“Crap, Avery, I thought you were a rapist or something,” I confess, and struggle to catch my breath. Apparently being terrified while exercising winds the hell out of a person.
He steps forward and wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him. My cheek rests on his sweatshirt near his collarbone, and I breathe in the fresh-laundered scent of the fabric mixed with the lingering smell of that woodsy, dark cologne he wears. It starts to calm me, so I take a deeper sniff.
“Sorry!” He squeezes me tighter. “When I woke up and found you gone, I figured this is what you were doing, so I thought I would join you. Like old times.”
I laugh at that. “You mean in Seattle, when I would somehow always run into you when I was sweaty and gross.”
I pull away from him and turn back to my route. I start to jog, but much more slowly than before. I’m not running from my fears anymore. They’re running beside me now. He gives me a sheepish sideways glance as we continue down the path. “I’ll let you in on a secret. It was no accident. I knew your workout schedule and showed up where you’d be.”
My step falters, and I slow down even more. “What?”
He speeds up and turns around so he’s running backward, facing me. This gorgeous boy is telling me he went out of his way to run into me? Really? Is he joking? He doesn’t look like he’s joking.
“You what?”
“Seb mentioned that you like to go running after work in the park by your house,” he admits, and his grin gets bigger. “Come on, I have hockey practice just about every day and games and a personal trainer and state-of-the-art facilities to train in. You really think I needed to jog in that park in the soggy Seattle evening rain?”
I laugh. He’s right. It rained a lot of the nights I ran, because it’s Seattle and that’s what it does. But Avery was still out there a lot. Almost every night he didn’t have a game. I did think it was odd at the time, but I believed his explanation about it being a way to clear his head more than a way to stay in shape. “You wanted to run with me.”
“I wanted to spend time with you. I had a major crush.” He winks at me, and then spins around to face forward and drop back next to me.
“Avery…really? While we were in Seattle?” I’m honestly blown away.
“You’re gorgeous and you had no problem challenging me and calling me out on my shit,” he explains. “And it was hot. And I needed it. I needed you. I just wasn’t ready to admit it to you or myself.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I’m so blown away, there are no words, so we jog in silence a little farther, until we turn off the beachfront path and head down the street where our houses are located. I slow to a walk. “So you go home for the summer and start dating Liz?”
His smile drops, and his gaze slips to his sneakers as we walk. He shoves his hands in the kangaroo pouch on the front of his sweatshirt. “That wasn’t planned. When I got home from Seattle for the summer I told my…Don that I was done with his mandatory no-girlfriend rule. I told him I wanted a relationship. I was going to ask you out at Jordan and Jessie’s wedding, but you shut me down suddenly.”
“The cold lake water shut you down,” I counter softly, and he grins insightfully.
“You tipped that canoe on purpose,” he replies, and doesn’t wait for me to confirm, his eyes shifting to his feet. “So I gave up, went home and tried to move on. Then Seb said you were moving here.”
Avery finally looks up from his feet. “And then I called my agent and had him ask the Saints if they wanted to make an offer.”
“So you knew I was here when you signed with them?” I swallow hard. “But you were in love with Liz.”
“I was never in love with Liz,” he replies swiftly, but without contempt. He’s not being mean, just stating something he believes to be fact. “But I didn’t think I had a shot with you, and Lizzie was…what I was supposed to want.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve said it yourself, more than once,” Avery explains, running a hand over his unshaven face before pushing it back into his hair. “Lizzie was a perfect match. She volunteered, she taught kindergarten, she was from my hometown, she didn’t go bar-hopping, she wasn’t interested in the media, she didn’t even have a social media account…”
His sentence trails, whipping away with the wind, and he pulls a hand out of his hoodie pocket and casually takes my hand in his. The pictures from his Instagram fill my brain again, but before I can say anything he starts talking again. “But something didn’t feel right. That’s what was crazy. She just didn’t fit. But I still felt like you might.”
He stops walking, turns to face me on the sidewalk and tugs on my hand, turning me toward him. He looks so earnest and so vulnerable. It’s breathtaking on a man who is nothing but stoic confidence to the rest of the world. “I took the contract with the Saints because you were here. That’s how much I was hoping for this.”
“But I don’t volunteer. I’m always tense and quiet with strangers. I would be horrible at those events the WAGs put on for the fans. I’m not well spoken or well educated. I’ve got a paralegal diploma from an online college. I don’t have Lizzie’s perfect past. She’s a good fit for your life. I’m not, technically,” I say, and my throat starts to feel tight.
I try to pull my hand away from him, but he won’t let go. In fact, he steps closer, tucking his free hand under my ponytail, behind my sweaty neck, and tugging my lips to his. The kiss is brief but scorching, and he only pulls back far enough so that I can see the look of certainty on his face.
“Fuck good. This is aperfectfit,” he replies, and oh, how I want to bask in that. Drown my fears and uneasiness in his words, but I can’t.
“So why are you still posting photos with her on your Instagram?”
I have a bird’s-eye view of his face as it morphs from certainty to confusion so quickly it looks like it hurts. “What are you talking about?”
His hand behind my neck slips away and I take a step back. He digs in the pocket of his track pants and pulls out his phone, not waiting for my explanation. A second later he’s swearing. Loudly. “Mother. Fucker. Are you fucking kidding me?”
