“I…” she began, but stopped, shaking her head and looking up into the sky for answers.
“I swear to God, love, you’re scaring me. Whatever it is, out with it.”
“I don’t know what this is, you and me,” she said in one breath.
He brought a hand up and ran it through his hair. “Christ, is that all? I thought…”
“What did you think?” Her eyes met his.
“I thought you were…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “I don’t know, regretting it, like in Australia.”
Shaking her head, she stepped closer. “Should I? Regret it, I mean?”
Alex stepped forward, his hands reaching for her, settling against her cheeks, his thumbs brushing gently over her skin. “Penny, I’ve never—I don’t know how to describe how I feel about you, but I know I’ve never felt it before, and I’ve spent every moment since I got here scared shitless that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. For a while there, I thought I’d have to live with that, and trust me when I say, it wasn’t pretty.”
He was one of the most confident men she’d ever met. She couldn’t imagine what he said was even possible, let alone how he actually felt.
“I don’t believe you,” she said with a laugh, pulling away—the seriousness in his voice was a little scary.
Alex reached for her hand. “Maybe we ought to have alittle more faith in each other. Can you do that? Can you have faith in me?”
Penny pushed up onto her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his lips, hoping he wouldn’t notice she didn’t answer. The truth was, she wasn’t sure if she could, at least not yet.
A few moments later, she pulled away breathlessly. “As much as I’d love to stay here all day, we better get going.”
“Relax, love. It’s early still.”
“It’s not that early. Dom’ll be waiting for us. Come on.”
Dom stood on their practice court, arms crossed, clearly unimpressed that they’d arrived ten minutes after seven, the time he’d asked them to be there: an early start time to help them acclimate to the time change once they arrived in Paris. He raised an eyebrow, clearly expecting an explanation, but Alex beat Penny to it.
“My fault,” he said. “I asked her to wait for me.”
Their coach’s mouth twisted into a frown. “All right. You know the drill. Ten minutes, ten Einsteins. Stretch out and then get going.”
Alex groaned beside her, but Penny laughed. “I told you so,” she said as they ran through their stretching regime, starting with the toes and working their way up the body. Then they ran side by side, sprinting from line to line, pushing each other with every stride. They ran through the last line after their tenth circuit, and as they pulled up, his shoulder bumped hers. She caught herself easily and brushed against him as she turned back toward the court.
“All right, enough messing around,” Dom barked, pushing off the fence where he’d been watching them run. “I’m not going to have another fight on my hands, am I?”
Penny glanced up at Alex, who’d sidled up to her, leaning over her shoulder. A day ago, she would have pulled away, but now she reveled in having him close. If she was truly going to surrender to this, to stop fighting, she had to go all in and try to maintain a balance between those feelings and what she wanted to accomplish on the court.
“Good,” Dom said. “I want the both of you at the top of your game in Paris.”
He tossed Alex a ball. “You serve first.”
They fell into the routine they’d established over the last few weeks of training as they warmed up. The tension from their previous sessions was gone, replaced by a comfortable rhythm, controlled and precise.
When they were both ready, Alex tossed a ball high in the air and fired a laser beam down the centerline, a perfect ace, impossible for anyone to return.
“Wow,” Penny called out across the court, but her eyes narrowed when she saw a flash of pain flit across his face. She wasn’t the only one who noticed.
“Al, you okay?” Dom asked, rising from his seat on the sidelines and ignoring the wave of dismissal from the younger man.
“I’m fine,” Alex protested when Penny jogged to the other side of the court.
“You’re not fine,” Dom said. “It’s your knee, right?”
“Left, actually, and it’s fine, only a twinge.”
