Reading the words delayed gratification from Hayes makes me think about something completely different than a TV show, and I blush even though I’m alone in my house. We’ve been watching the first two episodes of Love is Blind on Netflix for the last hour, and shows like this are my guilty pleasure. Hayes had been talking me through his takeout order dilemma before—a dire choice between Chinese and pizza—and then we’d moved onto a bingeathon that he was now clearly into, though he protested at first.
Me: I think the one couple with the scientist guy is completely sweet. They both seem so real and down-to-earth.
Hayes: You mean the guy who is contemplating proposing after less than twenty-four hours of conversation? AND he’s never seen her before. So realistic *rolling eyes emoji*
Me: You’re clearly not a romantic *grumpy face emoji*
We’ve ventured into flirty territory too many times to count at this point. Over the last week, this texting relationship has become familiar, relaxed, and at times, I’ve had to put my phone down and walk away before saying something that toed that thin line. Or completely went over it. Both Hayes and I have edged too close to it, and yet … I can’t stop.
The man is completely charming, in an honest and effortless way. He comes off like he’s this big, grumbling grump, too preoccupied with his sport to make small talk or form friendships. But two days of texting and it’s like we’re old pals or a man and woman just establishing a witty, flirting banter.
Hayes: I believe in love, in theory. Just not at first sight, or when a TV show is giving you fifteen minutes of fame for it. Believe me, I’ve seen enough phony marriages in LA and in the league to fall for this crap.
Me: There has to be some kind of love you believe in?! Come on, it could work out between the manic army chick and the retired frat bro! Don’t count them out.
I chuckle to myself as the couple I just mentioned mauls each other’s faces off for their first kiss.
Hayes: I guess I believe that if two people spend enough time together, have a mutual respect for each other, and enjoy both physical and emotional sides to one and other, then they can make it work.
It’s not the most romantic sentiment I’ve ever heard, but it is the most truthful. And coming from Hayes, it makes my heart rate spike.
Something is happening between us, and sooner or later, I have a feeling we’re not going to be able to step back over that quickly evaporating line.
18
Hayes
“My girlfriend just texted me. Who brought the blond bombshell?”
Jimenez waves his phone above his head, and all of my teammates start to look around the room. I cringe, trying to sink further into my locker.
“Ah, fresh meat! Who brought the bat bunny to the game?” Walker wonders aloud.
It’s a pretty strict rule that you keep the groupies who hang around teams out of the family room. It’s disrespectful to the legitimate partners and spouses of the players, and grandparents of the team don’t want to be rubbing elbows with women who only want to jump on your jock strap for their fifteen minutes of fame.
But the girl I gave my team room tickets to isn’t a bat bunny, a fact that Jimenez and the rest of the team figure out rather quickly.
“Wait, my girl sent a pic.” He holds it up, and five to six guys clamber around his phone.
“Wait a minute, that’s that Russian model, Marlena.” Clark whistles under his breath.
“Shit, she’s with you, isn’t she?” Walker rats me out, turning to accuse me.
I have to now pull my head out of my locker, where I was very intricately studying the tape the trainer had applied to my wrist. Every pair of eyes in the room are staring directly at me.
“Yes, Marlena is here to see me. Happy, you nosy bastards?” I grumble.
Jimenez wolf whistles. “Dude, I have absolutely no problem with that. Though the WAGs are definitely still calling her a bat bunny.”
“That’s because they’re fucking jealous. Did you see her tits in the Sports Illustrated issue?” Shane Giraldi rubs his hands together.
The guy is a fucking creep, and he’s talking about my ex-girlfriend like he has a chance to go up there right now and bend her over a couch. When his wife and two daughters attend every game to support him. I can’t stand him, and a lot of our other teammates can’t either. Walker bares his teeth each time the guy walks into the locker room.
“That’s enough,” I deadpan at Shane, and then address the room. “She was on the East Coast and we reconnected. That’s all you gossip columnists need to know.”
Half the guys mutter that I’m being an asshole, and the other half just lope off, disappointed not to get the dirty details. Walker is still seated next to me, and he’s smirking.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re playing a very skilled game of PR right now.” He wraps the end of his bat in red tape, the same color as the Pistons’ uniforms.
I grin back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Except that I do. My agent thought it might be good to do some damage control, even if the moves we make are subtle. Which is why I invited my ex to the game tonight, and she’s sitting in the family section as we speak.
Marlena is a pretty well-known model, someone I dated about a year and a half ago back in Los Angeles. We were together for a few months, though it wasn’t serious, and most of the time one or both of us was traveling.
It took some persuading to get her out to Packton, but once I promised some press coverage of it, she relented. Marlena had made some poorly worded comments a month ago about Judaism and the holocaust. I was completely disgusted by them, but if she could use me for some good publicity, I could play the game right back.
And right now, Colleen could not afford another scandal on her head. Still reeling from the blowback of her father’s decisions, she was being questioned left and right. After I stood up for her at the press conference, it turned some heads, but not enough to make any solid assumptions. The attempted assault, however, had brought a media storm to her doorstep.
Fate seemed to have intervened that night, leaving me as the last player to be seen by the trainer. That snowballed into me being the last in the showers, and then the last to leave the stadium. I was the one who came upon those two vile men trying to …
I shiver just thinking about what they would have done to her if I hadn’t fought them off. After I made her report the attack to the police, the report became public knowledge, and had pinged on some journalist’s radar. They picked up the story immediately, and it had burned us up in its wildfire.
Rumors were flying everywhere about Colleen and me. That we were dating, that she was giving me favors just like her father did, that I was breaking my “oath” not to get married before I left the league. The most disgusting one I heard was that I had just been biding my time to fuck my way into the right family, and that was why I had helped Colleen. There was also speculation that the two men who assaulted her could take me to court for battery and request a very hefty payout. If that ends up happening, I’ll have my lawyers hang those two by their balls.
She doesn’t need any of that shit troubling her mind. Not after the thing she just survived. I still can’t get her look of panic and utter desperation out of my head. How she dug her nails into my arms so hard that I bled, holding onto me for dear life as if those two pieces of shit could come back and take her from me.
If pretending to see an ex-girlfriend, and create some gossip by having her sit in the family suite with my tickets, helps Colleen have a marginal amount of peace, then I’ll do it.
Pretty soon, I’m wrapped up in the energy of the game, with no time to stop and dwell on the publicity stunt I’m pulling or to worry about Colleen. We’re playing our rivals, the Carolina Titans, and they’re just a game back on us in the division. With every inch of ground, base stolen, run earned, they’re just a hair above us. The team can’t seem to keep pace with our enemies, and by the end of the ga
me, we’ve lost by three runs and I’m both furious and exhausted.
I shower and dress, going up to greet Marlena after my press interviews. I call her a cab, telling her I’ll meet her at a nearby restaurant because I brought my car. I need a few minutes to decompress, especially after a loss. If I have to fake small talk and some photo ops with my ex, I’ll need an extra minute or two of alone time before plastering on a fake smile, a thing that feels very foreign to me. It was a shitty night, punctuated by thinking about my ex in that family suite and the woman I can’t get off my mind in the owner’s box.
Colleen and I have been purposely avoiding seeing each other in person, though neither of us has acknowledged this. We message all day long, about everything from the type of breakfast we’re eating to the ridiculous TV shows she’s watching at night.
Something is forming between us, though we won’t speak of it and don’t make plans for … well, anything. I think both of us know that it’s better for everyone if we don’t act on any of the emotions that are clearly being felt.
So it has to be fate intervening when a flash of buttery brown hair whips down the hallway to the player’s exit in front of me.
“Colleen.” My voice echoes, and I know she can clearly hear me.
There could be any number of reporters around, but I don’t really care. I haven’t seen her in the flesh since the morning I left her house, where she stood on her hardwood in that adorable nightgown, looking properly bed-tousled. I wanted to do so much more than restrain myself and walk out her front door.
But she doesn’t stop, and I’m forced to walk faster, her heels clacking on the linoleum.
“Oh, Hayes. Hi.” Her expression is completely phony, because there is no way she didn’t hear me calling her name.
“You heard me,” I deadpan, not one for stupid games.
Colleen shrugs, trying to keep her professional mask I’ve seen dozens of times before. But we’re past this, or so I thought. It feels like she’s icing me out, even after the week and a half of us being in constant contact over text.
“I actually have to get going …” She trails off, looking behind her in an attempt to escape.
“I’ve been wanting to see you—” I start, trying to articulate everything that’s been on my mind.
For some reason, I don’t want to hold back when it comes to her any longer. It doesn’t matter that this can only end badly, or may not even start due to the reality of who we both are. But it’s the first time in a long time that I feel any sort of connection to a woman, much less another person, and I’m tired of fighting it.
She cuts me off. “I was in the family room tonight. Met your … uh, girlfriend.”
The way Colleen says this has a jealous undertone to it, and my curiosity is piqued. Is she mad?
“Marlena is an old friend, and we’re spending some time together while she’s in town,” I tell her, not wanting to get into the specifics.
I’m doing this for her, for us, to get some of the heat off, but it feels like if I say that out loud, it will only make the thing happening between us more evident.
We text every day, and it’s not just initiated on my end now. What started out as me checking on her after the attack in the parking lot has turned into us updating the other on the small goings-on of our days. She’ll text me about a movie that just came on TV, so I can watch it if I’m home. We message about the obnoxious person listening to their music too loudly on the team plane when we’re just rows away from each other. I tell her about my home chef failings, and she laments me with stories about the gossip from her cousins.
“Well, I’m glad she’s here. It’ll be good for you to have some … company.” There is no way she didn’t mean for that to be scathing.
“Are you jealous?” I ask, leaning into her.
Colleen gives a snort, one that most definitely says she’s trying to cover up the fact that she’s envious. “Hayes, I’m your general manager. What goes on in your love life is none of my concern, unless it endangers the good of the team.”
“Now we’re back to being professionals? Just last night, we were discussing the pitfalls of Jack or John Locke being the tribe leader.” I reference the Lost marathon we’ve been partaking in.
“And now you have Marlena here. I hope you have a great night.”
Colleen walks off briskly before I can argue anymore, and it hits me square between the eyes. Shit, maybe I should have mentioned my agent’s strategy to her, because she clearly thinks I was talking to her last night and am now going to get off with another woman tonight.
It’s asinine of me, but I go after her, no matter who might see us quarreling in the hallway.
19
Colleen
That deep command echoes down the concrete hallway, the same one where he gave me that dressing down before the season started.
“Will you stop?”
My feet carry me as fast as my four-inch heels will allow, and my heart races as tears prick my eyes. I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t help it. I ignore his next plea of my name, and for me to stop. I have to.
When I walked into that family suite tonight, I thought it was going to be a pleasant experience. I was there to socialize, which I felt like doing for the first time since the attack. And my own assault left me thinking a lot about Hannah Giraldi, who I wanted to check up on.
But I’d barely been three sentences in when I heard the tall, statuesque blonde give a whooping yell and scream “Go, Hayes, baby!” Most everyone in the family suite cast their disdained eyes her way, because it was common knowledge that people invited to sit in here just did not cheer on their relatives like they were completely obsessive fans.
Obviously, she was there for Hayes, and I immediately became suspicious. And completely jealous, if I have to admit it to only myself in secret. Whoever the woman was, she was drop-dead gorgeous in a way I’d never be. I’m not insecure, and I know that I have an attractiveness that I’m typically proud of. But this was the type of woman that attracted every stare in the room, be it male or female. With long blond waves out of a Pantene commercial, the figure of a Victoria’s Secret model, and a thick accent behind her cheers and whoops, she was both exotic and stunning.
This was the type of woman you just knew would be absolutely killer in bed, and my stomach burned with a big green monster.
Hayes and I had been toeing that line, and typically crossing it, with our texting the past couple of days. Just the night before, he sent me a picture of him in baggy sweatpants, watching the Lost marathon we were both tuning into. He’d been shirtless, and there had been a definite bulge in said picture.
My whole body flushed at the thought.
And yet, here was Miss Sports Illustrated, in the family room waiting for him. Actually, I think that’s where I’d seen her. She was literally a model that graced the most famous sports issue of a magazine ever.
So with Hayes hot on my tail, I speed up. I probably look desperate and childish, but I feel duped. Duped by him, and stupid on my part. Because I ridiculously thought that there was something between us, but clearly he just liked passing the time flirting with his general manager over text. Maybe he even thought this was some sort of twisted revenge, to get back at me for what my father did to him.
I’m just feet from the exit when his hand lands on my elbow, tugging not harshly, but not gently either.
“Stop this.” He whirls me to him, bright green eyes dodging to the left and right.
Before I know what’s happening, he’s leading me into what appears to be a supply closet. When we get inside, Hayes closes it at my back, and then I’m cornered against it.
Our mingled breaths are coming fast, and my heart is skipping leaps and bounds being this close to him. I’m surprised we’re not causing electric shocks between the two of us, lightning bolts shooting off into the room around us. Sexual tension, desire, anger … it’s all so thick in the air that I begin to sweat.
Hayes’ hands box my
head in as he ducks his eyes, looking at the floor, and then those emeralds are looking squarely into my soul.
“I invited her tonight to get some of the heat off of us. If I could have you up there, cheering for me, that’s … shit, Colleen, I want that too much. Which I shouldn’t. We both know we’ve been skirting around this, refusing to say it out loud and avoiding seeing each other. But I’m not going to let you think I want another woman. I want you so badly, I ache for you.”
“I …” The word is a squeak out of my mouth, and I don’t get another word in.
Because Hayes’ hands dive into my hair, and then he kisses me.
The meeting of our mouths isn’t patient, on either end. The minute our lips touch, I throw myself full throttle into the moment. The kiss is passion intensified, months of tension, frustration and the anger of tonight unleashed in this one moment.
Hayes’ tongue slides into my mouth, warm and skilled, as he shifts my head to a better angle. He’s controlling every aspect of our mouths crashing together over and over again, like waves that will never stop beating upon the shore. My insides quake, I’m too hot and my knees are practically giving out. The sensations he’s stoking low in my core are ones I haven’t felt in ages, and they’re so intense that I feel as though I could come from his kiss alone.
A low growl emanates from his throat, vibrating into my mouth and shooting all the way down my spine. This is the kiss that ruins all other kisses. I will forever compare any moving forward to this one, and the desire I’m feeling toward Hayes is bigger than any I’ve felt for another man.
He slides a hand down my neck, palming my breast through the material of my blouse. I don’t shy away, which I’ve been worried about since the assault. Would I feel comfortable being with a man, trusting someone to touch me after that? Clearly, my body has no problem with Hayes trying to unbutton my blouse, because I’m pushing my breasts out as if they’re longing to be held by him.
Warning Track: The Callahan Family, Book One Page 10