“Did you get it?” He rubbed his face.
“Yes. Are you okay?”
“Hard head. How’s the catching hand?” He took her right hand in his, fingers massaging her knuckles.
“I’m fine.”
“Might want to ice it anyway.”
“Oliver, I’m fine.”
“You’ve probably been wanting to do that.”
“No… Okay, maybe a few times.” She rolled her eyes.
Oliver bent his head, his wide grin so unlike him. So goofy.
“You got your one shot in.” He bumped his nose to hers, almost as though he were waiting for her to step back, put some distance between them. Why the heck would she do that?
He leaned in farther, his gaze sliding down to her mouth. She held her breath, her lungs burning for what felt like ever. He gently pressed his lips to hers.
“Eeww!”
Sam flinched.
A little boy, not more than five, wrinkled his nose at them. His mother gaped at him, her eyes wide.
“I am so sorry.” She snatched her son’s hand.
“It’s okay,” Sam chuckled.
“Don’t kiss girls, dude.” Oliver winked at the kid.
“I can’t take you anywhere.” Sam groaned and pushed him away from the corner.
“What?”
Sam rolled her eyes, the pain in her hand forgotten. Time with Oliver was…magical. Full of laughter.
She didn’t need him to finish the pros list, because the reasons why being with him was worth the risk built themselves. Still, what about the pictures? What about their history? They’d agreed to not talk about it, but it was still there. An ugly sore that still hurt.
They were going to have to seriously discuss that at some point. Before they could really move on. She’d said things… He’d done things… It couldn’t be swept under the rug that easily. Not for her. Still, she did like spending the afternoon with him.
Hunting monsters, getting lost in her own neighborhood, it was fun. She smiled more and laughed harder than she had in weeks. Since her sister Rashae last visited. And she didn’t want it to end. “It’s getting late.” She tipped her head up, looking at the sky, which was turning a stunning shade of indigo.
They were almost back to her coffee shop. She was dragging her feet, holding off the inevitable for as long as she could.
“Your sister still at your place?” he asked.
“Yes.” She groaned.
“Damn.” He fished his keys out of his pocket.
“I guess we’ll…continue later?”
“Or…” He clicked the key fob, unlocking his car. “We could go make-out like kids in my car…”
“Because we never did that in college.” She arched a brow at him while her insides heated.
“We did a lot of stuff in my car.” He took her hand and kissed the back of her fingers.
She could remember the time spent in his backseat in vivid detail. If she got in that car, she had no doubt he’d kiss her silly and make her want more. He wouldn’t push, because he didn’t have to.
Was she strong enough to draw the line? Or did she want to be tempted?
Oliver steered the car into the parking lot of a mom and pop pizzeria. He’d considered a couple really neat, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, but if there was one thing Samantha liked, it was pizza. Judging by the way she tapped her foot and shifted in her seat every sixty seconds, it was pretty easy to tell she was nervous. So was he. They had a chance to do things right this time. And that meant not jumping on her the moment the car doors were shut.
“Hungry? I’m starving. You don’t mind if I grab something to eat, do you?” He turned to face her.
Sam blinked at him a few times. He was pretty sure, if she was anything like him right now, she was too anxious to really register her stomach.
“Yeah, actually, I’m starving.” She popped her seatbelt.
“Cool.” He killed the engine and met her on the sidewalk. “I found this place when I was playing in that flag football league.”
“When was that?” Her nose wrinkled. “I don’t remember you playing flag football.”
“Oh, well, it was a couple years ago.” He shrugged.
Fuck.
She’d been engaged to Trevor, and Oliver had avoided her. Which had led to signing up for the football league in the first place.
He ushered her inside the small restaurant. It had all of four tables with a capacity for twelve patrons at a time.
They decided to split a pizza, placed their order and took the table most out of the way from foot traffic in a corner, partially shielded by the drink coolers.
Play it cool.
Don’t stick your foot in your mouth.
Talk about her.
“How’s the job hunt going?” He reached across the small table and took her hand.
“It’s not.” She sighed and glanced away.
“Oh, come on.”
“No, really. No one in Congress wants to hire the new Secretary’s daughter. At least not yet.” She sighed.
Crap.
Not a good topic.
“I guess it all depends on how these first few months go. I’m doing okay right now, but I can’t wait around for Dad to make a good move, and gain some favor before someone decides to hire me. I mean, at that point, I run the risk of becoming a pawn. What if Dad makes a decision my new employer doesn’t like? What then? Do I get fired?”
“Damn. You’re right.” He hated admitting that. Sam was a lot like her father. She was the kind of woman to change the world from the inside. In quiet, subtle ways that echoed her father’s methods. It was one of the many things he loved about her.
“It’s so unfair,” she mock-whined. “Life is unfair, I know, but it’s nice to at least say it once in a while. What about you? How’s everyone settling in?”
“Good. Good. Some growing pains, but you know how that is.”
“Yeah.” One side of her mouth hitched up.
Oliver had hoped Timothy would bring on Sam as part of the PR department. She wasn’t just his daughter, she was personally invested in his success and had a brilliant mind. Ultimately he’d chosen not to, which Oliver also understood. There was just no easy way through this quagmire.
Way to step in it, bro…
“Sometimes I just wish I could go back in time.” She stared at the table top.
Oh, how many times Oliver had wished that.
The things he’d do differently.
The changes he’d make.
For one, he’d never have kept Sam in the dark about things. At the time, he’d thought he was protecting her. In his young mind, he’d thought he was facing the end of the world. Not a storm to be weathered.
Sam’s gaze flicked to his face, her eyes narrowing. She bit her lip.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“We agreed to not discuss the past.”
Ah, so they were thinking about the same things then.
“We can bend our rules.” He swiped his thumb over her knuckles. “What’s on your mind?”
“I wish I’d fought harder for us.”
Oliver stared at her. That was the last thing he’d expected her to say.
“I held onto the hurt for a long time, because I knew we had something good. Losing the good hurts worse than losing the okay or the bad, you know?”
“Yeah. I wish…I wish I’d maybe told you part of it. Probably not everything, but some of it. Put us on pause instead of full stop.”
“I’d have pushed you into breaking up with me.” She shook her head. “There was no way I’d go from what we were to nothing.”
“You think we would have lasted?”
“I don’t know. You weren’t good for my grades, that’s for sure.” She narrowed her eyes.
He chuckled. Distracting Sam was a great pastime.
Their pizza arrived and they spent a moment staring at the steaming hot di
sh.
In a way, their relationship was like the pizza. Promising, but dangerous to touch. If he waited long enough, maybe he could keep her.
“What if we had…I don’t know, worked things out?” Sam pulled a slice onto her plate, cutting the long strings of cheese.
“I think…we’d have been good for each other.”
“You getting me to skip class was good for me?”
“Hey, you needed to live a little.” He took the knife from her and helped himself.
Sam chuckled, her smile warming him from the inside out. Being around her made him happy. Talking to her, sharing a meal, small things that to anyone else were insignificant were huge. He’d gone so long without her, he had to play this right.
“What are we now?” She crossed her forearms on the table, watching him. Studying him in a way that was all her.
“Friends?”
“Friends don’t kiss. Do I even want to know what you did in my bathroom?”
“Nope.” He grinned. Cold water was good for a few things, but he liked letting her wonder what he’d been up to.
“What are we doing, Oliver?”
“We’re having dinner.”
“Not what I meant and you know it.”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that stuff tonight?”
“No, we agreed to not discuss the past. This is the present.” She spread a napkin over her lap.
“We’re…exploring our options.” Getting the lay of the land, a feel for the players, their strengths and weaknesses. After tonight, he’d have a game plan for how to win Sam back.
“No, you’re not. I can see the wheels turning now. Don’t forget that I know you Oliver.”
He sighed and nudged the pizza aside, reaching for her hand. When all else failed, honesty. He’d have to hope she didn’t spook.
She put her palm in his.
“We’re two people, getting to know each other again. I don’t know what to call it, but I like it. There. How’s that?”
Sam studied his face a moment, looking for something.
“Are you dating anyone?” she asked.
“No.” He hadn’t for…a while. There just wasn’t time to take away from the office and most women didn’t understand. There was a side of politics a person either got, or was born into. It was difficult to make most women get it the way Sam did.
“What are we?” Her voice was quieter. She was lost, and he wanted to anchor her. Shelter her. Be the person she turned to when she needed to complain about the injustices of it all.
“I don’t know.” He squeezed her hand. As much as he wanted to push her for a commitment, to dive into the deep end, he had to be smart about this. Sam needed time. “How about this? What if we…take it slow? Give us a few weeks, hang out, go out, and see what we both want?” That wasn’t Oliver’s style, but Sam would need to rationalize being with him again. And after everything he’d put her through, he had to win her over again.
She pressed her lips together, brows drawing down.
Oliver kept his sigh inside.
The one concession he didn’t want to make.
“We keep this…private. Just us?”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
Of course she wouldn’t want to go public with a relationship she wasn’t certain about. He had to keep his disappointment inside. She was giving him a chance, that alone was huge. The rest he’d have to earn.
6.
Samantha smoothed her skirt over her thighs in an effort to wipe off her sweating palms. Her stomach was in knots and she couldn’t pretend to know why. Where this was all going? And she didn’t mean the car.
Oliver glanced at her and smiled. It was infinitely harder to breathe when he looked at her like that. With…promise.
Sam smiled back, her stomach flip-flopping a bit. It might have been a bad idea to have taken that last slice, but it’d smelled so good. She didn’t allow herself a lot of pizza, and curse him, Oliver probably knew that.
It was crazy to give him a week or two, to give them a trial period.
All it would take was twenty-four hours for her to be completely hooked on him again. Sam knew herself. And she knew how Oliver affected her.
The stop light turned green and he turned his attention to the road.
They were winding ever closer to the river, which was rumored to be a great spawning ground for Monster-Go starter creatures. While they were eating, she’d gotten several notifications about a higher than usual appearance tonight. She needed something to do instead of sitting there staring at Oliver. The more she looked at him, the more she saw the possibilities.
She’d spent so long hating him, in an attempt to protect herself, that this one-eighty still had her head spinning.
Damn Lily and her eminent domain attitude.
What Sam wouldn’t give to go home and be in her own space to mull this over. But Lily would ask questions and she didn’t have answers. Plus, it wasn’t like Sam could have Oliver all to herself if Lily was there.
It was like Sam and Oliver were back in college again. In those days they’d both had roommates. No privacy meant they’d conducted a large part of their relationship in the backseat of his old Mustang.
His new car had a lot less seat space, though it lacked that stale French fry smell.
Oliver pulled off the road, coasted down a tree-lined drive and steered into a waterfront lot. It was a convenient place for joggers, bikers, and water enthusiasts to start and stop their activities, since it had plenty of paths and direct access to the river. During the day it was supposed to be busy. At this time of the evening, they were the only ones around, save for a car or two off by themselves.
“I guess whoever posted those sightings cleared out?” Oliver killed the engine and glanced at his phone.
Sam’s heart beat too fast, hammering against her ribs. Being around Oliver was easier when she’d hated him. She’d known the rules, what they were, how to act.
Now…
What were they doing?
They weren’t really playing the game. Oh, they were pretending to. They hit waystations, and if something interesting popped up on their screens they captured it, but they weren’t monster hunting. Not really. They were…what?
Talking. Laughing. Catching up. Staring at each other.
“You want to get closer to the stop?” Oliver popped his seatbelt and opened his door.
“Sure.”
“We don’t have to, if you don’t want to. It is getting kind of dark out there.”
“No, this is totally fine.” She scrambled to get out, to appear as though everything were fine.
Oliver was there almost immediately, taking her hand and closing the car door for her. He wasn’t giving her a moment to find her center. But wasn’t that how he was?
Attack. Attack. Attack. Push forward. Insert random sports ball reference she didn’t get. There was no doubt in her head he already had a strategy. Because that was Oliver. He played to win at everything and if she didn’t realize she was the prize, well, she might as well turn in her diploma. The writing was on the wall. Oliver was out to win her back, but did she want him? Was this a good idea? Should she follow her head or heart?
He took her left hand in his right. It was a casual gesture, but also a thoughtful one.
Oliver didn’t want to handicap her game. She caught monsters on her phone with her right.
She didn’t need to ask if it was intentional, because she knew the answer. Oliver was the kind of guy who tried to think four and five moves ahead. He had a plan, a playbook, and though they spoke different languages, she understood the importance of having those moves thought out.
They fell into step, nothing hurried about the way they approached the trail head that was also the Monster-Go waystation. They hit the stop, paused for a moment, then turned to walk along the water.
There was so much in Sam’s life she couldn’t control right now, and this thing with Oliver was another one to add to the
list. But unlike her need for employment, she could chose to enjoy whatever it was they were doing. Or weren’t doing. For the next few weeks. Oh, he probably had something in mind, but she could always change the game.
“Hey.” Oliver tugged on her hand. “Come here.”
“Hm?”
“Put that away for a second, okay?” He took her phone from her hand and slipped it into her purse.
Oliver slid his hand around her waist, bringing their bodies together.
She knew what came next.
Her heart was already galloping away.
Her skin was hyper-sensitive.
“The cat drinks the milk,” he whispered.
Sam sputtered, laughing, and tipped her head forward against his shoulder.
“Do you remember the day you busted me for saying that?” He chuckled into her ear, his stubble scraping her cheek.
“You were terrible in high school.” Could he feel her pulse? It hammered against her temples, beat her ribs and throbbed in her throat—and lower.
“I was. You know, that was the day I really noticed you.”
“What? Because I came between you and a girl?” She rolled her eyes. Plenty of girls had fallen all over themselves for a shot at a chance with the Venezuelan ambassador’s son, and he, in turn, ate up all the attention. He’d even say the stupidest things—in Spanish—to the girls. Probably to see what he could get away with.
The day Sam couldn’t get into her locker because Oliver was too busy telling a girl about a cat drinking milk was the day she put a stop to those antics in her space. She could still remember the look of horror on the poor girl’s face when Sam laid into him. And he—he’d just laughed. She’d come awfully close to nailing him in the face with her biology book that day.
Oliver lifted a hand, smoothing her hair down. The skin at the corner of his eyes crinkled. He’d grown into a handsome man.
“Because I knew you wouldn’t let me get away with anything. I don’t always want to hear what you have to say, but I appreciate the honesty. You know how to say the hard things other people wouldn’t.”
Right in the feels.
How long had he been saving that bit of wisdom?
He bent his head, and this time she met him halfway, eager for the feel of him. The taste of his lips. His hand on the back of her neck kept her there, waiting on him while he nibbled along her jaw, to the corner of her mouth.
The Jock and the Geek (Gone Geek Book 3) Page 5
