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Burke picked up a handwritten note and exhaled a laugh. He turned it so I could see.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I read out loud. I grinned. “Your sister gives excellent advice.”
He nodded. The quilt stayed in the box, and I desperately wanted to pull it out, but it wasn’t mine to decide. There was something about the items that cast a cloud of melancholy over the room.
On the envelope was the blockyMof the University of Michigan. “What’s that?” I asked.
“An invitation to something I don’t want to go to.” He picked it up and stared hard at the envelope.
Carefully, I slid behind him and set my head on his shoulder, wrapping a cautious arm around his waist. His frame relaxed.
“When is it?” I asked.
“First home game of the season,” he answered, his voice low and charged. “End of August. They’re doing a thing for Chris.”
I closed my eyes. There would be so many memories for him there. All the memories he had with his friend.
“The last time I was at the stadium, I was with Chris and Amie.” His voice was quiet. A little ragged. “She was pregnant with Mira.”
I pressed my cheek against his shoulder, kissing the muscle through the thin cotton of his shirt. It wasn’t nearly enough. But it was something.
He slid his hand over the top of mine and squeezed. My eyes opened.
“Will you come with me?” he asked.
The breath caught in my throat.
“You don’t have to come to the event if you don’t want to,” he continued. His hand tightened over mine. “You can do something else during the game. I know how you feel about football—”
I stopped him by pulling away from his shoulder and turning him with a gentle hand to face me. I hooked my hand into his shirt andtugged him closer. His eyes could hardly meet mine, and my heart somersaulted with a horrible aching sense of how hard it must be for him to ask for help.
“Of course I’ll be there with you,” I told him. “But you’ll have to tell me what ‘first and ten’ means again.”
He huffed a short laugh, his eyes finally holding on to mine. “I can do that.”
I smacked his chest. “I know what it means, you ass.”
Burke laughed, and that dimple appeared beneath the stubble on his cheek.
“Think you can handle sharing a room with me?” I asked. “Or should I dip into my travel budget?”
His eyes heated at my not-so-innocent question. “I think we can manage it for one night.”
“You’re sweaty,” I told him.
He glanced down at his chest, then wound his fingers into my shirt, similar to the way I was holding his. He tugged me closer. “So are you.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
Burke’s eyes locked on to my mouth, and my body felt it everywhere. My toes curled in anticipation, my chest muscles struggling to pull in enough air as I imagined kissing him.
Instead, he started to pull my shirt off. When it cleared my head, he dropped it on the floor. I did the same to him, spreading my hands up over his chest as he started walking us backward toward the bathroom.
In truth, I didn’t mind that he was sweaty. And based on the way his gaze devoured the gleam on my chest above my bra line, he didn’t seem to mind much either.
While I started running the water and we waited for it to warm up, he pressed against my back, mouthing at the nape of my neck while he finagled the clasp of my bra. He rolled his hips against my backside as he started pushing my shorts down my hips. He sucked hard at the curve where my neck met my shoulder, and I slammed a hand out tobrace my weight. His hand spread over my stomach, fingers wide as he pulled my body tight to his. I was panting by the time we’d pulled all our clothes off, and I tugged him impatiently under the spray.
I wasn’t sure how to keep doing this.
