Page 83 of Lucky Shot

“You don’t.” I put the pieces from the checkerboard on the table in their starting positions. I jump when his hand closes around my arm, my gasp filling the small room.

“Really?” He chuckles. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, it’s just—you’re just . . .” I don’t want to dare to hope. I did yesterday and then today you let me down. And standing on the razor-thin edge of hope versus abandonment isn’t the easiest way to live. Always wondering. Always waiting. Always expecting to wake up to find that person is gone. I finish setting a new game of checkers on the board. Anything to prevent me from turning around.

“We’ve already seen each other naked, Whitney. Already watched each other come. I’m pretty sure the nerves should be out the window.”

I open my mouth to speak and can’t. What he doesn’t get is it’s the physical that’s the easy part, but everything else that comes with it for me that’s the struggle.

“It’s not nerves. It’s . . .” His hands on my shoulders turn me around so I’m forced to face him. My eyes flutter up to meet the gray of his. “You. Here. Me. Here.”

“It’s just a kiss, Whitney. Not a lifelong commitment.”

My pulse races, and my heartbeat pounds in my ears. I open my mouth to speak but only a croak comes out.

“I’m a man who likes to right his wrongs. I was wrong to kiss you as a means to prove a point and so . . .”

“And so . . .?”

“Hmm.” His eyes flicker down to my lips and then back up as his hands run down my arms. “I seem to have lost my train of thought.”

The kiss happens in slow motion, like snapshots of time burned in my memory. His hand on my neck and thumb brushing over the dent of my collarbone. The scrape of his stubble and the softness of his lips. The addiction in his taste and the command in his touch.

My body sings with the slow burn of desire and the acknowledgment that I want him. His kiss. His body. His touch.

Everything we had the other night but that I didn’t allow to progress. Everything he respected me for.

I melt from the heat while it forges a need that’s so much greater than just this kiss.

The kiss ends with one last brush of lips, like a promise that this won’t be the last time.

He smirks. “It was worth the hangover.”

“What was?”

He takes a step back, which has me fighting the urge to take one forward. “Your kiss is better than I remember.” Another brush of his lips to mine. “So much fucking better.”

“Hmm,” I murmur, my body humming, my smile no doubt plastered all over my face.

He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “I’m not who you think I am, Whitney. Who the media makes me out to be. The prick. The playboy. The selfish star. There’s a lot more to me than just that.”

“I’m sure there is.”

“If you saw me on my own turf, you’d see that.” Another step toward the door. “When you’re ready to trust that I’m not that guy, there’s a ticket waiting for you in the box office for any game so you can find out for yourself.” He’s at the door. “See you tomorrow, Lucky Shot.”

As Hardy walks out the door, I want to go after him. But his words make me pause.

I’m not who you think I am, Whitney. Who the media makes me out to be. The prick. The playboy. The selfish star. There’s a lot more to me than just that. If you saw me on my own turf, you’d see that.

I could be very wrong, but my gut instinct suggests that Hardy wants me to know the side of him that most don’t see. And that somehow both settles and excites me. Which is a little dangerous for my softening heart.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Whitney

“What seems to be the problem, then?” Suri asks in her steadfast tone I’ve come to depend on over the last decade.

She’s both my voice of reason and the sense that often needs to get knocked into me, depending on the situation.