Page 49 of Her Player

I did, however, scoop her into my arms, even with my basketball shorts and leggings still around my knees.

“Holy hell, you’ve still got energy?” she said, spent and laughing, as I scooped her beautiful big body into my arms.

She clung to me as I shuffled over to the door that led straight from the weight room into the locker room. “Oh to be young again, huh, Miss C?”

She gasped before she shoved my chest playfully. “Did you just call me old, asshole?”

I barked with laughter as I shuffled us into the locker room before I set her down with a wink. “Come on, Miss C. Let’s get a shower before we head back to Victoria’s place.”

And the smile she gave me before unbuttoning her blouse sealed the deal for me.

17

VICTORIA

It was a tight squeeze, even in the handicapped shower of the locker room. And yet, that didn’t stop Rhett from squeezing right in and pressing those warm, delectable muscles against me. My curves against his muscles, separated only by the softest layer of padding that blanketed the hard peaks of his biggest ones. Water dribbled down his body in rivulets, tracing the lines of his muscles that he managed to keep up with despite the pizza and beer I’m sure he still guzzled down at his age.

I couldn’t help myself as I threaded my arms around his waist.

“Come here,” he muttered into the top of my head.

He started with my back. As I nuzzled my face into the hair of his chest, I felt the soapy expanse touch down against my back. He massaged me softly, rolling the soapy washcloth in long, languid circles against my skin.

And before I knew it, he had me back beneath the hot water.

“Close your eyes, beautiful,” he beckoned softly.

I allowed them to close as he tilted my head back beneath the water. His fingertips massaged through my hair, working up a nice lather with whatever shampoo he used. I was going to have opinions about that later. For now I let it go. I melted into his touch. I let myself be weak with him.

And when I did, a tear rolled effortlessly down my cheek.

I felt him kiss the trail away.

I hadn’t been washed by another person since Ryan.

That was the thought that came in uninvited, the way grief always did. Not with a knock. Not with any warning whatsoever. Just a sudden presence in the middle of a handicapped shower in a hockey locker room at seven o’clock on a Tuesday evening, arriving on the back of a soapy washcloth moving in slow circles across my shoulder blades.

Ryan used to do this after bad days.

Not often. We were not people who made a habit of vulnerability. Neither of us were built that way. But after particularly bad ones, when I’d come home from a board meeting that had gone sideways or the anniversary of something difficult, he’d run the shower hot and take the washcloth from my hands without a word. He never asked if I was okay. He already knew the answer. He just washed my back in long slow circles until my shoulders came down from wherever they’d gone, and then we’d stand under the water together in the easy silence of two people who had run out of things to need to say.

I hadn’t let anyone do this since.

Fourteen years. Every shower since then had been a functional thing. Something to get through. Shampoo and conditioner and a washcloth and twelve minutes because I had places to be and things to run and a franchise that didn’t manage itself. I’d gotten very good at efficient grieving. At keeping it contained to specific hours of specific days when I had scheduled the time for it, which I understood was not normal but which had kept me upright for fourteen years so I wasn’t inclined to argue with the methodology.

And then Rhett Calloway put a soapy washcloth against my back and my entire carefully maintained system fell apart in approximately forty-five seconds.

The tear surprised me. I didn’t plan for it. I didn’t feel it coming the way you sometimes did, no tightening in the throat, no burning behind the eyes. It just fell. One tear, tracking down my cheek and disappearing into the hot water, quiet and without permission.

Ryan.

Not with pain. Not even entirely with sadness. Just his name, the way it lived in the back of my mind. Always present, always there, the frequency of a person who had been so thoroughly woven into the fabric of your life that even after fourteen years the absence of them still registered as a sound you couldn’t quite hear.

I let the tear fall.

I let Rhett kiss the trail it left.

And I stood very still in the steam and the heat and let myself feel two things at once for the first time in longer than I could remember, the weight of what I’d lost and the tentative, terrifying warmth of what might be in front of me, without trying to resolve them into something tidier.