“Are you serious right now?” Her voice cuts through my thoughts, saving me from myself. “There are like… a million seats open.”
“Yes,” I state, leaning back, arms behind my head. “But this one is mine.”
She narrows her eyes. “And what exactly makes it yours?”
“For starters”—I gesture lazily toward the overhead numbers—“row twenty-three, my jersey number, my lucky number.”
She rolls her eyes so hard I half expect them to get stuck. Cute. So fucking cute I want to haul her over my knee and…Nope. No, Roger.Get a grip.
“That,” she says, pointing at the row across the aisle, “is also row twenty-three. Three empty seats, same number.”
“Ah,” I murmur, letting the corner of my mouth twitch upward. “Clever little kitten, but”—I tap the small letter on the side of my seat— “this is seat G… G for Gallagher, so… my seat.”
She huffs, leans back into her chair, and goes quiet.
I let a beat of silence stretch before I add, “If you’d like to move, I’m happy to get up. Maybe you’ll like seat A across the way better.”
No answer. Just the click of her headphones, her gaze flicking to the window like I don’t exist.
I smile, and cross my arms over my chest. She has no idea what she’s in for.
I lean my head back against the seat, eyes closed, pretending to sleep. I canfeelher looking at me, her gaze burns hotter than the Florida sun, and my feckin’ blood rushes straight south because of it.
It’s torture, the good kind. The kind I’ve been denying myself for years.
I grip my biceps, folding my arms tight to keep from doing something stupid, like reaching over, tugging one of those loose strands of hair behind her ear, and finding out if her skin is as soft as it looks.Sweet Jaysus.
Feckin’ hell. You’re about to make a bloody fool of yourself on a team plane. Keep it together, Gallagher.
I haven’t let myself get this close to anyone in a long time. Not really. The last time I gave someone a piece of me, she proved she only wanted the parts that came with perks—a fancy house, a famous boyfriend, the lifestyle. Not me.Never me.
I’ve had enough disappointment to last a lifetime. Family, friends, lovers. Every time I’ve trusted someone to stay, they’ve left or used me. So I built a wall around myself that no one could climb, but somehow, this girl… this girl with the messy ponytail and the soft hoodie and the sunshine smile… she’s halfway over it without even trying.
It’s not just how incredibly painfully hot she is—though feck me, she is—it’s the way sheis. Genuine, funny, unapologetically herself. I’ve been watching her all week from the corner of my eye, pretending not to notice while I noticedeverything.
She loves what she does.
I’ve been on bigger teams than this one, with much bigger budgets, fancier marketing departments, entire PR teams dedicated to making players like me look like gods, yet I’ve never seen anyone so dedicated toactuallyshowing the world who we are. She doesn’t just take a picture, she tells a story with it. She makes the lads want to give her something to work with, makes them laugh, makes it lookreal. Even I can see that.
I don’t do social media. Not really. I have the mandatory account because it’s expected. I post the pictures someone else took, a quick thanks to the fans, a generic game-day post. That’sit. I’ve got three hundred million people following me, and I’ve never given them anything real.
But this week …
This week, I logged in. I actually opened the app. Followed the Strikers’ official account for the first time since I signed the bloody contract, and then I went down the rabbit hole.
Hundreds of posts, videos, pictures. Not just of the team. Of me. Of moments I didn’t even know someone captured. She makes me look like the kind of man I almost wish I was, the one people want to believe in. She does that.
It’s me in the picture… but it’s her making itmore.
I just can’t stop thinking about her.
What else is hiding behind that beautiful feckin’ smile? What other magic could she make without even trying?
The engines hum beneath us as the plane lifts off, the city shrinking below. I feel the subtle shift from her seat as she gets more comfortable, pulling her laptop back up after the captain announces it’s okay to do so, and gets to work. I keep my eyes closed, pretending I’m somewhere else. Pretending I’m not seconds from leaning over, from breathing her in, from telling her she’s been living in my head rent-free since the day we met.
Christ, I want her.
The flight attendant comes down the aisle, her smile bright enough to light up the entire plane, but not the right type of bright, or the type I like anyway. She’s practically glowing as she stops at our row, leaning just a little too far into my space.
