump change. But I’m just trying to get to know you. We lived in the same house for years and I was busy with other things. Which is a shame, really, because I should’ve been paying attention to you. The little sister. You grew up kinda nice.”
He said so many things just now.
So many, many things that I don’t know which one to focus on. I don’t know which deserves my attention the most: the fact that he basically called me a thief or the fact that he said I grew up nice, and now he’s looking me up and down.
Because he is.
His gorgeous lips are turned up in a cold smirk and he’s taking me in like… like I’m a doll or something. An object. That he’s eyeing and I so want to get away from him.
But I’m frozen.
My feet are glued because despite the cold, calculating way that he’s looking at me, my witchy heart is still beating like a drum.
My stupid belly is still fluttering and when he finally looks up to my face and licks his lips in that new way of his, I clench my thighs.
I curl my toes.
“So I have a proposition for you,” he whispers with hooded eyes.
“What proposition?”
“I’ll help you with your soccer, if you help me with mine.”
“Help you how?”
“Be my distraction.”
“Distraction.”
He nods and somehow his scent has become thicker and the space around me has grown darker.
It’s like he’s blocking all the light with his big chest and dousing me in his musky, delicious scent.
He’s dousing me in himself like he’s gasoline and I have no choice but to drip, drip, drip with his scent.
“Yeah, distraction. My rebound girl. You know everything about me. You know I’m angry and I’m hurt and I’m upset. You know I can’t play when I’m like this. So why not? Besides, you ruined it for me, the other night. It’s only fair that you make it up to me now. What d’you say? Want to be my rebound girl, Salem?”
My belly clenches when he says my name on a whisper.
On a thick, rough whisper that rolls down my spine like the beads of sweat his heat is causing.
“I need to…”
Think. Leave. Get away. Throw myself at you.
My brain is short-circuiting right now.
All the wires, all the nerves in my body are coming loose and getting tangled up with each other, firing off like crazy.
