by Amy Andrews
Never miss a training session was one of his golden rules.
Jesus. With his brain coming back online he could see the clock on Harper’s bedside table announcing the time as a quarter to seven. Training started forty-five minutes ago.
Dex had never missed a training session. He sure as hell had never been late for a one. He’d seen Griff bench guys for a hell of a lot less.
“I’m coming now,” he said, springing out of bed wondering where the fuck his clothes were.
He caught his reflection in the mirror as he paced around the bed. Christ, he was still covered in paint, dried and cracking, and no time to shower.
“Your clothes are near the couch.”
Harper’s voice was calm and clear as she jogged his memory, which was more than could be said for him as he went into full-blown panic mode. He couldn’t afford this kind of slip up. He might not have lived on the wrong side of the tracks for over a decade, but the lessons from that time in his life were as fresh as yesterday.
This shit was how you got busted from the team. How things went to hell. And a kid from Perry Hill was never arrogant enough to think it couldn’t happen to him.
Holy crap! His chest was tight and his fingers had started to tingle. He didn’t bother to thank or acknowledge her help, just turned for the door and strode out.
He found his clothes and threw them on, his heart pounding as he sat on the couch to tie his shoes, his brain tossing around potential excuses and various routes he could take to get to the stadium as quickly as he could now that Monday morning traffic would be in full bitch.
Christ. What the fuck was the matter with him? This was why he didn’t get involved with anyone. This was what being involved did to a man’s concentration. He more than anyone had had to fight for his place on the team, but bring out a bloody paintbrush and he lost his mind.
“Are you okay?”
Dex stiffened. “No.” He yanked the lace on his shoe.
“I’m sure Griff’ll—”
He yanked the other one and stood to face her. She was in a T-shirt that stopped high on her thighs, and if he was a betting man he’d place money on her being naked underneath. His body responded to her in a completely Pavlovian way that ratcheted up his anger another notch, disgusted at his lack of control.
“You sure Griff will what?” he demanded. “You don’t know the first bloody thing about Griffin King and what he will and won’t do.”
She raised both her eyebrows and put her hands up in a whoa there motion. “Okay. Sorry, you’re right.”
Great. Now he was yelling and taking it out on Harper because he was torn. Jesus. He’d never been torn before. He’d always known where his priorities lay.
And he hated that she’d muddied the water for him. Hated her. Hated himself.
“So what will he do?” she asked.
“At the very least, he’ll bench me for the next game. At worse, he’ll castrate me with his bare hands.”
She gave a hesitant half laugh. “That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?”
Any hold he’d had on his temper snapped with a twang that practically rattled his teeth. “I’m late for my goddamn training session. Griff doesn’t accept late.” He shoved a hand through his hair. She wouldn’t understand. How could she? She grew up playing video games while he ate packet mac and cheese.
He hadn’t just let his focus slide—he’d let Griff down.
The thought made him half crazy.
“This is why I said I didn’t do dating and relationships. This was why we were just…hanging out and having fun. But then you”—he glared at her, wanting to shake her so she would understand—“go and say the L word and now I’m late for practise.”
She recoiled as if he had struck her. “What the hell are you talking about? I did not say the L word.”
“You did. Before. In your sleep. You said ‘I love you.’”
God was it only a handful of minutes ago that the sleepy words she’d uttered had sounded so damn good in his slumberous drowse.
What had he been thinking? It was a fucking disaster.
Harper looked stunned at the revelation, her olive complexion draining to white. She seemed temporarily speechless before she straightened her spine.
“Take a freaking breath, Dex. I once apparently told my father in the middle of a very sound sleep that I was in Narnia. I’m pretty sure he didn’t take it as gospel.”
Dex had waited for her denial. Yearned for it. But now it was here, it didn’t bring him the relief he’d hoped for. It only made him want to grab her and shake her even more.
For fuck’s sake. Where the hell was his head at? “This is the kind of distraction I just don’t need.”
“Well, go,” she said, her back stiff, her arms folded. “I’m not bloody stopping you.”
Dex grabbed his keys from off the floor where they’d fallen a handful of hours ago and strode to the door. He paused when he got there. “I can’t do this anymore.”
She frowned. “Do what?”
“This,” he said, turning to face her. “Us. Obviously it’s more distracting than I realised.”
Her look could have refrozen melted polar ice. “What on Earth makes you think I ever want to see you again? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”
Then she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.
Chapter Eleven
“Something more important you had to do?” Griff inquired, his voice low and icy, as Dex ran onto the field forty-five minutes later.
The Smoke’s coach was a big lion of a man. Only in his early forties, his hair was liberally shot with gray and a permanent frown crinkled his face into harsh lines. Apparently women found that sexy instead of terrifying. There was an insanely popular Facebook fan page devoted to him, complete with his own memes.
Obviously they’d never been at the wrong end of his ire.
There were times when Griff could yell loud enough to let everyone in the surrounding suburbs know his displeasure. But it was his quiet, menacing fury that was the most dangerous.
Fuck.
“No, boss. I…” Nothing short of an apocalypse or admission to intensive care was going to satisfy Griff.
“It’s complicated,” Dex said grimly. “But it won’t happen again.”
His eyes glittered a tawny yellow. “You’ve taken care of it?”
Dex nodded. “I have.”
“Good.” He pointed to the field behind him. “Lucky you, you get to drill twice. And you’re benched for Saturday’s game.”
Dex used his fury at himself and Griff’s punishment to get him through the gruelling session. They were always physically challenging, but having to do everything twice pushed him to his limits. By the time he’d hit the locker room he’d never been so exhausted in his life. Only a few hours sleep, combined with an exercise programme specifically designed by Griff to make grown men cry after just one run through, had left him utterly spent.
No such thing as gentle recovery swims as far as Griff was concerned.
The guys were mercifully devoid of smack talk—for the moment, anyway—obviously pitying him as he sat his sorry ass on the low bench. Also, Linc had the floor, talking about some chick he’d met at a club last night, and Dex had never been so thankful for Linc’s big mouth and bigger ego.
Perspiration poured off Dex and every muscle quivered in a gelatinous soup as he leaned forward on his elbows and cradled his head in his hands. Aromas of sweat and grass and muscle liniment surrounded him.
“You okay?” Tanner asked, his voice low as he sat down beside Dex, his legs on the opposite side of the bench.
“I’ve been better.”
“You need to talk about anything?”
Dex shook his head. Tanner was his skipper and his friend, but they didn’t talk about their personal shit. And that was just the way Dex liked it.
“You know…” Tanner hesitated. “Griff is a goddamn genius. At rugby. But he’s got nothing o
utside of it, Dex. His personal life is a wasteland. Don’t try and emulate a guy who’s so emotionally stunted he can’t even bear to look at his own daughter most of the time.”
Dex shrugged. “He’s been through a lot.”
Griffin King never talked about the tragedy that had poleaxed his life twenty years ago. Neither did anybody else, not even between themselves. It was taboo. “And he’s alone,” Tanner added. “Alone sucks.”
“Fuck me,” Dex said, trying to lighten the mood. “Tilly really does have you by the balls, doesn’t she?”
Tanner grinned. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Dex blinked at the statement. “What?” he half laughed. “Better than rugby?” If Dex has been asked to put money on it he would have said Tanner’s priorities were to the game first.
“I’d give it up tomorrow if she asked me to.”
Dex waited for Tanner to grow a second head or do something to indicate his apparent demonic possession.
“Look man,” said Tanner, “I think you really like this chick. I haven’t seen you serious about anyone, and I’ve known you since under nineteens. Don’t fuck it up.”
Maybe Tanner was right. Maybe there was more to him and Harper hanging out. Maybe there was more to the fucking than just friendly benefits. But he couldn’t think about that now. He wouldn’t let himself go there.
“I’ll worry about all that shit after my career is done.”
Tanner groaned. “Don’t make her your consolation prize, man. Jesus, don’t you know anything about women?”
“Only what Linc tells me,” he said with a humourless smile, tipping his chin at Linc, still flapping his gums.
“Christ, that’s a worry.” Tanner grinned. “What Linc thinks he knows would take up all the space on the frickin’ internet. What he really knows could fit on the back of a postage stamp.”
Dex laughed. Linc talked a lot of shit, but at least he was focused on the game first and foremost, too.
“She won’t be around, man,” Tanner continued. “Some other guy will have snapped her up, and you’ll be too damn old and broken-down to beat him up.”
The thought of Harper with someone else hammered inside his head, filling Dex with the unreasonable urge to smash his fist into the nearest locker. Although Tanner’s face might be a good alternative if he didn’t shut the fuck up.
He dropped his head from side to side to stretch out his traps, then stood in case he succumbed to the impulse. He needed a shower. He needed to be alone. He needed to crawl into his bed and die for a couple of hours.
He needed to forget about Harper Nugent.
Signalling their conversation was over, he stripped his shirt off as he strode the two paces to his locker.
A wolf whistle rang out around the room, echoing off the tinny lockers and he realised too late about the paint on his body.
Fuck. There went his moratorium on smack talk.
“Don’t look now Dex,” Bodie said, “but I think you’re on fire.”
“Smmmmokin’,” Linc called in his best Jim Carey voice.
“Cool ink, man,” Donovan added. “But you should really ask for your money back. It’s a little smudged.”
A lot of Harper’s swirling smoke was either smudged from rolling around on the sheets with her, or had run in streaks from the sweat that had dripped down his body. But it was largely still recognisable.
“So, that’s where you were,” John Trimble mused. “I hope it came with a happy ending.”
Dex grabbed a towel from his locker and slammed it shut. “Why don’t you ask your mother, Johnny,” he snapped, and strode away.
Laughter followed him all the way to the shower.
…
It took two weeks for Dex to crack. His life had gone to hell in a handbasket, and he hated it. After being benched for that one game, he’d been raring and ready to go for the next one, but he’d screwed up, including fucking up a line out that had led to the other team scoring a crucial try and winning the match.
Griff had been apoplectic, but no one had taken it harder than Dex.
His training was suffering, too. Once upon a time, rugby had filled his head from morning to night, especially during those sessions on the field when he was pounding away and sweating like a pig, giving everything he had and more for the game and for Griff. Now, all he could think about was Harper.
The things he’d said to her that last morning. The L word on her lips.
How much he missed her.
And he got no relief from his thoughts at night. In the dark, when his mind finally let up enough to drift off to sleep, his dreams turned steamy and he’d wake with a start, his body aching, reaching for her, desperate for her touch.
Christ, if there were a worldwide award for wanking, Dex would win it with flying colours. He lay in the dark night after night, his hand on his cock, conjuring her face, her smell, the feel of her hair brushing his stomach, only to be left with a limp dick and that sick, hollow feeling in the aftermath.
Because no amount of instant gratification could make up for her absence.
He felt the loss of her acutely every moment of the day. It weighed heavily on him even during training, ruining his concentration. And every time he fudged a tackle or dropped a ball, Griff grew grimmer and grimmer.
Dex got so desperate he let Linc take him to a strip club, thinking he might find some distraction there. A woman with hips and thighs. Someone with whom he could close his eyes and pretend he was with her. But none of the women did a damn thing for him, and he was left to his own devices yet again.
He didn’t know what kind of wild female juju Harper had going on, but she had crept under his skin and he was hooked.
When the fuck it had happened, he had no idea. But he did know he needed to fix it.
Pronto.
He needed her back in his life. He needed things the way they were. Then maybe his world could return to its regularly scheduled programming.
Rugby six days a week, and Harper on Sundays.
…
He wasn’t nervous when he knocked on her door. His heart was pumping for sure, but that was from anticipation. Even if she kicked him out he’d get to see her again, and frankly, he’d give his right nut just for a glimpse.
He’d waited till six, figuring she’d be home from the hospital and any sibling wrangling she had to do by now. If she wasn’t home, he’d wait for her. He’d done it before, and he’d been nowhere near as desperate as he was now.
He should have rung. Or, at the very least, texted. It would have been the polite thing to do. But he didn’t want her to hang up on him, or give her a heads-up he was coming over.
He wanted her at as much of a disadvantage as he was where she was concerned.
The door swung abruptly open, and he couldn’t say who was more taken aback—Harper, from the unexpected sight of him after two weeks of radio silence, or him, at finding her in her long red dressing gown with Japanese symbols stitched in yellow cotton down the front panels. Her hair was piled on top of her head, and there was a towel slung over her arm.
He’d bet his other nut she was naked beneath.
Neither of them said or did anything for a moment. But he could hear the roughness of her breath, echoing his own, and see the wild dilation of her pupils. “Go away,” she said finally, crankily, slamming the door in his face.
But he was too quick, catching it before it shut, holding it open against the insistent push of her arm. “Please,” he said, “I just want to talk. I have something to say.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, her voice glacial.
“I’m not leaving until I say what I came to say.”
She glared at him, obviously weighing up her chances of winning a tug-of-war with the door and concluding she wouldn’t win.
“Fine.” Her hand dropped from the doorframe. “But I’m going out, and I’ve got fifteen minutes to have a shower, get ready, and be out the door, so you be
tter talk fast.”
She pivoted away, stalking across the lounge area and heading for her bedroom. Dex had no choice but to follow if he wanted to talk to her. “Where are you going?” he asked as he stepped into her bedroom in time to catch the swish of red fabric entering her en suite.
And with who?
He followed her into the bathroom. She was throwing the towel up over the glass of the shower screen when he caught up. Dex halted at the line where the wooden floorboards of her bedroom met the tiles of her bathroom, leaning against the doorjamb. It seemed like it was a line he probably shouldn’t cross anymore, although, God knew, that seemed to be their thing.
“To a movie,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him, “Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”
“Are you going with someone?”
She quirked an eyebrow that perfectly conveyed just the right amount of you-have-to-be-shitting-me. “Yes.”
Dex decided to quit now. If she told him it was a guy, he didn’t trust himself not to do something drastic like drag her up against him and kiss her until they both couldn’t breathe.
He shoved his hands in his pockets just to be on the safe side. He was supposed to be winning her back, not demonstrating how much of a caveman he could be.
“I came to apologise for that morning.”
“Oh really?”
Dex couldn’t tell what oh really meant. Her voice was neutral, so was her face. She wasn’t giving anything away.
“Yes. Really.” He tried to inject every single ounce of his remorse into the two words.
She stared at him for long minutes. “Okay, fine. Thanks,” she said flippantly. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”
She pulled the shower door open, but Dex moved quicker, his hand landing on her shoulder to stop her from getting in. If nothing else, he needed her to know he was sorry. “Please, let me explain.”
The angle of her jaw tightened as her gaze flicked to the hand on her shoulder. Dex could feel the stiffness of her frame through the palm of his hand.
“Fine,” she said, her fingers quickly untying the belt of the robe and wriggling her shoulders. His hand fell away, so did the gown, slithering to the ground and pooling at her feet. “You have ten minutes.”