It feels like a lifeline and an anchor, but also like danger. There’s something in the gruff way he’s speaking that’s lifting the fine hairs on the back of my neck.
“No.” I’m panting.Dammit. I can’t draw a full breath. And I’m not wasting it asking him to find out where she is when she’s clearly not close enough to hear me calling for help. “Just…get…me out.”
Modesty doesn’t exist inside locker rooms, so there’s zero chance in hell modesty will be the reason I die.
I want to get out of this dress.
I bend over so my arms are in the direction of his voice. “Tug,” I say. “For the love of championship rings, please tug me out of this.”
“Fuck me,” he mutters.
I tell myself hisfuck meisn’t about the fact that a woman in granny panties with a dress trapping her arms and upper body wants him to help her. I try to peer at him, but actual pinprickdots of light dance in my vision and everything’s dark inside the dress.
“Hope you’re…strong,” I add.
He makes a noise I can’t interpret but that vaguely reminds me of a movie I watched recently with a cranky billionaire hero who catches a strange woman waxing her beaver in one of his many mansions.
“Please…get me…the fuck…out…of this thing,” I repeat, having to draw a breath between practically every other word.
I’m losing my no-nonsense edge and veering into panic territory. Next step is crashing out of the shop and onto the sidewalk to see if any random passers-by will help me out of this. Modesty might not exist in my world, but going out onto the street in only granny panties and a straightjacket dress is a bit far.
Plus, that’s the sort of thing that gets you fired.
But if my choices are getting fired or death, Iwillhave to choose getting fired.
He blows out a massive, audible breath. “Yeah. Fine.Of course, I mean. Yeah, I can…tug here, right?”
I feel him grip the dress, and I almost tear up in relief. Which also doesn’t happen often. Generally only when my fellow coaches tear up as we either win the whole damn championship or are eliminated from the playoffs. Or when one of my brothers’ wives has another baby, which I only cry about in private. And those are tears of joy.
“Yes,” I say. “Right there. Hold it and don’t move. I can do the rest.”
I cross my fingers that he’s strong enough for this, and then I heave myself backward.
While half bent over.
Something twinges in my lower back and there’s a subtlerrrrrrriipppppnoise from the dress, but I don’t care.
It’s working.
He grunts.
I grunt.
My arm gets stuck weirdly and I have to contort my upper body even more, but I twist and snort and groan and don’t care how unladylike I sound.
“Thing’s on really tight,” Mr. Cranky mutters.
“It’s not—built—for girl guns.” I’m panting and wiggling and it’s coming off.
It’s coming off!
Today is not the day I die.
I try to make my shoulders as small as humanly possible.Think tiny thoughts, Addie. Think tiny thoughts.
Right.
Tinyand I will never be acquainted.
