“It was real,” he said quietly, voice steady. “I’ve loved you for a while, Bella. I just didn’t know how to say it without sounding like I was rushing you, so I waited. But then it hit me that that wasn’t fair to either of us. You deserve to know that you’re loved, Bella Pink. So, unless you have an issue with it, I plan on telling you so every day.”
I blinked. “For how long?”
“The foreseeable future.”
I laughed shakily and buried my face in his neck, breathing him in. “I think I’d be okay with that,” I whispered, the words tumbling free. “I love you, too.”
“Good,” he said, lips brushing my temple. “Now roll over. This time, I call dibs on being the big spoon.”
Bennett
Roasters 3–1
Ihad never been more excited to get off a fucking plane in my life.
Usually, flying didn’t bother me. I liked the routine of it. The hum of the engines, the way the world shrank to a few dozen people hurtling through the sky, the quiet hours to think or watch films or just stare out at the clouds.
Diaz had a fear of flying. Dani got motion sick. The poor thing spent every flight or bus ride popping Dramamine like Skittles. But me? I’d always found it peaceful.
Not tonight, though.
Tonight’s flight had felt like four weeks of foreplay stretched into three hours of torture.
It had started somewhere over Nashville. I had turned my phone off for takeoff, but the second we’d hit cruising altitude and the Wi-Fi had kicked in, the messages from Bella had started rolling in.
Bella
Have a safe flight. Counting down the hours until you’re home.
The next one had come in a few minutes later, this time with an attached picture.
Bella
I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed your jersey.
She had taken it in her kitchen. Her hair was up in a messy bun to show off the eighteen-carat gold studs I had bought for her during her last day in Scottsdale. Bees, of course.
Sure enough, she’d also been wearing my jersey.
First my hoodie, now my jersey. I’d smiled to myself, already accepting that dating Bella meant that I would be making a lot more trips to the team store.
The messages had kept coming, each one more of a tease than the last. By the time the plane jerked to a stop at our gate, I was shifting in my seat, adjusting to hide the semi tenting my joggers.
Pink was only a few rows back, droning on and on about the proper order to put on socks and shoes—sock, sock, shoe, shoe. Obviously. He didn’t need to know that I was already hard, counting down the minutes until I got to fuck his sister again.
Even if she was the love of my life.
I stayed seated, pretending to scroll through my phone as the rest of the guys filed past, grabbing their gear from the overheads.
“Need a ride?” Pink asked, duffel slung over his shoulder.
“I’ve got my truck,” I said, forcing casual coolness. “But I’m right behind you.”
He nodded and kept moving, disappearing down the aisle.Thank fuck.My pulse was thudding too hard for a guy who’d just sat on a plane for three hours.
Notifications began flooding in the second I stepped on the jet bridge—one from my brother, a couple from my mom, a coupon code from my favorite sandwich place.
And one from Bella. Sent seventeen minutes ago, right as we’d been descending.
