“Stay. You can study here.”
“No, I can’t. You’ll just want to show me more footage of my volleyball games.” She looked at Gia. “He tries to give me pointers. Apparently, he doesn’t understand that volleyball and baseball are different sports.”
“There are similarities in technique—” I argued, but Cassie cut me off.
“See! He’s awful.” Then she stretched up on her toes and kissed my cheek. “But he’s my brother, and I love him.”
“It’s late. Let me take you back to the dorm,” I offered, but she flashed her phone at me.
“Already called an Uber. And it’s here.”
“An Uber. But…” I stopped myself before I could say something stupid. “Cancel it. I’ll drive you—”
“Stop it,” she interrupted with her serious voice. Then she lifted her chin and looked at me, her jaw firm, her eyes steady. I recognized the stance because I’d taught it to her. “I am leaving now in an Uber. And no, you may not come downstairs to intimidate my driver.” Then she patted me on the cheek as if I was her doddering old grandfather. “But you’re cute when you try.”
“Cassie—” I protested, but she waved me to silence, and I knew I had to respect her choices. That’s what her psychiatrist had told me, in no uncertain terms. She was an adult, and I had to treat her like one.
“Bye, Big Doofus.”
I bit back my sigh and curled my fingers by my side to keep from grabbing her and locking her away inside. “Bye, Tiny Mutt. Call me the—”
“The second I get to the dorm. I know.”
Then she was gone, out of the apartment and off to her life. And I was proud of her independence even more because I knew how hard she’d fought for it. And yet it was still so damned difficult to watch her leave that I held my breath as I listened to her footsteps down the hall. I heard the ding of the elevator as it arrived, and then the rumble as the doors closed behind her.
Cassie was gone, and that was a good thing, I told myself. She was doing great. She didn’t need me hovering over her.
But now that she was gone, what the hell was I going to do with Gia?
Chapter Eight
Gia
I’d seen Connor in many moods, but this one was new. His gaze was focused, yet abstract, which was weird. Cassie had just left, but he was still staring at the door with an intense fear that he had to visibly restrain. I saw it in the way he clenched his fists but hid them inside the pockets of his sweatpants. His gut was tight, his belly sucked in and his shoulders rigidly broad.
It took me a moment to understand why he was acting so odd, but then I heard the elevator ding. He was listening as Cassie departed. And he was keeping himself from running after her.
This was Connor at his most protective, and it shocked me to the core. His feelings were raw and intense, and ten times more powerful than anything I’d seen in a game. He was desperately afraid for Cassie, and yet he was holding himself back so that she could be a normal college student.
Admirable. And so damned sexy, I felt a wave of desire like I’d never experienced before.
Because in that one stance, I saw Connor as a husband and a father. Love for Cassie pulsed like the vein in his neck. It beat out loud and clear, and I knew that he would do anything for his younger sister, without hesitation.
What would it be like to be loved like that? Not only that fiercely, but with the strength to hold back, to not smother?
I never knew my biological father, and my mother had lost her battle against drugs by the time I was nine. I’d been a street kid. Even though foster care had picked me up soon after her death, I vividly remembered scrounging for food, wondering who or what waited around the next corner. A rainstorm meant a miserable, freezing night, and a snowstorm could mean death. Even though my adoptive family was the best, I had a desperate need to be loved and protected. And here it stood, right in front of me.
Connor, listening carefully as his sister got into the elevator.
I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. When the elevator doors shut, he took a slow breath. Then he turned to me. His expression was weary now, almost sad, as if this desperate love he had for his sister was quietly wearing him down. But his focus now was 100 percent on me, so maybe it was my presence that exhausted him.
“What do you want from me, Gia?”
That,my soul answered. I wanted what he felt for Cassie, only man to woman. I wanted someone to love me so deeply it exposed him like a raw nerve to anyone who looked. And even more, I wanted to love someone that fiercely, myself.
Was I even capable of loving like that? I mean, I loved my adoptive family. Totally. But there was a tiny core inside me that I had walled up. I protected my deepest self. I don’t think I would cut off my own arm to save my parents or even the sister who lived with me. I would give a lot, but the unthinking devotion I saw in Connor wasn’t inside me. A tiny part of me always said, Think of yourself first.
When I didn’t speak, he sighed and leaned against the back of his couch.
