#Awestruck (A #Lovestruck Novel)

by Sariah Wilson

  Then I slipped on the little black dress that Rory had helped me pick out. It had been on sale, it fit me perfectly despite my height, and I could wear it both for the restaurant date and to Tinsley’s meeting the next afternoon. I put on a pair of black heels that I’d owned for a long time and had hardly ever worn as they made me taller than every guy I’d gone out with. I realized that tonight it wouldn’t be a problem.

  About twenty minutes later, I was at Rodrigo’s, giving the hostess my name. She asked me to follow her and led me into a tiny private room. It had a view of a marina on the Willamette River. Although it was dark outside, the large floor-to-ceiling windows gave me a fantastic view of the city all lit up on the other side of the river. Boats decorated with lights came into the marina to dock for the night. There was an outdoor patio beyond the windows, and I imagined in the spring and summer it would be a wonderful place to have dinner.

  There was a small table set for two, with plush armchair-like seats. A single candle burned in the middle of the table, making the room seem soft and romantic.

  The hostess set down two menus and promised to send our waiter in. I went over to the windows to better take in the view.

  All day long I had wondered: What would he say? What would I say? What would happen on this sort-of date? Some part of me was scared. Anxious. I put my hand over my stomach, willing it to calm down.

  It didn’t help when Evan suddenly entered the room and said, “Just so you know, technically I got here first. I just stepped out for a minute. But I went ahead and ordered some appetizers, if that’s okay.”

  Was this some sort of competition? Who was the most on time? I turned around to see Evan in a dark-navy suit that fit him just as well as the last suit I’d seen him in. His hands were in his pockets, and he rocked slightly on his feet. Almost like he was . . . nervous.

  Evan Dawson, nervous? The man who played a highly intense game every week to sold-out stadiums and millions of viewers all over the country? He was praised for having nerves of steel, for never rushing, no matter how many defensive linemen were closing in on him. How could he be nervous right now?

  Had I made him nervous?

  “These are for you,” he said. He picked up a big bouquet of flowers that had been placed on a side table and handed them to me.

  “Oh. Thank you.” I’d never had a man bring me flowers before. They were a mixture of pink and purple and white. I recognized the roses but not the other ones. They looked expensive.

  I set the bouquet down on the floor next to my feet. One, because I didn’t know what else to do with it. It wasn’t like I could put it in water. And two, because all morning and afternoon I’d been telling myself that I had to shore up my defenses. Put my armor back on. Not let Evan Dawson in with his charm and smile counting and devastating good looks. I had a job to do, and I couldn’t forget it.

  And all my good intent nearly went out the window when he said, “You look really beautiful tonight.”

  I could actually feel my heart soften as it sped up at his words. Sarcasm was my only defense. “Am I supposed to be impressed by all this?” I asked as I sat in my chair quickly, before he could help me. “The expensive flowers, the swanky restaurant?” The compliments?

  My snark actually seemed to make him relax. Like he could deal with me better in my natural state. He sat down across from me, draping his linen napkin across his lap. “You don’t have to be impressed by anything. But feel free to try and be civil.”

  This was the problem with eating at a restaurant so fancy. I didn’t know which fork to pick up and stab him with.

  But even I had to admit I begrudgingly admired the fact that he never cowered when I got snarky and gave as good as he got.

  “I don’t remember you always being this sarcastic,” he added.

  My boss wanted me to not aggravate him and get him on my side, but I couldn’t help myself. “I didn’t used to be a lot of things. I’ve changed a lot in the last ten years. And I’m not always sarcastic. Sometimes I’m eating. Or sleeping.”

  He let out a short laugh. “I’d bet all of my Super Bowl rings that you’re sarcastic while you sleep. Dinner’s on me tonight, so please order whatever you’d like.”

  I probably should have protested and said I could pay for myself, but I figured he could afford it. I opened my menu, grateful for the chance to block him out, if only for a couple of minutes. Like most of the riverside restaurants in the area, Rodrigo’s specialized in steak and seafood. I looked at the ridiculously expensive surf-and-turf option and considered ordering three of them. Just to see what Evan would say.

  There were also quite a few French dishes I didn’t recognize. A note in the menu said the new head chef had trained at a swanky culinary school in Paris. I decided to stick with food I could pronounce.

  Our waitress entered the room and introduced herself as Jeannie. She said our appetizers were on the way and offered to get us a drink. I ordered water, and Evan did the same. I wanted all my wits about me, plus I was driving. Better not to take any chances.

  “Are you ready to order?”

  I said I was, and Evan nodded. I got a filet mignon, while Evan, to my private amusement, chose the surf and turf.

  Jeannie said she’d return shortly with our drinks and appetizers. Evan thanked her, smiling, and she tripped over her own feet as she left the room.

  Which I totally got.

  Unfortunately.

  As I sat in this romantic candlelit room, the moonbeams bouncing off the river outside, the man across from me looking like he’d just stepped out of a man’s high-fashion magazine, I again reminded myself to get my armor and defenses back in place. Because he was doing much too good of a job of slowly dismantling both. I was going to hear whatever he had to say, and then it would be done. I was finished letting him lease so much space in my head. If I kept this up, he’d become a joint owner of my brain.

  “You graduated from UO, right?” he asked.

  How did he know that? Sister interference, or had he looked me up online? “I did.”

  “And where are you working now?”

  What should I say? Should I lie? I hadn’t prepared for this question. If I told him where I worked, would he somehow make the connection?

  I figured it was better to stick to the truth as much as possible so that I didn’t trip myself up later. “At the moment I’m using my degree to fetch coffee from Starbucks and make copies. I’m an intern at ISEN.”

  “You mentioned you still want to be an announcer. Is that why you’re working there?”

  Yes, that hadn’t changed in the last two days. He might also have remembered that from before. I’d talked about it all the time with him when we were younger. He’d been very supportive, even though back then no woman had ever announced a televised NFL game. “I do still want that. And yes, that’s why I’m there.”

  He picked up a butter knife and twirled it back and forth. “I seem to recall you telling me about how you’d gone to that sports announcer camp in Pennsylvania.”

  Slightly humiliating that that was what he’d chosen to remember from the time we’d spent together. “It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.” There were plenty of female sideline reporters, but no announcers at a national level for the NFL. Not until Beth Mowins. She was kind of a personal hero of mine. And even then she’d been relentlessly attacked by trolls on the internet for being “too shrill” or “annoying” as she called the game. She’d cracked the glass ceiling hard, and I hoped to follow in her footsteps. “I’ve spent a lot of time calling whatever I can—college volleyball games, Pop Warner football, the local junior high soccer team’s games.”

  “Do you have a demo? I know some people.”

  I actually always had one of my demos in my purse. Something my grandma had insisted on. I pulled the CD out of my purse and slid it across the table to him. It probably wasn’t very cool of me to accept his offer to help when my plan was to bring him down, but that’s how badly I wa
nted this job. I would go through whatever door opened up to me.

  His fingers brushed against mine as he took the CD, and I bit down on my lower lip to prevent myself from gasping. That burning, melting sensation returned wherever his skin touched mine. And he was only touching my fingers. What would I do if he ever touched the rest of me?

  Probably spontaneously combust.

  Jeannie came back in with the appetizers. Evan stuck the CD in his suit jacket while I contemplated what had just happened. Why did I respond to him like this? Was it residual teen angst? Or something more?

  If nothing else, he’d been exceedingly clever to distract me by asking about my career ambitions. That always made me let my guard down.

  “Here you go,” she said, placing the plates on the table. She announced their French names, but they meant nothing to me. It all sounded . . . disgusting. I didn’t recognize any of the so-called food in front of me, and I was too embarrassed to ask her about it.

  “What is this?” I asked when Jeannie left the room.

  “I don’t know. I told the hostess to bring me the chef’s signature appetizers.”

  “You do know that the man studied in France, right? For all we know this could be snail antennas and frog tongues.”

  “Aubrey said you were a foodie.”

  “I’m not. I like eating, and I enjoy cooking, but I’m not one of those people who take forty pictures of their meal and put it on Instagram. Or who thinks that life is unfulfilled if you haven’t tried yak’s milk, ostrich eggs, or hissing cockroaches.” I was perfectly happy living a less fulfilled life with normal food.

  He leaned forward, his hand near mine on the table. It took all my willpower not to move it away in a pathetic attempt to show him he didn’t affect me. “Let’s be adventurous and try it.”

  I never backed down from a challenge. I grabbed the gray stuff in front of me and dished some onto my plate. I took a small, tentative bite. And whatever this slimy meat-like substance was, it was extremely salty. I spit it out onto my plate. My mother would have yelled at me, using my first and middle names as some kind of curse words, if I’d done that at home. “I’m sorry, but that is truly awful. There should be a calorie refund on things that taste that gross.”

  For some reason that struck Evan as completely funny, and he was laughing with a mouthful of food. He did finally manage to swallow his but only barely. He had the kind of laughter that was contagious, and while I did keep my own laugh in check, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Smile Number Four,” he said after he’d started breathing normally again. “And you were right earlier. I was trying to impress you.”

  “Swing and a miss.”

  “Wrong sport.”

  “Fourth and ten, then.”

  Another brilliant smile from him that had my baby-making parts giddy with excitement. I told my glands to chill the freak out. I reached for my napkin, intending to drape it across my lap. Evan was going to think I’d been raised in a barn, given how I’d been acting all evening. My hands were shaking. Why were my hands shaking?

  In my effort to be quick, I dropped the napkin ring on the floor, where it rolled under the table.

  “I’ve got it!” he said before I could even react.

  He reached for the ring and held it aloft to me, bending on one knee. “Ashton?”

  It was such a magnificent picture, him on his knee like he was going to propose, that it took me a second to respond. “Yes?”

  He took my hand, and explosive flames enveloped my skin. My heart beat so fast and so hard I was sure he could hear it. He dropped the napkin ring into my open palm, and my fingers curled around it.

  “We need to talk. About this long-standing fight we’re in.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Some part of me was weirdly disappointed. That wasn’t what I’d hoped he would say. Obviously I didn’t want him to ask me to marry him, because that was beyond ridiculous—I still hated the guy. But I wanted him to say something that wouldn’t bring me crashing down to earth quite so hard.

  “We’re not in a fight,” I said as he got back in his seat. “That implies us both devoting a lot of time and energy to it, which we’re not.” Liar, my inner voice whispered. “Think of it more as an ongoing, detached distrust of you and everything you say.”

  “I severely underestimated your anger, and I’m not someone who underestimates anyone. Ever.”

  Jeannie chose that moment to reappear with our entrées, telling us not to touch the hot plates as she placed them on the table.

  Was that what this was about? The quarterback known for his field vision, his tight control on every play and over every player, had finally been blindsided? And he didn’t like it? As if I’d somehow bruised his precious ego?

  The waitress left, closing the door behind her. My food smelled delicious, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to eat.

  Evan picked up his fork and knife, and then, like he shared my sentiment, he immediately put them back down. “I didn’t think back then about how it all might make you feel. I was too wrapped up in my own drama to think about anybody else. And you were so much younger than we were. I should have taken that into account. I should have been more considerate of your feelings. I am really sorry for everything that happened. But I didn’t betray you the way you think I did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I didn’t pass your letter around. I thought it was really sweet, even though it never could have happened between us. You were thirteen. You hadn’t even hit puberty yet. While I was reading it, Piz found me. Do you remember Piz?”

  Aaron Piznarski. He’d been our team’s center and one of Evan’s best friends. I nodded.

  “Anyway, he grabbed the letter away from me and started reading it out loud. He’s the one who took pictures and passed them around to everyone at school. He’s the one who stole my phone and texted you to come out to the football field. He started all the teasing.”

  He was going to blame it all on someone else? What if it’s true? that voice asked me. Even if it was, why hadn’t he defended me? “Why didn’t you do anything about it? Why didn’t you stop him? I’d thought we were friends.”

  Evan again reached out, like he wanted to hold my hand, but he stopped himself. “We were friends. I loved hanging out with you. You were like the kid sister I never had.”

  Oh, that was a blow to the old ego. I’d always suspected he’d seen me that way, but it was a totally different feeling having him confirm it. “Then shouldn’t you have protected me?”

  He leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his dark hair. “I was only fourteen when my parents died. And I didn’t have any relatives who could take me in. Coach Edwards stepped up and went through all the hoops so that he and his family could become my foster family.”

  I reached for my purse at my side and pulled out my phone, unlocked the home screen, then pushed the record button. Evan was talking about his time in foster care, something he never, ever shared with the press.

  “And I thought it was because of some bond or connection we had until I overheard him one night on the phone. He said he couldn’t have me ending up in a home in a different school district. That I would win him the state championship.” Evan let out a self-deprecating laugh. “He was right. I did. Three times. After hearing that phone call, I almost considered quitting.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He cleared his throat. “Football always made me feel close to my dad. He played college ball, and he had a football in my hands before I even started walking. We used to drill and practice together all the time. I didn’t want to . . . I don’t know . . . dishonor his memory or something. I did consider throwing some games, just to make Coach Edwards mad, but I couldn’t have done that to my teammates.”

  I glanced down at my phone, making sure it was still recording. “Are you close to the Edwards family now?”

  He let out a short bark of laughter. “No. I ha
ven’t spoken to them since I graduated from high school. They took me in only to exploit me and my talent. And I did my best when I was living with them to make their lives hard. I acted out. Committed some petty theft, went to too many parties. We even stole a police cruiser once.”

  Aha! I’d been right about that. “And despite all the partying, you really never hooked up with anyone?”

  I held my breath, waiting for his response.

  He narrowed his eyes briefly, then smirked as if he found me amusing. “I was acting out to punish Coach, but I think some part of me was doing it with this belief that if I was bad enough, it was like I was daring my parents to come back and discipline me. I know it sounds crazy, and I didn’t really think it was possible, but I did have that thought more than once. They were really committed to me waiting for marriage, and it turned out to be the one line I couldn’t bring myself to cross. I couldn’t disappoint them that way.”

  I was torn. I wanted to let out a moan of disgust that he was sticking to his story, but I was also touched that he was finally sharing all this deeply personal information with me. In high school our conversations had revolved around football and video games. Very surface-only kind of stuff, not at all deep or meaningful like I’d imagined it to be at thirteen. Which I was realizing now as he was being vulnerable with me. “So you’re really committed to this celibacy thing, huh?”

  “I am.” He nodded. “And the stuff I did when I was younger—it’s why I have to be extra careful now. I know the press calls me a Boy Scout and a Goody Two-shoes, but I can’t afford to do anything to upset Chester Walton. He knows about my past, and I promised him nothing like that would ever happen again.”

  “Why would you care what Chester Walton thinks? You could quit tomorrow, and you’d literally have offers ten minutes later from every other team in the league.” It was in part what eased my conscience for when I got him fired. Knowing that he’d land on his feet in a different city.

  “My grandma lives here, and I don’t want to leave her.”