Chapter 18
~Travis~
PAST
“Come on, Travis, have a shot.” Ricky pushed a small glass in front of me. “Get enough tequila in you, and you’ll be ready to rejoin the party in no time."
“I’m not in the mood, Ricky. Just leave it, okay?”
I couldn’t drink. It would help numb the pain for a little while, but my thoughts would always come back to Sexy. Then I would be both drunk and lonely, and only bad things could happen.
It had been hard enough to drag myself out to the bar with the guys, but I couldn’t stay for another moment in the room where I’d spent so much time with her. Her scent was everywhere, and if I closed my eyes, I could imagine that she lay next to me.
“Come on, cheer up,” Joey said. “We’re in Florida, at spring break. You might as well enjoy yourself, because in a few days, we’ll be back at school and starting spring practices. We’re lucky Coach even let us come.”
I sighed. “Maybe soon. Let’s just hang out for a while, okay?”
The bar was packed, which wasn’t unusual. So many people, and there were a lot of women wandering around and looking at our table with interested eyes. Women I would have been glad to sleep with only a few days ago, but now, the thought of it turned my stomach.
There was no chance that any of them could compare to the chemistry between Sexy and me.
“Hey, isn’t that your girl over there?” Ricky said. He pointed to the other side of the room, and I craned my neck to see. “Looks like she’s got the right idea. You should take a page from her playbook.”
He was right. Sexy leaned against a wall next to her girlfriend, but she was chatting with a man wearing a fluorescent tank top and plastic shades.
The protective part of me wanted to storm over there and smash the offending prick’s head into the wall over and over again until he stopped moving. When he leaned in close to talk into Sexy’s ear and put a hand on her lower back, I got to my feet.
“Whoa, easy there, big fella,” Ricky said. “Sit back down. I don’t want to witness a murder. A little help here, guys?”
It took three of them to force me back into my seat.
I growled, unable to take my eyes off the spectacle across the bar.
“Come on, Travis. Just ignore her. Let’s find another bar.” Joey patted me on the back.
I shrugged off his hand and grabbed the shot of tequila. I threw it back, barely tasting the strong liquor.
“All right, that’s what I’m talking about!” Ricky said.
I snatched another shot from across the table and knocked that one back, too.
“He’s on a roll, everyone.”
Three shots later, I’d polished off every drink remaining on the table.
The men hollered as I slammed the final glass onto the table.
I hooked my arm around the waist of a girl standing beside our table and pulled her into my lap.
“Oh!” she said, looking up at me with wide eyes.
I didn’t give her the chance to say anything else, bringing my lips to hers and taking them for my own.
PRESENT
Los Angeles suffered from a lack of confidence without me on the field.
Words of encouragement from the sidelines weren’t the same as leading by example on the field, and it took a toll on the men beyond just losing my arm. After the first loss of the season, we split the next two games and were down by several touchdowns in the final game of the season.
Spending so much time on the sidelines was hard for another reason—it put Juliette within easy reach every practice and game. No matter how disappointed I was in sitting out, she called to me like a siren in a storm, and it took as much effort as anything I’d ever done to resist the call day after day and game after game.
It’s better this way. She’s got the stipulations in her contract, so we shouldn’t be seeing or talking to each other anyway. We’ll just ride out the rest of the season like this, and then we can talk after.
Maybe the time apart would help to clear my mind. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so powerless against the burning need inside me.
Did I want to be free?
“We need you out there.”
Ricky came up to my side. Our defense was on the field, and they were having another rough game.
What happened to the confident troupe of men that came so far during the season?
I sighed. “I know. There’s nothing more frustrating than being on the sidelines instead of out there making a difference.”
“You know I called this, right? What did I say the first day you were here? That study would take us out of the game and prevent us from playing. You feel fine. I’ve seen you after practice throwing the ball around. You could be out there right now.”
The yearning inside me rose in response to Ricky’s words. I belonged on the field, not the sideline. There was nowhere in the world I felt more at home than grasping the football with the game in my hands.
Except in the arms of the woman watching the game ten yards to my right.
“It’s not that simple, Ricky.”
Hadn’t I had the same thoughts? The same reactions? As much as I’d disagreed with Ricky over the course of the season, he had a point.
“Look, I know Tony’s on our side. He hated taking you out of the game and losing the streak even more than we did. He’s the one keeping an eye on the study for the league—why don’t we ask him to talk to them and end this nonsense?”
I turned to look him in the eye. If he got the league to end the study, then Juliette’s career was over. I’d bent the rules and risked her future myself, but I’d be damned if I’d let Ricky be the one to bring everything crashing down.
“Do not get Tony involved, Ricky. I know it sucks, but my sitting out was the right call. I’ll be back for the playoffs. That’s what really matters.”
He met my gaze for a few moments, then nodded and turned back to the game.
“You’re the captain. But you’d better be back for the playoffs.”
The playoffs.
I took a deep breath, waiting in the tunnel as the announcer continued to whip the crowd into a frenzy.
The entire year was simply a stepping stone to get back to this point. Each game was do or die, winner advance and loser go home. This was the most intense part of the year—of my life.
“And finally, returning from injury, your starting quarterback and your captain, Traviiis Kiiing!”
Heat washed over me from the columns of fire and pyrotechnics that surrounded the tunnel’s exit. Rows of cheerleaders lined the path to the field, and fireworks went off overhead so loudly that the cheers from the crowd were hard to hear.
This is it. Crunch time.
I’d passed all of the administered tests to measure my recovery from the concussion. I also conveniently failed to mention the recurring headaches that had plagued me since the hit. That’s the type of thing that would mar a clean bill of health and prevent a return to the team for the postseason.
After the coin flip, I took my place on the sidelines to wait for my chance to reclaim the field and make my mark on history.
“They let you play.”
I stiffened. That voice would never fail to stir my heart, even after not speaking to each other for a month.
“They did. I’m back to normal.”
It was impossible to resist looking any longer. Juliette wore a pair of black pants and a team shirt—she could have been a trainer. The green eyes looked into my own as though she saw right through me.
“Are you, Travis? I’m not sure you should be back yet. That hit you took—”
“Look, I don’t want to hear it,” I said, cutting her off. “I’m playing this game. There’s nothing you can do this time, unless your fancy sensors can do more than just measure impacts.”
The hurt in her eyes affected me more than I wanted it to. I shoved down the emotions roiling through my mind, fighting the impulse to take her into my arms and
tell her I’m sorry. I looked back at the field and set my jaw.
“Travis?”
I held my helmet a little tighter at the shaking in her voice.
“Yes?”
“Good luck out there. Be safe.”
Always her number one priority.
Why couldn’t I accept that?
“Thank you.”
Chapter 19
~Juliette~
PAST
“Yeah, I’m taking business because, like, that’s how you make it rich, you know?”
I nodded and tried to keep an interested look on my face. I shoved down a retort about how a man with his obvious lack of ambition would just bounce between low-level office jobs until he was laid off.
Where’s Heather?
A rescue would be good right about now. She’d been intent on helping me find someone to get over Cocky with, but I wanted no one but him. I definitely didn’t want this goon she’d shoved at me.
The bar was packed, so I scanned it in the unfocused way I had that made familiar faces pop out at me.
There! No…
It wasn’t Heather’s face I’d found, but one of Cocky’s football buddies. And he was looking at…
Cocky.
With his tongue down some slut’s throat. With people watching and clapping all around.
“…Because once I make CEO, then I’ll be able to afford my own yacht, and that would just be like, really cool, you know?”
I grabbed the front of the doofus’s shirt and pulled him to me.
His lips continued to move for a full two seconds before he realized what happened and stopped talking. I slipped my tongue along his lips, but he didn’t respond the way I wanted him to.
When I closed my mouth for a second, he opened his and jammed his tongue against my teeth. I opened wider, and he moved his head forward, banging our teeth together.
Damnit.
I slowed the pace, trying to bring us into sync and failing miserably.
If the sight of Cocky kissing another woman had inflamed me and flooded me with jealousy, kissing this buffoon was enough to turn my panties into the Sahara. Instead of being lost in a kiss, I struggled to keep myself from gagging.
I can’t do this. It’s too wrong.
If all I had to go on were my experiences with Jim, I could have put up with the lackluster performance. After Cocky, I couldn’t settle for such mediocrity.
I broke off the kiss and watched as the man’s lips moved for another second before he got the hint.
“All right,” he said. “You wanna do it?”
“Hell no,” I said. “We’re done here.”
Cocky still made out with the bimbo as if she held the secret to immortality in her throat.
Bile rose at the back of mine at the sight.
Where the fuck is Heather?
I had to leave. It was too much.
It took too long to press through the crowd, and I had to squeeze closer to Cocky’s table than I wanted to since they were so close to the exit. I refused to look in their direction, and by the time I hit the street, hot tears splashed down my cheeks.
I didn’t have a plan. I needed air, and I needed quiet. I had to get the sight of him and her out of my mind.
PRESENT
A maelstrom of emotion enveloped me, whirling faster with every day that Travis avoided me.
He’d been magnificent since his return, leading Los Angeles on the field and off, inspiring the greatness they’d found during the first three quarters of the regular season and lost since his injury.
They destroyed their opponent in the first game of the playoffs, and Travis looked like his old self. The problem was that he didn’t come to speak to me on the sidelines during the games—or at practices. I was just another member of the staff to him.
Invisible.
Having him this close and so cold was worse than the years of never knowing if I would see him again. At least then, I’d been resigned to my fate and knew it was for the best. Now, I knew what could be, and I could feel it slip further from my grasp a day at a time.
Over it all was the lingering worry that he would get hurt again. I’d rather he detested me forever than suffer the consequences of another hard hit when he still hadn’t fully recovered from the first.
Having lost three of the final four games of the season, Los Angeles lost home field advantage for the conference championship. Traveling with the team during the season had always been an incredible experience, and knowing that Travis might force an encounter never failed to keep me horny and on edge, even though I knew I should reject any advances.
The atmosphere was far different this time.
I barely saw Travis, and each time I did, he never met my eyes. It was like he had a special sense of where I was at all times and purposefully avoided looking in my direction.
The night before the game, I finally cornered him.
He was in the hotel hallway, speaking with Ricky. The receiver’s presence gave me pause, but not even Mr. Reynolds could stop me from approaching Travis now.
“Travis.”
The men paused and looked my way.
“Will you please come and talk with me?”
Directness was my last resort.
“Don’t do it, man,” Ricky said. “She’ll just smack you in the head and tell Coach you can’t play tomorrow. She wants us to lose the championship.”
“Shut up, Ricky,” Travis said. He turned. “Let’s go. My room is right there. We can talk in private.”
He left Ricky behind and took my arm. Ricky’s stare unsettled me as he watched Travis go.
Inside Travis’s room, I lost my train of thought. Everything I’d been wanting to say to him for weeks—the words I’d rehearsed and spoken to myself through countless showers and runs—all fell away as I looked into his eyes from a foot away.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said instead, putting as much into my words as I could of the turmoil that had rocked me since his injury.
Travis stared at my face like he had never seen it before.
His silence gave me time to remember my words.
“I can’t stand twenty feet away from you, watching you, wanting you. It’s killing me to have you so close but so far away, within reach but untouchable. I thought the season was bad, talking to you and having to pretend nothing more was going on. This is far worse.”
The muscle in his cut jaw twitched. “It’s been awful for me, too. You’re the sun, Juliette. I always know where you are and can always feel your heat against my side. I was angry with you, but then I just didn’t know how to talk to you again. I thought it would be best if I kept my distance until the season was over.”
“I’m so sorry, Travis. I never wanted anything but what was best for you and your health. You may disregard it, but I can’t. Not with what I know about the consequences. Can you please forgive me for interfering?”
He took my hands in his. “Will you promise not to do it again? I need to make my own decisions.”
His grip felt incredible, exactly what I’d been missing from my life for the past month. I hesitated with my reply.
“I can’t promise. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand to the side while you try to put yourself into danger. Can you promise me you won’t get hit?”
He smiled, just a little quirk of the lips but enough to lighten my heart. “You know I can’t do that. You may have had a point though. I feel much better now than I did after the hit. It was a good thing I took the time off, as painful as it was to watch my team lose without me.”
The admission coming from anyone else would have made me want to gloat and bask in the vindication of being right. From Travis, it made me want to comfort him.
His arms came up to embrace me at the same moment I launched myself toward him. We hugged, and it felt so much better than I’d ever dreamed possible. His large, muscled back and shoulders were firm under my hands, and I buried my face into his chest, the deep, clean scent
of him settling me like nothing else could.
We stood like that for a long time, holding each other in the foyer of his hotel room as though we’d found each other after a storm. I lifted my face and found him waiting to capture my mouth, his lips tender against my own as we reconnected in the way we knew best.
The kiss deepened but remained sweet. Travis grasped the backs of my thighs and lifted me up as though I weighed no more than a football. His tongue slid alongside mine, lips never leaving my own even as he lay me back on the bed.
My hands were free to roam across his torso above me, sliding along his chest and around his shoulders, pulling him closer. I raked them up underneath his shirt, taking a break from the kiss so he could remove the shirt for me.
During the days, I’d been despondent over the lack of communication with my lover, but the nights had been spent dreaming about his body. The perfectly chiseled and proportioned body that sated my desires more fully than anyone else could hope to.
His dark eyes burned into me as he lifted my shirt and threw it to the ground. My pants followed, leaving me in a simple black bra and panties. He took off his own pants, dropping them and the boxer briefs below to the floor in one movement.
“Yes,” I whispered, unable to help myself as he stripped fully naked. He was already hard for me, the visible representation of his lust a wordless confirmation of our connection.
I shrugged off the bra and took off my panties, eager to begin the main event after so long spent apart.
Travis kissed up my body, light and feathery touches that sent a shiver through me. He took my lips again, and this time, our nude bodies pressed fully against one another, leaving me breathless.
“I hope you don’t mind getting down to business,” he said in my ear, his voice low and throbbing in that way it got when he was ready to consume me. “I can’t wait any longer.”
I pulled his hips against me with my hands and wrapped my legs around him, grinding our bodies together in a way that lifted a gasp from my lips and a low groan from his.
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