I push myself away from him and scoot over to the side of the bed. “Kieran,” I say, and get the next part out before he can interrupt. I’m breathing heavily and I’m shaking and once again, it’s such a jumbled mess of emotions on either side of the panic-sanity line. “Thank you so much for rescuing me last night and letting me stay here and loaning me this top-tier outfit. But I mean it: This can’t happen.”
“Why not? You know how much I fancy you.”
“And I’m flattered, truly, but it wouldn’t work.” I cast about for any excuse other than the fact that I’m desperately in love with his married teammate and also milliseconds away from a nervous breakdown. “I’m way too old for you.”
“That’s such bullshit. I don’t care how old you are. I love how old you are. And I love the way you look and feel and how you make me laugh.”
I know I should love hearing this, but Kieran is not the one Iwant to be saying it. Kieran is not the one who was supposed to be my first kiss after Steven. Kieran’s is not the bed I was meant to wake up in on the first morning of the new year. These realizations hit me one after another, and it’s like being stabbed in the gut with a dull pencil. “There’s just…there’s too much going on in my life right now. I can’t drag you into it more than I already have.”
He mutters something that sounds an awful lot like “Fucking Ramsay” and crosses his arms over his knees, no longer meeting my eyes.
Hmm…The smart move is to ignore that he’s just said that; maintain plausible deniability and all. But there’s a very vocal, agitated part of my ego that is dying to know what he knows, what he’s seen, what—if anything—Lachlan has said in the dressing room. “You know?”
“Of course I know. I’m not fucking blind. We’ve all seen the way you two carry on.”
“Yeah, well, then you also know that he’s married and I’m in big trouble there and I can’t possibly get entangled with someone else from the team.”
“I know that whatever he said to make you feel the way you did last night is not your fault. And it’s also not my fault.”
“Yes, you’re right, but—”
“I’m not married. I’m not even dating anyone right now, at least not seriously. We’re clearly into each other. There’s no reason we can’t do this for real.”
“Kieran—”
“No, I mean it. Give me one good reason.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose; the ibuprofen isn’t working fast enough, because my throbbing headache is only getting worse. And I know I shouldn’t be harsh on this lovely man who has beennothing but nice to me, but…well, he did ask for it. I inhale sharply through flared nostrils and open the floodgates. Andboy,once they’re open, they are hard to close. “One reason?Onereason? Sorry, Kieran, I can’t do that. What I can do is give you about four hundred. Like, you’re the first person I’ve kissed since my fiancé left me last June. This was after he cheated on me for years, by the way. Did you know I was engaged? Yeah. I don’t talk about it, because then all you get from people is pity. But up until recently, I thought I’d never have a first kiss ever again, so you’ll forgive me for being a bit thrown by this one.
“And I’m almost thirty-one. Which wouldn’t be an issue if you were also almost thirty-one, but you’re not. You’re twenty-two. So you probably don’t know the particular type of crazy that settles into a childless woman’s brain in her thirties. It’s just a constant, low-level scream of anxiety and questions like ‘Are you going to have kids? Are you going to get a dog? Are you going to buy a house? What are you going to do with your life?’ And don’t worry, because not only am I getting the questions from my own mind, I’m getting them from my mother too. Every week on the phone. And I don’t know the answers. By the way, we’ll just entirely set aside the question of whetheryouwant kids or a dog or a house, which you may never have actually contemplated, because why would you when you’re twenty-two?
“And you’re British, which is very cool and, to be honest, very attractive, even though I’m one hundred percent sure my family would not understand a word you say. But it adds another layer of complexity, in terms of where I want to be, where I want to live. And you’re an internationally renowned footballer, which means you’ll be in the limelight probably forever. Can I handle that? Oh and also, would I get fired for dating you? I genuinely don’t knowthe answer to that, but I’m already paranoid that Charlotte Collins is going to somehow find out I’m here in your bed, and I’ll get in on Monday morning to find my office piled into one of those depressing cardboard banker’s boxes and bam, that’s it, I’m on the first plane back to America because theonething she asked was that I not use this job to become a WAG.”
I take another breath in—because I could go for another five minutes at least—but then I see his face. He looks like I’ve just set fire to his childhood home while he watched. His eyes are almost bugging out of his head, and his beautiful dark skin has taken on an odd greenish tint. And I might be crazy, but I think he has actually scooted away from me, millimeters at a time. The combination of all of it is just too much; my hysteria edges into hilarity and I erupt in nervous giggles. Then the giggles turn into body-wracking guffaws, big gales of laughter that shake me to my core but feel so good to get out. Because all of this—allof it—is so ridiculous. It’s like my brain decided to bury all these normal anxieties deep down, crowded out by the only one that seemed to really matter: the Lachlan question. It’s like when I was with Lachlan, none of those other questions mattered. Well, good call on that one, brain. Guess I know what I’ll be stewing over in the coming months.
When I’ve regained my breath, I smile at Kieran. “Sorry, was that enough?”
“Mate…” The man is shook. “All of that’s going on in your dome all the time? That’sfucked.”
“It is what it is, and I’m dealing with it. I just want you to know that when I say, ‘There’s too much going on in my life right now,’ I mean it. It’s not me trying to bin you off, and it’s not just about Lachlan. Because you’re lovely, Kieran, you really are. If I wereyour age…I mean, shit, if I were even one percent less emotionally scarred, you would have to drag me kicking and screaming out of this bed.”
He nods and chews his lower lip, and there’s an endearing vulnerability in his expression. “But we’re still friends, yeah? This isn’t going to stop you wearing my kit when you think I’ll be Man of the Match?”
“Never.”
“Okay, cool. Want to order some cheeseburgers?”
I sit there, blinking in the wake of his unbelievably quick pivot to being over me. Oh, to have the mental elasticity of a twenty-two-year-old man!
“It’s not even ten in the morning.”
“So?”
“Good point. I want to take a shower, maybe throw up a little bit, and probably cry for a good three to five minutes. If there are cheeseburgers here when I’m done with all that, then sure.”
“And to be clear, you don’t want company in the shower?”
“Kieran…”
