Sugar Rush (Offensive Line #1) (22 page)

LILLY

LAX

Los Angeles, CA

Sloane is a strange traveling companion. She met me at the gate out of LAX with my ticket already in hand.

“Don’t worry,” she told me as she led me toward the security checkpoint. “I’m billing it to Colt.”

That did not put my mind at ease. I’m curious how this will all shake out if Colt’s not happy to see me. I’m pretty sure I owe Sloane Ashford the balance for a last minute, one way ticket to Minnesota, and she is not a woman I want to be in the red with. I’m already hamstringing the bakery leaving Rona alone with John and Gina. Not only does she have to manage it without me, she has to keep those two from fighting like junkyard dogs all day.

Once we get on the plane she pops on headphones and stretches her legs out into the spacious first class seating area. She doesn’t speak to me the entire flight.

Somewhere over Denver I fall asleep.

“Lilly,” Sloane calls gently, shaking my arm. “Wake up. We’re here.”

I open my eyes slowly. The plane has landed. People are already disembarking.

“We’re in Minneapolis?”

“Unfortunately,” she replies, digging through her bag. “I got an email from Colt’s mom while we were in the air. She’s already here.”

“Is there an airport in Galena? I thought it was tiny.”

“It is, but there’s an airpark. I chartered a plane to pick her up and bring her in. Also going on Colt’s bill.”

“Jesus.”

Sloane smirks. “Don’t worry. He’s good for it.”

“I guess he must be.”

She looks up at me, taking me in seriously. “You really don’t know how much he’s worth, do you?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

She smiles softly. “I knew I liked you.” She stands suddenly, gesturing for me to do the same. “Now let’s get out of this damn thing. It smells like hot sauce.”

As we wheel our carry-on bags, our only bags, out of the concourse I check my watch. Nine P.M. California time.

“Is Minneapolis Eastern or Central time?” I ask Sloane, struggling to keep up with her brisk pace.

“Central. Two hours ahead of L.A.”

“Will he still be at the stadium or did they move him to the hospital?”

Sloane frowns at her phone in her hand. She deftly dodges a small child that runs out in front of her, though I have no idea how. It’s like she has a sixth sense.

“My phone is still updating,” she explains vaguely. “I’ve got messages coming in from his mom, Carol, Coach Allen, and Trey. It looks like it’s not that bad. It’s not a break. No torn ligaments.”

“Oh, thank God,” I sigh with relief.

“They’re thinking it’s a sprain but they’ll know more when the swelling goes down. They tried to bus him back to the hotel at halftime.” She laughs to herself as she’s reading. “But he told them he wasn’t ‘going fucking anywhere until the game is over’. He was on the sidelines for the last half of the game, propped up on crutches and doped out of his mind. He’s back at the hotel now.”

“Did they win?”

Sloane frowns. “No. They lost. Fourteen to nine. Trey says Tyus took a hard hit and was on the sidelines with Colt for the last ten minutes of the game. They couldn’t get anything going after that.”

“What happened to Tyus?”

“They’re worried about a concussion.” She tsks unhappily. “That’ll be his second this year.”

“That’s not good.”

“No,” she agrees grimly, stowing her phone in her pocket. “That’s two too many.”

Sloane leads me outside into the dark, snow-filled night and I almost pass out from the cold. My lungs can’t handle it. It feels like they’re freezing inside my chest. I bounce from foot to foot, collapsing in on myself into a compact ball while Sloane hails us a cab. She’s got a large jacket on and I’m jealous as shit that I wasn’t prepared for this, but I don’t think any jacket I own could have helped me survive this. When we finally get a taxi I launch myself into it like the devil is on my tail. It’s blissfully warm inside.

“How cold is it out there?” I ask the driver breathlessly.

He glances at me briefly in the mirror. “Probably about ten degrees.”

“Ten?!”

He doesn’t repeat himself, but that’s fine. I heard him. I feel it. Ten degrees does not sound like a real, sustainable temperature, but the thing is I believe him. I have the frostbite to back up his story.

“Hyatt Regency, downtown, please,” Sloane tells him as she snaps the door shut.

The driver looks at her in the mirror the way he did me, but he quickly gives her a glance over his shoulder to double check.

Yeah,
I think to myself.
She’s that hot, dude. It’s messed up.

“Hyatt Regency, as the lady says,” he replies cordially.

Sloane gives him a patient smile, one I imagine she reserves for guys who shit all over themselves when she walks into a room.

It’s a short ride to the hotel, only twenty minutes, but in that time I go from shivering to sweating. From driven and confident to afraid. Nervous. If Sloane sees it she doesn’t say anything. She taps away at her phone, takes a quick call from Trey that ends in a beautifully heartfelt ‘I love you, baby’, and looks out the window. She’s not much of a talker, not idle chit chat anyway, and I realize it’s something I really like about her.

Once we’re inside the hotel she points me toward the elevator and herself toward the bar.

“You’re not going up with me?” I ask in amazement.

“Trey is waiting for me at the bar. I’ll have a drink or two with him before heading up to see Colt. He says Colt’s mom is out getting him waffles ‘cause he’s a big baby, but she’ll be gone for at least an hour in this weather. You’ve got that long to get things back on track.” She smiles at me, surprising me with a quick hug that’s both bracing and gentle. “Good luck, Hendricks.”

“Wait. What room number?”

“Three-fourteen,” she calls over her shoulder, already rolling her black bag away from me.

The elevator ride is excruciatingly slow. The carpet a painful purple. I’m chewing the inside of my cheek, on the brink of drawing blood, when a harsh
ding
announces that I’ve arrived. Outside the shining brass doors the hallway is littered with dirty white plates and silver trays. There are at least two outside almost every door. This must be where most of the team is, all of them planted in the same area. All of them ordering room service after a long, hard day.

I’ve seen Colt after a loss, but I can’t imagine what he must be like after a loss and an injury, especially one he took in the first minute of the game.

My palms start to sweat at the thought. I feel like bolting, but I hold my ground because I want to be better than this, for me and for him. For this thing between us that’s so sweet and so bitter at the same time. This thing stands on the edge of perfection but shrinks away with every barb, every sharp edge wrapped around my hesitant heart.

Now is the time to be brave again. Now is the time to be fearless. Now is—

The door to room three-fourteen swings open in front of me. A surprised Tyus Anthony stands on the other side, silent and appraising. He looks me over, noting my bag without remark before stepping aside to let me in. I pass over the threshold, turning to thank him but he’s out the door and gone before I can say a word. I stare after him, watching the door shut firmly on its own behind him.

“He’s in a shit mood,” Colt tells me quietly from across the room. “He’s not the best company right now.”

He’s propped up on pillows on top of the comforter. He’s in black, satiny running shorts, his knee wrapped and propped up on a big, white pillow. His chest is bare and beautiful. His skin a warm tan tone that contrasts harshly with the cold blustering cold and white outside the window. I can hear the wind howling. I can hear us both breathing. I could probably hear a pin drop if I had one.

“Hi,” I manage softly.

He smiles and I nearly collapse with relief. “Hey, beautiful. How did you get here?”

“Airplane.”

“No shit?”

I smile faintly. “Sloane brought me with her. She’s in the bar with Trey.”

“Typical. Gotta check in with her piece before her client.”

“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“I’m stunned, but I’m also drugged. If Jesus Christ himself walked through that door he’d get the same reaction. It’s all I’ve got.”

I take a tentative step toward him. “How are you feeling?”

“Emotionally or physically?”

“Either.”

“Like shit.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No, it is,” I insist firmly. “I overreacted that day in your car and I’m sorry. I was scared but it was about all the wrong things. I wasn’t worried about my dad and the paparazzi, not really. I was afraid of you meeting him because what if he knew everything in the world about you, your every single stat from college to pro, and he couldn’t remember my name? I didn’t think I could stand it. I can’t begin to explain how humiliating and painful that would be and I didn’t want you to see that.”

Colt’s face is clouded with concern as he pushes up off the bed to sit up straighter. “Lilly, I had no idea. I wouldn’t have agreed to go with you if I’d known.”

“I asked you to go, it’s on me, but I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t ready.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to be ready for anything. I’ll wait as long as you need me to.”

“I love you,” I blurt out. The words shock us both. I feel my body burn with adrenaline when I hear myself say it, but I don’t stop. I let the truth poor out of me at a blinding speed. “I love you so much and I don’t want you to wait. I want to rush and run with you. I want to fly. I want to feel alive. I want to feel like I’m living my life and I want to live my life with you because—“ I take a breath, realizing I haven’t done that in a while. “Because I love you,” I laugh shakily.

He grins and it’s a lovely thing. A charming, boyish, delicious thing.

“I love you too, Lilly.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” he chuckles, his voice deep in my blood, in my heart, thrumming in my ears. “I’ve been miserable since you walked away. I haven’t been myself. I’ve never felt this way, and I can come back from anything. Any loss, any hit.” He shakes his head, his voice dipping softly. “But not you. You are the one thing I can’t bounce back from. And I don’t want to, but you’ve gotta know that this is my life right now. Tomorrow it could be different. That hit today, it could have changed everything. They all could. Every one of them could be my last, there’s no way of knowing. I understand that I have a shelf life. This ride is going to come to an end and probably soon, so I’m enjoying it while I can. Ten years from now I’ll probably be a mechanic back in Galena with a tattered old jersey framed on my wall and a scrapbook full of all of these memories, and I’m cool with that. But I owe it to that mechanic to give him as many memories as I can.”

“Are you saying you’ll see me in ten years?” I ask, half-joking, half-heartbroken.

He shakes his head seriously. “I’m saying I hope you’re still with me in ten years. I hope you’ll ride this ride with me and know that that’s what it is; a ride. An adventure that we’ll look back on, because it’s not going to be this way forever. But you and I, we are. We’re tiramisu, Lilly. Sweet and complicated, but so fucking good it’s worth it. Every last bite.”

I laugh shakily, my eyes welling with hot tears.

It’s been a month since we met. Such a meager amount of time to make such a strong declaration to each other, but I think I first felt it that night in the bakery when he kissed me. When the batter was burning next to us and sweet sugar filled the air. I’ve been denying it ever since, pushing back and pushing back. Going slow. Running away.

But I’m not going slow tonight.

I step to the door, throwing the bar lock quietly.

“Lilly?”

I shed my jacket, letting it fall to the floor. I lift the hem of my shirt. I pull it up over my head. I drop it on the floor at my feet.

Colt’s eyes go wide. Interested. “What are you doing?”

I reach behind me to unhook my bra. It releases, falling slowly off my shoulders. I drop it beside my shirt.

Colt’s eyes are
very
interested now.

“How drugged are you?” I ask him.

“Not that drugged. I’d have to be dead before I’d put a stop to this.”

“I’m not taking advantage of you?”

He smiles slow and easy. “Never.”

I unbutton my jeans. I drag the zipper down slowly. I keep my eyes on his, a slow smile curving on my lips.

“I can’t stand up,” he reminds me, his voice husky and low.

“You don’t have to.”

I shimmy out of my jeans. Out of my underwear. I stand naked at the end of his bed.

“I’ll come to you,” I promise.

I can see his breathing change in the rise and fall of his chest. It’s shallow and rapid. His thin athletic shorts rise as I kneel on the end of the bed, crawling toward him on my hands and knees, my eyes lock on his.