“Maybe we should talk about this more,” she says as I tug her down into the couch beside me.
“We really shouldn’t.” I pour her a glass of water, rip open the bag of peanut M&Ms, and pass her both before plopping my feet onto the top of the coffee table. I hit Play and focus on the TV. “This isn’t a date, remember?”
“Would Chayton just let you pretend like what you said didn’t matter?”
The opening of the movie is playing, but I’m not really seeing any of it.
“Act as if what you told me wasn’t a big deal?” she prods.
“He’d know it was a huge deal. The biggest deal. Which is why he’d let me drop it.”
When I finally look at her, I realize she’s set the bag of chocolate and the drink back on the table. Her palm finds my cheek, and her thumb smooths the scruff of my beard.
“It all makes so much sense to me,” she says, as though I should understand what didn’t make sense before.
“Doc, I’m really approaching my ‘fuck it’ moment here. If you keep acting like this is a date, I’m going to treat it like it’s a date.”
“What does that mean?”
“You keep touching me. You wore makeup. You’re encouraging me to share traumatic personal stories. All of it makes me want to kiss you so fucking bad that it’s painful. But more than that—and I can’t even believe it’s possible to say I want somethingmorethan that—I want you to want it too. I don’t ever want to put you in a position where what I want is more important than what you want. You told me you don’t want this, but itfeelslike you do. If I’m reading that wrong, tell me.”
The movie is playing, but neither of us is watching it. She’s searching my expression like I hold all the answers, and I really wish I did. But I don’t know what she needs to hear, what she needs me to say that’ll tip the scales.
“If we were to do this, we’d need really strict, firm ground rules.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sawyer
“Done,” Logan says without missing a beat. “You lead. I’ll follow.”
I can’t believe I’ve let the part of me that wants him rise to the surface. Since that night at Wino Wine Bar, I’ve been stuffing down my attraction. There’s only one way something less professional makes any sense. Firm rules. A set timeline. Maybe Matilda was right. To truly get over someone, you need to get under someone else.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to suggest,” I say.
“If the outcome is that I get you, I’ll agree to anything.” His deep voice is so earnest that it makes my heart stutter.
“Only this season. At the end of this hockey season when you go back to your apartment in California for the offseason, whatever we’re doing is over. No long-distance. No lingering anything. It’s whatever it is for this season, and then it’s over. Next season, we’re back to being just colleagues.”
“Short term?” A line appears in his brow.
“I think it’s easier for us to work together afterward if we have clear boundaries. Short term. Casual.” I catch myself at his deepening frown. “Not casual like we’re seeing other people. Just you and me, but not serious. Get whatever this is out of our system.”
“Notserious?”
I can almost see the wheels turning as he thinks through what I’ve said, calculates the possibilities. If we can’t keep fighting the physical pull, my rules are the only sensible way forward. Ever since I left my office, I’ve been going over and over how anything could work between us.
“You’re twenty-one.” Which is one of the biggest factors in my mind.
“I fuckinghatewhen you say that.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think it matters.”
“What’s the most important thing to you?”
“Winning,” he says without hesitation.
