by Lana Dash
It might ensure some longevity to stay here and see where things could go with Brownie. It’s hard not to want to make plans with her in mind.
* * *
BROWNIE
“What are you doing?” Taylor asks. “It looks like something exploded in here.”
I’ve spent the better part of the afternoon recreating my Nonna’s lasagna recipe from scratch. I don't remember her kitchen looking like this when she cooked, but she was a much better cook than me.
"I decided to take your advice and forgetting what I thought about football players and their wandering dicks. So I’m making Hunter my Nonna’s lasagna.”
“Wow, you are really going all out for this football player.”
“I want to impress him.”
“If that kiss was really anything like what you described, you could pour ketchup overcooked noodles, and he'd eat it happily."
“You bite your tongue. If my Nonna were alive and heard you say something as blasphemous as ketchup on spaghetti sauce in a Moreno kitchen, she’d—”
“Then it’s a good thing this isn’t a Moreno kitchen until you pay rent,” she quips.
“It will be soon enough. I have a promising interview next week with a top design company in the city.”
"That's great," she says, pulling me into a hug.
“The game is starting!” Mack calls from the living room.
"I'll be right there," I tell Taylor. "I want this done, and the kitchen cleaned up before I sit down to watch."
“It’s going to be fine,” she says, sensing my anxiety about how this game will turn out. “He wants to eat your lasagna.”
I shake my head and laugh at her double meaning of the word.
The game ends up being a real nail-biter. Both teams fight hard for the win, but even the sports commentators note how Hunter is playing at a level they never expected from him.
“He must want this win badly,” one of the guys on the screen comments.
Taylor looks at me and pretends she's got a dick in her hand, and she's blowing it. I laugh out loud, and Mack looks over and catches her.
"After the game, babe. There are only three minutes left," he says.
Taylor scoffs. “You wish. That wasn’t for you.”
“But—”
“I have a headache.”
Mack may be a two-hundred-pound heavyweight bodybuilder, but at that moment, he looks like a little boy that was just told that he isn't going to get dessert.
I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the giggle in my throat. We are down by two points. We need this field goal to win. I close my eyes. I can't watch this.
6
HUNTER
The team wants to celebrate our first win of the season, but I've already got other plans. I'm the first one out the door as soon as we can leave. I know that I left the reporters, not understanding my surly mood when they took forever at the press conference after the game. But I had one thing on my mind, and that was getting to Brownie's apartment.
By the time I got back to the locker room after the game, I had found a text from her already waiting on my phone. It was a picture of a cooked casserole dish of lasagna with the words “to help us keep our strength up later.”
I’m hard as a rock in the cab ride over thinking about her waiting for me. I figured it was the fastest way to get here since I don't know the parking situation around her apartment building.
The cab pulls to a stop, and I hand him the fare and the hundred-dollar tip if he got me here in fifteen minutes. There were questionable moments on the drive that felt like I wasn’t going to get here in one piece, but I did.
"Go number seven!" I hear someone yell.
I look up, and I see Brownie standing on the balcony, looking down at me. Her smile floors me. How am I lucky enough to have found her?
"Are you going to buzz me up, or are you going to let down your hair?" I call up to her.
“We can leave the hair pulling for later. I’ll buzz you up for now.”
I wait, bouncing on the balls of my feet for the door lock to buzz and click open. When it finally does, I take two steps at a time to get up to the third floor. The door swings open before I even lift my hand to knock. Brownie grabs a handful of my hoodie and pulls me inside.
Our lips meet in a bruising kiss. If I thought the kiss at the event was hot, it’s just a flick of a spark compared to what’s happening between us now. I cup her face in my hands, not wanting to miss a single moment of tasting her sweet lips.
She uses her grip on me to pull me in until we hit the wall. I use my foot to kick the door shut behind me. My hands move down her body, enjoying the sensation of feeling every dip and curve of her body. It feels even better than what my imagination would let me conjure up. I hook my hands around the back of her thighs and lift her, so her long legs wrap around my waist.
"Roommate?" I breathe against her neck, needing to kiss every square inch of her body.
“Gone for the night,” she moans as I push my cock against her center.
I nearly blackout from the loss of blood from my brain at how good she feels and the sounds she’s making. I don’t bother putting her down as I start walking us into the apartment and to the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.
“Which one is yours?”
“First door on the right.”
As I carry her into her room, she nips and licks at the skin on my neck.
“I want you so bad.” I put her down on her feet next to the bed. “I’ve wanted you since the first moment I laid eyes on you. I couldn’t believe someone so beautiful was real.”
She pulls back and studies me. It feels like she isn't sure she can believe what I’m telling her, but every word is the truth. My dad used to tell Zach and me that the first time he saw my mom, he felt his heart flutter in his chest, and the world slowed down around him. He said that it was his heart resetting, so his heartbeat would match hers. I never understood what he meant until Brownie walked up next to me, and I looked over at her. My head and my heart reset themselves, moving her up to the top of the list of my priorities.
“No one’s ever said anything like that to me before.”
“Good.” I lean down and kiss her. “I want to be the only man for you. I want to be the one that changes everything for you.”
“You are.” The corner of her mouth ticks up like she is enjoying a private joke with herself. “You have no idea how much you’ve changed the way I think about a lot of things.”
We quickly become a tangle of arms and legs as we work to frantically strip out of our clothes and climb into her bed.
I could spend a lifetime kissing her, and I plan to, but the urge to be inside her is too much. I reach between us and press my fingers against the soft folds of her pussy. She is already wet and ready for me. But I'm going to make sure that she's primed and ready to go when I do push inside her.
I bring my mouth down to her full breasts, wanting to give them the attention they deserve. My fingers push inside Brownie’s wet heat as I use my tongue to lick and suck each hard peak.
“Oh my gosh,” she cries and throws her head back against the pillows. Her fingers rake into my short hair. It's just long enough for her to have a firm grip and hold me where I am. I move my fingers inside her, pushing on that magic spot that pushes her closer to ecstasy.
The plan is to give her multiple orgasms tonight, but Brownie can't wait a moment longer, and I'm grateful for the excuse.
“I want to feel your thick cock inside me.”
Her words nearly have me coming on the spot, so I don’t waste any time guiding my dick to her entrance and push inside her. She arches her back off the bed as I pump in and out of her. She feels amazing, and I'm ready to lose myself in her, but I push back my release. I want us to come together.
I use my thumb to rub circles on her clit and help get her to the highest peak before we tumble over the edge.
It doesn't take long, and I feel her start to tense around me.
“Come for me, baby,” I grunt with each syllable.
“Yes!” she cries out, her nails raking down my back.
I come watching her unravel before me. My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. We hold onto one another, not wanting to let the other go. It’s never been like that for me. Just another way that I know that she is it for me.
I write out the words on her back with my fingertip what I think is too soon to say, but I want to express it.
I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.
She sighs against my chest, and I wonder if she understood my message.
I hope so.
We pad naked into the kitchen and share lukewarm lasagna out of the casserole dish by the light of the moonlight. We talk about everything. No topic is off-limits. I tell her about growing up in Texas and the religion of Friday night football down there. I tell her about how Zach and I would spend hours every day in the backyard taking turns throwing footballs through a tire our dad hung up for us. She told me about how she’d spend every Saturday growing up shopping in Little Italy in Cleveland with her Nonna and helping her prepare for Sunday dinners.
“She taught you very well.”
Brownie laughs. "If you think this is good, I wish you could have tried her dish. The clouds in the sky would part, and the angels would sing when Nonna cooked. Her skills were heavenly.”
“I wish I could have met her.”
“She would have liked you, even though you were a football player.”
“We all aren’t that bad.”
“You, Hunter Delaney, are my Nonna’s lasagna in a world full of prepacked frozen lasagnas.”
I’m pretty sure the girl of my dreams just told me she loves me.
“Is it weird that that comparison kind of turns me on?” I ask.
She laughs and gives me a quick peck on the lips. “That was the plan.”
We both stand up, and I quickly scoop her up onto my shoulder.
“Oh my gosh, put me down! You'll hurt yourself, and my dad will blame me!"
I smack her bare ass gently as I walk us back to her room, making her squeak. Not to be outdone, she hits mine.
“I could get into this,” I chuckle.
She laughs and smacks me again.
7
BROWNIE
A couple of weeks go by in a blur. I can't stay away from Hunter, and it kills me when he has to travel for an away game. He told me before he left that he wanted to discuss telling my dad about our relationship. Pretty brave, in my opinion, considering my father owns a gun. He laughed when I told him as much.
"I'm not afraid of dads with guns. I am a Texas boy, after all. But I am afraid of blindsiding a dad with a gun when it comes to his only daughter."
“So, you want to tell him everything you do to me?” I asked.
Hunter’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “I’m in love, not suicidal.”
He also told me before he left that he loved me. But I already knew that from his fingertip message on my back. But I didn't tell him that. One day I will, but for now, I will let him think he was sneaky.
Our Saturday morning brunch with my dad finally arrived, and I think I was more nervous than Hunter. Or at least he was able to hide it better than me.
"Baby, it's going to be fine," he says, looping his fingers with mine as we wait at the table on the patio at a café near my apartment. “I think we both know that I have zero poker face skills when it comes to hiding what I feel for you. And your dad has been around us a few times.”
He’s not wrong.
“I like that you don’t have a poker face when it comes to me.”
“Anything to make my girl happy.” He kisses the top of my hand.
There is a group of women a few tables away from us watching. I can't help but notice how they keep staring at Hunter as if I'm not even here.
I feel a flutter of anxiety that I haven’t felt in a long time. Not since—
“What happened?” Hunter asks me, then looks over his shoulder into the café. “Is he here?”
He probably felt me tense. But it’s good to know that I’m not the only one who is nervous.
“I’m fine. I think I just need to splash some water on my face,” I tell him and stand up.
Hunter stands with me in that old-fashioned way that gentlemen would do when a lady left the table. If I didn't already plan to jump him later, this would have cemented my plans. I love the little things like that that he does for me. He’s an old-fashioned gentleman in a sexy as hell modern man.
I kiss him again. “I love you.”
He smiles. “I love you, too.”
I run inside and splash some water on my face. I can’t let the fact that I was cheated on ten years ago mess with what I have with Hunter. He’s not that guy.
My dad is walking into the café when I step out of the bathroom. The familiar flutter of people recognizing him starts to happen, but he doesn't notice. His eyes find me.
“Hey, kiddo."
"Good morning," I say and hug him.
“Should we get a table?”
“We already have one on the patio,” I say and lead him through the tables to the patio doors.
I stop dead in my tracks when I see the women I noticed earlier standing by our table talking to Hunter. Two of them seem to be keeping a respectable distance, but one of them keeps resting her hand on his arm. I'm about to remove that arm from her body when my dad stops with a hand on my shoulder.
“Before you go in there, guns blazing,” he says, and I turn to glare at him.
“If you two are going to keep seeing one another—”
The look of shock I give him makes him pause.
“Did you honestly think I didn’t know?”
“You never said anything.”
"Well, it's pretty clear to anyone around you two what is going on.”
“Are you mad?” I ask.
“Mad?” He laughs. “No, I’m not mad. Hunter is a good man. He’s the guy you want your daughter to bring home—if she has to bring someone home.”
“I do.”
He shrugs. “I’m just surprised that you broke your no football player rule.”
I look back at Hunter. He’s signing a cloth napkin that one of the two respectable women hands to him.
“I wanted to keep it, but he wore me down.”
“I’m just glad to hear you are opening yourself up again. It would have been a shame if you missed out on something great because you were afraid of history repeating itself.”
I point to Hunter. “I’m starting to see it repeat.”
Hunter stands up to take a picture with them.
“This is something that will come up,” Dad says. “People are drawn to people in the spotlight. And Hunter has a bright career ahead of him, which will make him someone people gravitate towards. But you have to understand, kiddo, that boy is head over heels for you. It’s clear from the way he lights up when you walk into whatever room he's in. Of course, you don't see it because you don’t see the before and after. But let me assure you that it happens.”
We both watch as the one woman wraps her arm around Hunter’s waist and pulls herself against him. I’m about to make a move when I see Hunter remove her arm and say something to her that makes the smile drop from her face.
“There you go,” Dad says. “Come on, let’s go eat.”
The anxiety I felt earlier dissipates. I know there will be a shadow where it once was, but I need to trust Hunter. He's given me no reason to think that he will hurt me.
I follow my dad out onto the patio. The women have returned to their tables, and Hunter straightens when he sees my dad.
“Good morning, sir.” He holds out his hand to him.
“Hunter.” Dad takes his hand.
I walk over and pull Hunter's face down to mine and kiss him. It's not for show to anyone. I just want him to know how I feel about him.
He pulls back and looks nervously at my dad.
&
nbsp; "Don't worry, son. I know." Dad turns to me. "But just because I approve doesn't mean I want a front-row seat to this."
I chuckle. “Understood.”
“He doesn’t have his gun with him, does he?” Hunter whispers to me.
Dad laughs, and then his face grows serious. “I’m sure you’d love to know.”
I laugh and pull Hunter down into our chairs. “He’s kidding. Right, dad?”
"Of course." He laughs but then shakes his head at Hunter.
I guess I should have warned Hunter of my dad’s twisted sense of humor when it comes to meeting my boyfriends. He loves torturing them.”
“Who’s hungry?” Dad asks, picking up the menu.
I take Hunter’s hand in mine and write a message to him on his palm.
I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.
Epilogue
HUNTER
My wife has really taken the foundation to a new level in the last two years when she took over as executive director. We didn’t want to lose any of the momentum we gained when I had to step back and focus on training.
As I’d hoped, Jace Michaels decided to “take his talents” to another team when his contract was up. My time as QB had proven to Coach and management that I could fill his shoes and lead the team.
We have a real shot of going all the way this year.
“The Zach Delaney Memorial Foundation has been able to assist over two thousand families all over the country with the funds raised to date. I can’t tell you how excited we are to keep raising money and helping families during the worst times in their lives. No one should have to worry about how they will find the money for their child’s treatment. Their health and well-being should be their only concern. So I thank you from my family," she points to me. I raise Zach's chubby little hand and wave it to the crowd. "And thank you from so many others for your generosity tonight.”