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She listens to my words, absorbing them without responding. I want to know what she's thinking, how she's feeling, but I can't get that read on her. She somehow looks even more depressed at my words. As if hearing them makes her realize how wrong she got it before. I hate that.
She turns her head from me, needing to grab her glass of water again. She takes a sip and sets it down, her lips glistening in the candlelight with a tiny drop that didn't want to leave. I can't stop staring at it.
“I think I've just realized over the years that we're better off in our little world together. I don't want to have to explain to anyone what Colin means to me or need to prove why I do it. I don't want to convince someone to understand.”
“You don't have to,” I say confidently, my hand finding hers again, forcing her to turn to face me. “Because I'm already here. I already understand.”
She searches my face for some kind of answer to what I'm admitting.
“I can't do this with you, Lake.” Her eyes wince and she looks away again. “My job is the only thing keeping us here, together. I'm already hanging on by a thread.”
“I get it, D. Truly, I do,” I say, gently touching the side of her chin.
She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, chewing on the edge of it again. I see the conflicting thoughts racing through her. It's not that she doesn't want me; she feels she can't have me.
If word got out she was with me while working as my physiotherapist, her credibility would be tarnished. Her career in the NFL would be over before it began.
It's the last thing I want for her. For them.
But I'm selfish. And I want what I want.
“I can't stop being here,” I say unapologetically. “I won't stop seeing you.”
Her cheeks flush as her chest rises and falls.
“I'm your therapist, Lake. You literally can't stop seeing me,” she whispers.
I grab her face between my hands, forcing her eyes to focus on me. She stiffens in my hold, eyes emanating the fear of what I'll do next.
“I'll take you any way I can get you, Dylan, for however long it takes, even if that means we have to keep it discreet.” I run my fingers down the side of her face, pausing to run my thumb across her bottom lip, wanting so badly to kiss it again. Those amber beauties scorch their way through me at my proposition. “But what I won't do is let you go.” I lean forward, closing the space between us until our foreheads rest together, and my hands slide down to the sides of her neck. “And that’s on rainbow.”
She looks bewildered for a moment before the pieces connect, and she replies, “The jacket.”
I nod as her chest billows with the breaths falling from her parted lips, meeting mine between us.
She waits nervously for something to happen, but when nothing does, her eyes find mine again. I gaze into her, allowing her to trust me, giving her the reassurance she needs without crossing that line.
“Whenever you're ready,” I whisper against her lips.
33
Dylan
Backtobusinessasusual, with an emotional hangover I can't reverse.
I can't believe myself. I opened up to Lake, spilling all of my insides before him. I'm talking guts and gore, the meatiest parts of my past. Open and bleeding, I let myself fall apart before him, and surprisingly, he scooped me up and put me back together where I belonged, as if it never happened.
He knew how to fix me by doing nothing at all. He listened. Absorbing every wound of my past as they all opened and bled before him.
If I thought Lake was only playing the part of a listening ear simply to get laid again, I was dead wrong.
He didn't even kiss me.
He had the opportunity. Told me he'd take me any way he could get me. Does he know I have zero restraint when it comes to him? I nearly stripped myself of my clothing right then and there, bent over the couch, and screamed for him to take me now! But no, composure.
He absorbed it all. And for no other reason than to understand.
His emphatic and understanding qualities were not at all what I was expecting. Neither was my inability to keep the truth from him. And yet, watching him in that room with Colin, I felt the surrounding warmth. A strange familiarity of sorts. It almost felt normal having him there with us, and I can honestly admit that was a first.
