A second wannabe, who’d set her sights on Bax the second he walked through the door, appeared to have appropriated someone’s cheerleader uniform: a short, tight skirt and a sleeveless crop top. In the generous light of the room, I’d noticed the goosebumps covering her bare legs, which explained her fidgeting. Or possibly her nerves were the problem because Bax had appeared less than thrilled with their rendezvous. At least one of the men had good sense. Plus, from the way he acted in Stromboli’s the night of the party, Bax had a serious thing for my friend Piper.
Like the snow swirling in the streetlights, my thoughts churned as the Uber driver carefully navigated the slick streets. Dropping my head back against the seat, I stared at the ceiling of the car.
Cripes.I absolutely did not want to be attracted to Finn McCabe. Not one little bit. I’d thought returning his hoodie would help me expunge thoughts of him from my mind. Then he turned on the sweet with the hot chocolate and what I’d believed in the moment to be honesty. So I’d done the monumentally stupid thing and kissed him.
My body had betrayed me as I gave myself over to his touch. I’d never experienced anything before that felt as right as Finn’s big body pushing me into the cushions of the couch. The raw voltage that arced through me when he set his lips on mine had left me soaking wet. My face heated as I thought about the shameless way I’d rubbed myself against him.
I was no different from the girls who dropped by to deliver cookies—among other things, apparently. My excuse was his hoodie, and I’d dressed in jeans and a sweater rather than a boobalicious crop top and short skirt. Otherwise, I hadn’t behaved a whole lot differently from the troupe of freshman girls who’d descended on his doorstep behind me. Only after the jersey chasers arrived did I discover Finn’s true colors. He liked the attention of all the girls, indiscriminately. I’d deluded myself for a minute into believing I was different from girls like Tory and her wannabes. The sigh that escaped me was one of pure self-disgust.
“Hey, I’m not trying to rip you off.” The driver glared in the rearview. “The roads are super slick, so I’m being careful.”
“That was aimed at me, not you.” I apologized. “Take your time.”
Finn came off as such a decent guy, if a bit clueless around women, but that was an act. He knew exactly what he was doing to keep women coming around, bringing all manner of treats, from cookies to kisses. All my life I’d prided myself on my self-control and ability to think rationally. One kiss from Finn had tossed all that pride right off the top of world to splat on the sidewalk in front of his house as I’d all but run away from the scene of the crime. Disgust roiled through me at the way I’d behaved.
My plan had been to drop off the hoodie, hop back in the waiting Uber, and return to my neatly ordered world—the one that would now be free of annoying distractions, like a certain sexy lineman. But when he opened the door, one look at his handsome face and those shoulders that filled his T-shirt right up, and I lost all common sense.
Instead of expunging him from my thoughts, I’d made it so much worse because now I knew exactly how his body pressed to mine could light me up. I knew exactly how his kisses could send lust molecules crashing through my blood. I knew exactly how the groaning sounds he made as I ran my fingers through his hair reverberated deep in my core.
I loved science—the experimentation, the principles, the behind-the-scenes information on how the world worked. But tonight I’d learned why the universe withheld certain secrets. Like what kind of chemistry I shared with a certain football player.
I was such an idiot.
Chapter Ten
Finn
As I gingerlydropped my gear onto the floor of my bedroom, I did my damnedest to ignore my body. After the thrashing we’d received at the hands of the Buffaloes in the semifinal game yesterday, I was a walking bruise. No one on the team wanted to spend one more minute than necessary in North Dakota, so by unanimous vote, we’d loaded the buses and headed home directly after our crushing defeat.
Without the benefit of an ice bath and some light stretching after that beat-down, every part of me hurt. Eight hours on a bus had certainly contributed to the soreness, but more of it was in my head. The resounding silence on the ride home said every person on the bus, from the coaches to the players to the managers was struggling with our loss. Bax boarded right ahead of Coach Ellis wearing one of his more obnoxious T-shirts rather than required dress attire, and Ellis didn’t even blink. That was how poorly we responded to the biggest loss of our careers.
The drive from the facility to the house in Callahan’s pickup wasn’t any better. Without a word, my three roommates and I had loaded up and driven home, each of us peeling off to our rooms without even saying good night—or good morning, as it were, since we were closer to Sunday than Saturday. Coach gave us the rest of Christmas break off, telling us we’d watch film when we returned. As if watching that season-ending disaster was any way to start the new semester.
All the silence left me with too much time to think. What I should have been thinking about, of course, was how I could have played harder, made more of an impact in the game. What I was actually thinking about was how I’d totally whiffed it with Chessly—again—when she handed me my big chance with her on the night she returned my hoodie. Until the fucking doorbell rang, I’d managed to do everything right—offer her a snack, have a conversation, take my cues from her—which had landed me in the glorious position of kissing the hell out of her.
Then that pack of jersey chasers had arrived with their cookies and their fawning all over me, and I didn’t know how to push them away without being rude. Of course, they didn’t have any trouble being rude to Chessly and making themselves at home without an invitation. By the time I’d clued in and got my act together, Chess was leaving without a backward glance. I didn’t have to be Einstein to know what she thought.
If she’d stuck around for even five more minutes, she’d have witnessed a master class in sending jersey chasers packing. At the start of the semester, Bax was as enthusiastic about all the attention as I was, but since hooking up with his purple-haired hottie—Chessly’s friend no less—he’d run out of patience with girls who followed the football team around like it was their job. Throw in the mess Tory Miller had made for Callahan at the end of the semester, and Bax’s patience with them had dropped to less than nonexistent. After the debacle with Chess who I’d been wanting to know better for months, I finally figured it out.
About five minutes too late.
Supposedly, with knowledge came power. One night with her had taught me that despite appearances, Chess was no delicate china doll. The strength and resilience of her limbs as she’d wrapped her arms around me and run her heels up and down my hamstrings and the backs of my calves had turned me on like no other woman. The way she’d rubbed her torso along mine said that rather than intimidating her, my size turned her on. The way she’d kissed me back with those whimpers in the back of her throat as her plush lips pressed urgently to mine drove all rational thought from my head. Discovering how well we fit together, how much we turned each other on with only kissing—I mean shit, I didn’t even try to palm her tits or slip a hand between her legs—had left me powerless to think of anything other than Chessly Clarke.
That girl had turned me inside out from the second I laid eyes on her. But after striking out with her twice, I didn’t have a clue how to make her see I hadn’t initiated any of what happened with Tory Miller and the other jersey chasers. It was just bad timing.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I shook my head. Bad timing seemed to be my thing this year. All by myself I’d given the Buffaloes twenty free yards at critical moments in the game. Their stadium had lived up to its hype as the 12thman, the noise of the fans drawing me offsides multiple times. By the fourth time the refs called me for it, I thought Bax was going to tackle me to the turf rather than go after their running back. No doubt Coach was planning an earful about it when we watched film after break.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
With far more effort than the situation called for, I dropped my dress pants to the floor and pulled on a pair of sweats. I sucked in air as fire licked across my shoulders and down my arms as I shrugged out of my dress shirt and tugged a hoodie over my head. When I stepped out into the hall to hit the head and maybe scare up a bottle of ibuprofen, I heard soft giggles and sighs coming from behind ’Han’s closed door. Guess he had company to ease the pain of the semifinal loss. Jamaica’s brand of TLC probably worked better than the kind I sought from pain meds.
I closed my eyes as the phantom touch of Chessly’s fingertips digging into my shoulders when I’d pinned her to the couch flitted over me. What I wouldn’t give to feel her soft body against mine right about now. Dragging my ass into the can, I found a half-full bottle of pain reliever in the medicine cabinet, thank fuck. After downing three tablets and chasing them with a couple of handfuls of water—apparently, the last guy to clean the bathroom hadn’t returned the cup we kept by the sink—I wandered back to my room, closed the door, and flopped down onto my bed.
With the way the past week had ended, I thought sleep would elude me. Then my alarm was blaring from somewhere in the middle of my room. Groggily, I located the offending device in the pocket of my pants in a heap on the floor, shut it off, stood, and took stock. Soreness was the order of the day, but at least I could move with some semblance of ease. Good thing too since I had a four-hour drive home after I dropped Bax at the airport.
My plan for a hot shower to soothe away some of the soreness shot straight to hell when Bax stepped out of the steamy bathroom right as I walked into the hall. With a sigh, I headed downstairs instead. The old Victorian we called home came with some perks—like generously sized bedrooms and a downstairs big enough to throw the kind of rager that had made our house famous on Jock Street—but what it lacked was a hot water heater big enough to accommodate four football players who needed twenty-minute showers after games.
Soft feminine laughter alerted me that Callahan and Jamaica were in the kitchen. Rather loudly clearing the morning cobwebs from my throat, I alerted them to my presence a couple of steps before I walked through the doorway.
