Savannah shakes her head. “Turns out it’s avaluable life skill. That’s what Victoria said anyway. I guess…you never really know where life’s going to take you.” She studies me, a sweep of her gaze from my waist up. “Your shirt’s wet.”
“So is yours.”
She pulls the fabric away from her skin, leaving a gap at her neckline that offers me a glancing view of her collarbone and her necklace that sits right above her breasts. A pendant.A lock. “If you’re good here, I can go home—” I say right as she says, “Do you want me to wash your shirt?”
Home will mean an unpleasant drive in a wet T-shirt. Not the worst thing I’ve gone through, not by a longshot. “Sure.” I peel my shirt off and hand it to her. She considers it for a second, as if realizing that her own shirt is equally wet.
I turn around, studying the wall above the utility sink and listening to the movement of fabric. Savannah taking off her shirt. Savannah putting things into the washer. Savannah picking something else up. I can’t see her, except for the tiny,distorted reflection in the handle of the sink. A tease. A reminder that we’re close and yet she’s completely out of reach. The laundry room smells like bleach, mostly, and a faint trace of must. An even fainter trace of roses, enough to make me sink a thumbnail into the callused surface of my palm.
I can feel her, even at a distance of several feet. A line of heat descends down my back. Is she looking at me? Is she busying herself with cleaning up, unaware of the fact I’m standing here half-hard in slightly damp jeans? Something soft pressing just above my waist makes me turn. Savannah, brushing me with a towel, which she hands to me.
She’s shed her shirt, her sweats, but not her bra, given the straps leaving slight red marks on the tops of her shoulders, and she’s wearing a towel as a dress. She tugs it up above her breasts, then realizes it’s barely covering her ass, then flushes. “I can lend you one of Brayden’s shirts while you wait.”
“Sure,” I say, and let her lead me through their house, slightly behind her so I can watch the soft rub of her thighs, the bounce in her step.
A shirt is fine. A shirt is whatever. A shirt isn’t the thing I’m here to take from Brayden without his knowledge. No, I want something else he thinks of as his.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Savannah
Asher followsme through the house, down one hallway to the front door. I close it and lock it, a process that shifts the towel I’m wearing—the only thing I’m wearing other than my necklace and bra. If Brayden was to walk in right now, who knows what he’d think.The truth. That I called Asher over here in the middle of the night. That we’re both more naked than we are clothed.
I walk up the staircase, glancing back a few times, even though I can tell from his footsteps that Asher is following. His hair falls casually across his forehead. His shoulders fill my entire field of vision, an abstract black tattoo winding at his collarbone. He’s taller than Brayden, wider than Brayden at the shoulders and narrower at the waist with cuts to his muscles like he’s worked hard to create them. Half of Brayden’s protein powders promise to increase mass and stabilize weight. Does Asher worry about that too? He came over to take care of me…but who takes care of him?
I walk upstairs, conscious of the length of this towel. Conscious of the friction of my thighs rubbing together.We’renot doing anything.Maybe after all of this Asher is just here to hang out at…I check the time on my phone. One a.m.
This is a mistake.I am making a mistake.
Then I look back at him again and he smiles, that faint smile that barely shifts his expression, but I know it’s there. The one that looks like we’re both in on the same joke.
We stop in the hallway outside Brayden’s and my bedrooms, both our doors shut.Bedrooms. As in more than one. I fumble for an excuse.
“Bray and I keep different hours. And I have a lot of clothes. Lots! So two closets made sense.”
“My aunt gets migraines,” Asher says simply. “She has her own room for that.”
Which would have been a better excuse than the one I came up with. Heat creeps up the back of my neck. It’s definitely a mistake to invite him inside my bedroom. I pause at my shut door.
Asher hovers behind me. He’s just that much taller than Brayden, and somehow that inch makes all the difference. Heat pours off him, hotter than the muggy Atlanta night outside. I wait, just for a second—to see if he’ll curve his palm at my waist.Keep your hands to yourself, I rehearse saying. What a good, well-behaved wife would say. Even if…I don’t want him to.
The house is completely silent. No one else is around outside. No traffic passing through. No neighbor taking their yappy little dog on a witching hour walk. I wait for someone else to provide an excuse.
None comes.
The knob turns. I open the door slowly. The icy blast of my bedroom A/C is a momentary relief as I wave Asher into my room and leave the door open, as if that will ensure this whole thing stays appropriate.
“Wow,” Asher says, peering around at the bare walls, “love what you’ve done with the place.”
“It’s a work in progress.” Though that would require me to actuallyprogressat it, rather than just letting the bare walls stare at me.
“When I really make real baseball money, I’m gonna fill my house with beautiful things.” He reaches a hand up as if he’s going to brush a strand of hair back from my face, then drops it at my slightly raised eyebrows.
My phone buzzes like the universe heard me.Brayden. My heart leaps to my throat.
Brayden: hmltersrry
A jumble of letters. Probably just a mistake. I study them again. Is he texting that he’ll be home late? He’s usually in before two, but he also usually doesn’t text. What would happen if he came home and found Asher—what? Here.Shirtless.I imagine the headlines: another player found in his wife’s bed. Even if Asher seats himselfonthe bed with one gentlemanly foot on the floor.
