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Kallista, to her credit, smiles at me and shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. Really. Just caught me off guard, is all. You can put it back.” It might just be wishful thinking, but I swear I catch a hint of a blush on her cheeks. “It was nice.”
So, I do as she says and carefully put my arm around her shoulder again. Damn, her little body radiates a lot of heat. I want to touch her hair, but that feels too intimate, somehow. At least a lot more intimate than keeping her warm. Never mind that I’ve touched her hair a dozen times already, but I’m her bodyguard. I’m supposed to guard her body, I tell myself. Not touch it.
When she rests her head against my shoulder and yawns, I can’t help but bite the inside of my cheek.Fuck, fuck, fuck.Okay, now this definitely seems unprofessional. Or were we already past that point when I ran my fingers through her hair? Forget the time in the shower when I fantasized about her.
My mind begins to spiral, but her voice cuts through the noise. “So, I’m curious about something. Why’d you quit your Terraball team?”
I blink and look down at her as something hard lodges in my throat. “Sorry, what?”
“Your team. You were a big deal, right? Lacie said she used to see you on the terminal. You must’ve been professional, then,” she says. “In the League?”
Swallowing, I nod. “Yeah.” In that moment, the memories come flooding back. All those bitter, long-winded arguments with my coach that went in exhausting circles. Our team’s manager skewering me in the locker room when he thought no one else could hear, but the entire team could always hear. “I didn’t. Quit, that is.”
She looks up at me with wide hazel eyes.Huh, I think to myself as I peer down at her. No Weave this time. Her eyes are so pretty. Just like the rest of her.
“Then what happened?” she asks quietly. “If you can share, that is. If you don’t want to, forget I asked.”
I ponder her question for a moment. It’s not a subject I’m too keen to discuss, but she asked so nicely. And besides, I’ve read her dirty laundry all over the internet the past few weeks I’ve been working for her. It’s only fair I share something about myself. I shrug my other shoulder, the one that isn’t currently hosting Kallista’s cheek, and say, “I got kicked off, actually.”
“You were fired?”
Fired. The word is like a brick hurled through my rib cage.
“Yeah. I was fired a few years ago. My teammates and I were celebrating a big win at one of the local diving holes. We were in Baltimore at the time,” I murmur. Kallista cozies up closer to my arm, and my cock strains against my pants. Fuck. Really not the time, nor the place. I try to ignore my erection and continue. “Everyone got sloshed, myself included, but that wasn’t anything unusual. Not for us.”
She nods and hugs my arm tighter, sensing the stress in my voice.
“A few of my teammates took it upon themselves to….” I look down at her and gulp. This next part is almost physically painful to get through, because it’s a memory that I’ve tried to forget since the moment it went down. “They found a couple women at the bar who were also drunk. They took them back to the hotel we were staying in. I wanted to head straight to bed and sleep off the liquor, but they were adamant that we party in the next room over with these super drunk women. And at first, I did. But then the night got later and later, and eventually, the girls wanted to go home. But our goalie and a few of the other guys didn’t want them to leave.”
Kallista’s fingernails dig into my arm slightly, as though she knows exactly where this story is going.
“The guys were not kind about it, either. They took the girls’ phones from them and threatened to lock them in the bathroom unless they did what they told them to do.”
“Holy shit,” Kallista murmurs.
“Yeah. That kind of behavior is unacceptable, obviously. So I tried to talk some sense into them. But again, everyone was drunk and volatile. I’m pretty sure I threw the first punch. Broke three of the guys’ noses, landed one of them in the hospital. It was more than three days, I remember. Modern medicine can do a lot these days, but … he was out for the rest of the season.”
Her eyes grew bigger as I recalled my depressing tale. “And that was that. They fired me the very next day.”
Kallista’s body stiffens against mine. “Are you serious? They didn’t do anything to your teammates? They were going to—”
“I know,” I say in a soothing voice, trying to calm her. That’s rich. I’m trying to calm her down when this is a memory that’s plagued my nightmares for the past three years. “I know. They got away with it, but our coach knew what happened, and he kept a tighter leash on them from then on out. But I was gone for good. No team would pick me up. I was considered too big of a liability.”
Kallista pulls away from my arm and sits upright. “That’s not fair.”
Yeah. Yeah, I know it’s not fair. I’ve spent so many nights agonizing over that moment, thinking of all the ways I could have handled it differently. But the truth is? I wouldn’t do anything differently. Those assholes deserved what they got, even if I didn’t.
“You’re right,” I say, then look out toward the silver strips of violet moonlight over the water. “It’s not. Life is just … shit like that, I guess.”
This is depressing. Too depressing for such a beautiful planet, so I push to my feet and offer her my hand. “But enough about that. We’re on a gorgeous planet with three moons, one of which is”—I glance up at the enormous sphere in the sky, its dark purple storms perfectly visible with the naked eye—“purple. Huh. Like nothing I ever saw on Terra.”
“I lived on the moon,” she says, as though I could have possibly forgotten. “Yeah, we had the gray rocks. But the other part of my view was of your planet. Pretty sure I got the better deal, though. It’s nicer to look at oceans and green continents than … white rock.”
It’s hard not to laugh. “You know, you’re probably right about that. It’s funny to think that maybe when you were looking down at me, I was looking back up at you.”
Kallista’s lips curl into a small smile, and she takes my hand. I pull her up and allow her to latch onto my arm again before shuffling toward the water.
“H-Hey, what are we—” she begins to protest, then lets out a shrill squeal when a wave rolls in and caresses our ankles. The water isn’t as cold as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s downright warm.
