Page 20 of Lovefool

Lake—who’s already unknowingly testing the limits of my willpower—gives my bicep a few squeezes and observes the circumference of muscle with unblinking eyes. “Wow, that’s solid. You could probably choke someone out really easily.”

She’s still touching me. And although my pants are thick enough to hide an unwanted disturbance down south, it’s not encouraged.

I’m not usually girl obsessed. I’ve never been a playboy; I’ve never liked sleeping around. I need to have an emotional connection to have sex with someone, and I rarely go out of my way to approach women.

People are just…unpredictable.

Right now, I’m warring between the urge to flee, the urge to fight, and the unrelated urge to push her up against every conceivable surface.

The sound of a whistle ping-pongs around the open space, signaling the end of practice. All my teammates begin to filter toward the locker room, skating in clumps before dispersing into a single file line after hitting the lip of the entrance.

She crosses her arms over her chest, looking over her shoulder at the slowly emptying rink. “I guess that’s it for today.”

Still a fair distance from the locker room, I slowly begin shuffling in its general direction before Lake stops me.

“What are you doing after this? Do you want to grab a bite to eat?”

My head swivels around, foolishly looking for the recipient of her hospitable invitation, and then I point to my chest. “Me?”

It’s a nonthreatening question. In fact, she’s been nothing but nice to me, and I’ve probably given her the impression that I’m being held hostage by talks of business etiquette. “Sutton, there’s no one else around. Yes, you.”

Getting food with her may not seem like that big of a deal, but throughout human history, sharing meals is an intimate thing to do. This girl terrifies me. I’m sweating an abnormal amount. I’m sweating in places I didn’t know I could sweat. I need to be hit by a horse tranquilizer.

“I’m, uh, not super hungry,” I lie.

I think she’s about to accept my barefaced excuse when my stomach betrays me with a long, hollow growl like I haven’t eaten in days, and the starved sound travels through the rink with a deep reverberation that can’t be blamed on anything else. My hand involuntarily lowers to my belly.

She expels hot air out of her nostrils. “How many calories do you burn during practice?”

“Usually seven hundred,” I admit sheepishly.

“Right, and you need to replace those calories to function for the rest of the day.”

She’s right. I usually grab something high in protein after practice.

Lake—who subconsciously knows I can’t resist her when she bridges the distance between us—glances up at me through wispy lashes, a small dimple rewarding me for my effort to stay still. It only peeks out when she’s beaming from ear to ear.

“There’s a family-style pizza place just on the outskirts of campus. It’s my treat. Consider this a makeup of the date we were supposed to have before I landed in the slammer.”

“Date?” I echo, and the prospect of getting more alone time with her appeals to me in the same way a big, fat, greasy slice of meat lover’s pizza does.

“I mean, it doesn’t have to be one if you don’t want it to be,” she amends swiftly, dropping her eyes to the toes of my uninteresting skates. “I just⁠—”

“I want it to be,” I assure her, sweeping her small hand into my large glove, my anxiety transfiguring into a fresh breath of excitement that I didn’t know was even possible given my self-imposed restraints.

“Great. I can’t let one of the best players on the team starve.”

My gut pointedly agrees with her, because it rumbles again, practically begging me to drag myself in the direction of delicious carbohydrates.

I’m starving, all right. Just not for what she’s offering.

9

FIRST-TIME DATER, LONGTIME LURKER

SUTTON

Iscarf down my third pizza slice in the span of ten minutes, not bothering to use a napkin or mitigate the burning sensation on the roof of my mouth. The pizza is orgasmically good, with the perfect ratio of cheesy goodness to crispy pepperoni, and the restaurant’s infamous parmesan-stuffed crust falls apart on my tongue. Every flavor profile coalesces harmoniously with one another—a marriage of savory and sweet that would make any grown man weep—and the dense amalgamation of oven-baked mozzarella slops into my stomach like a landslide.