by Dahlia Adler
But then, again, my name. His velvet voice. I turn to look up into his long-lashed eyes, despite my better judgment. “You wanted me here.”
“I did,” I acknowledge. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I just told you—”
“Cait.” He takes a step closer. He smells like mint gum and Right Guard; I shudder to think of my scent after an entire game of running around like an animal. Not that he seems to notice. “You wanted me here.”
The truth. “I always want you here.”
“Even when I’ve been an asshole.”
“Apparently.”
“Even though I don’t play anymore.”
Now I look him squarely in the eye. “You play. You don’t have to be on ESPN or make the front page of the school paper to be an athlete, Mase. You’re doing something real with those kids, with our basketball team. I’m not letting you rewrite your present any more than I’ll let you rewrite our past.”
His lips curve, just on one side, just an inch, but it feels like the ice around us has finally cracked. Like I can finally breathe. “Mase.”
“Yes?”
“Why’d you come?”
“Because you wanted me here. Because—” He sighs. “I always wanna be here, Cait. I always wanna be on your damn team.”
“Even when you’re being an asshole.”
“Especially then,” he says, velvet vanishing into smoke as he dips his head and brushes his lips against mine. It’s the slightest of kisses and yet the sparks it sends through my blood could set this field on fire.
I wrap my aching, sweaty, filthy arms around his neck and nip his lip, forcing him to look at me, to listen. “Our victories, from here on out. Our victories, our losses. All of them.”
He’s quiet for a moment, though his hands find my waist. “As long as it’s my blue Gatorade.”
“You selfish bas—” My words are lost in his kiss, fierce and hungry and victorious.
For once, I let him win.
• • •
That night, I go the victory party. And for the first time in two years, I actually bring someone.
“So, this is our first ‘date,’ huh?” Mase had asked when I told him that not only did I want to go—together—but I wanted him to pick me up. (Then I realized how tremendously awkward that was and amended it to have him pick me up at Double Trouble’s apartment instead.)
“Yes,” I’d said firmly, “and we are doing it right, like a normal couple. Well, starting after the part where you can’t pick me up at my own dorm room because my roommate’s your ex. But then.”
He’d laughed, and so had I, and it felt really damn good to laugh, even though I still feel really shitty about Andi. When Mase shows up at Lizzie and Frankie’s door, looking so fucking good in jeans and a button-down I could weep, I vow to put the bad stuff behind me, at least for a night.
And then he whips out a bouquet of lilies from behind his back, and forgetting everything else gets really, really easy. “Impressive, Mr. Mason.” I mean it to come out light, teasing, but it comes out a little choked. It makes my heart ache that he’s really trying, that he wants this as much as I do. He might’ve thought the idea of emphatically making this A Date was silly, but that’s the thing about Lawrence Mason—he always takes me seriously when I need it.
“You, too,” he says with a shameless onceover, sounding a little choked himself. Dresses may be hard to find for my height, but I’ve always loved this one—it’s cobalt-blue and makes my eyes look like sapphires and my legs look a billion miles long.
It would appear Mase is a similarly big fan.
“You guys,” Lizzie coos, clapping her hands together like a proud parent at prom. “Don’t make me cry.”
“Aren’t they adorable?” says Frankie. “So fucking adorable I could just bang them both.”
“This is why I asked you to stay in your rooms,” I say with a sigh.
Mase just laughs and squeezes my hand. I know then that he likes my friends, and that’s probably the best thing about this night so far.
“So is this just the lacrosse team getting drunk together in a dorm room?” Lizzie asks.
Frankie perks up. “Wait, is there room for one more?”
“It’s in the basement of Shamblin, and my friend Tish said a whole bunch of athletes are crashing. You’re welcome to come if you don’t mind non-stop jock talk and if you promise not to lay a finger on a single one of my teammates,” I add with a glare in Frankie’s direction.
“Hard pass,” she replies, and Lizzie nods.
“Well then, we’re gonna head out.”
“Here, gimme those—I’ll put them in water.” Lizzie takes the lilies from me and whisks them off to the kitchen. I never thought I was a flower person, but I miss them immediately. At least until Mase fills the empty spot in my hand with his. “Hopefully they’ll drop very subtle hints to Connor that some girls occasionally like flowers, and not just DVDs of old documentaries from the History Channel.”
“Girls like what now?”
I shake my head at Mase. “We do not attempt to understand Lizzie’s history nerd boyfriend. We just go with it.”
“Noted. Good to meet you, officially,” he says to Lizzie, “and to see you again,” he says to Frankie.
They both chirp back “You too!” and Frankie adds a “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do tonight!”
“Don’t worry,” I tell Mase. “There is literally nothing on that list.” Then I yank him out the door before any of them can get out another word.
The first thing I realize when we step through the door is that I wildly underestimated how awkward it would be to walk into an athlete party with a date who isn’t the guy everyone thinks I’ve been with for months. It’s impossible not to notice how many heads turn to stare at me and Mase as we walk through the door, fingers interlaced. While I accounted for the fact that it might be a surprise to see me dating a guy almost no one’s seen me speak to, there are a bunch of pissed-off looking basketball players I realize think their coach stole me from one of their players.
Huh. I guess that would be pretty fucked up, if it were actually what happened.
“Cait! Hey!”
I’m relieved when I see Latisha hop off her chair and make her way over. She’s the only one on the team for whom this probably isn’t much of a surprise, and it makes seeing her oddly validating. “Hey, Tish.” I let go of Mase to exchange a squeeze hug with my teammate, just long enough for her to whisper, “Nice job, and I expect many details.”
“Smoothies after practice tomorrow,” I promise, and she releases me. “Tish, this is…” My inclination is, of course, to call him Mase, but that isn’t how anyone here knows him. Hell, I don’t even know if he hates the nickname now, if it reminds him of glory days past or something.
“Mase,” he fills in with a little chuckle in my direction as he shakes Tish’s hand. “Or Law. Or ‘that fucking asshole,’ when the guys on the basketball team don’t realize their student-coach is in the locker room with them. I’m not picky.”
There is no better sound than one of your friends laughing at your boyfriend’s jokes, I swear. God bless Tish, because some of my anxiety about this party melts right then and there. “This is Latisha,” I say to Mase. “She’s on lax with me, as you presumably saw earlier.”
“Definitely noticed,” he says with a warm smile. “Always happy to see a sister representing in this white-ass sport.”
“Someday, maybe there’ll be two of us,” she replies in a mock-fantasizing voice.
“Dare to dream.” He raises a fist in the air.
A couple of drinks and an hour later, the party has blown up. We’ve got an undefeated season behind us, a week until our next game, and most of our finals done with; tonight, we’re here to have a good time like nothing else matters. Of course, with Mase’s arm around my waist, his fingers stroking dangerously close to my ass, the definition of “good time” keeps getting more
and more singularly focused in my mind. His touch is a drug to my already beer-soaked brain.
“So, Johannssen,” Scott Madden says, “you think you’ll be the one to pull the Fabe from Lewis this year?”
His tone is friendly, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s actively trying to be a dick. “The Fabe” is the Donald and Emily Fabian Award for Scholar Athletes, and Keisha Lewis, girls’ basketball captain, has locked it down for the past two years. Even if there was a chance of them not giving it to her in her senior year, I killed that chance by losing out on captain, and Scott knows it. Everyone knows it. Not that anyone’s talked about it to my face since Tessa’s painful attempt.
“No one’s prying the Fabe from Lewis’s cold, dead hands,” I say evenly, and everyone around me laughs, oblivious to my sourness.
Well, almost everyone. The tension I’m carrying in my back slowly melts as Mase draws his hand across my waist and creeps it under the hem of my dress. “I’d give it to you,” he murmurs in my ear as he traces a pattern on my skin. The conversation’s moved on, but he’s still here, with me.
I cover his hand with mine, just loosely enough to convey I have no intention of moving it off. His hand slides up my thigh so slowly under my grip, it’s like a moving Ouija piece—I have no idea who’s actually steering.
“You guys are all going to the award ceremony, right?” some dude asks.
Mase’s fingers inch higher.
“Of course.”
There’s chatter about outfits and finals schedules and who will win what awards and I can’t hear any of it through the roaring rush in my ears. One finger, two, brushes against the little scrap of silk I’m wearing under my dress. It’s my only nice pair of underwear, and it's not faring very well right now. Bits and pieces of the surrounding conversation filter in, just enough to remind me we’re not alone, but not enough to make me care.
“Are we supposed to, like, bring dates?”
Another brush. Beneath the table, the dress, the silk, I am liquid fire.
“You looking, freshie?”
“Ugh, back off, Layton.”
Touch me.
All I get in response to my mental begging are lazy trails of heat—torturous but responsible, given we’re in a room packed with friends. Only I don’t care about responsible; I am going out of my fucking mind.
“We should go,” I murmur, but when I turn to look at him I see he’s deep in conversation with a guy on the basketball team. I don’t wanna interrupt—my impression from Jake is that Mase could use all the fans on the team he can get—so I re-focus on the conversation.
Which is exactly when one of his fingers dips inside, finding me wet and wanting.
I glance up at him, and see him trying to keep a sly smile from spreading across his face.
Fucker.
Two can play at that game. I glance down to make sure his lap is as hidden by the table as mine is, then skate my fingers over his denim-covered thigh. He tenses immediately, knowing what’s coming, but it doesn’t make me inclined to show an ounce of mercy.
“So, where’s Moss tonight?” The question from Dan Guttierez—the one he seems to love asking me—drips with blood, and stops both Mase’s and my teasing hands in place.
“Maybe you should get a tracker, and then you can stop asking me that,” I reply as lightly as I can manage.
“Nice move, snaking the girl of one of your own guys,” he spits at Mase. Then he turns to me. “Don’t you think it’s a little slutty to start fucking his coach five seconds after you guys break up? If you even waited that long.”
Conversation in the room grinds to a halt, and everyone turns to look at us—particularly at me, since I jumped out of my seat the second I heard the word slutty.
“Don’t you think it’s a little fucking presumptuous to think you know anything about our relationship? In case you missed it—which you might have, since you don’t seem to realize this is a party to celebrate my team’s achievement today, not yours—Jake was in the stands at our game. We’re just fine. You’re the one with the problem, and you can feel free to take it elsewhere.”
Dan looks like he wants to spit nails, but his gaze flicks over to Mase standing behind me—hand on my back, a tight expression on his face that I know is masking a whole lot of rage, ready to let loose if he determines I need it—and he keeps his mouth shut. As player and coach, there are infinite reasons they cannot have a throw down here and now, and as gratifying as it would be to see Mase deliver the pop to Dan’s jaw he so desperately deserves, it’s probably a good thing for all of us I can take care of myself.
Instead, Dan stalks off, a few of the other guys behind him. I’m glad to see them go, but I feel so queasy at how shitty this is for Mase. At least their season is over and done with; their record picked up after Mase’s hiring, but not enough to dig them out of the hole.
“You okay?” Tessa asks as soon as the door slams behind the basketball players.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But I think we’ll probably head out too. I’ve had enough celebrating for the night.”
“Cait—”
“I’ll see you guys at practice tomorrow.” I blow a kiss and a bunch of the girls blow them back. Then Mase and I get the fuck out of there, all thoughts of fun and fooling around forgotten.
I storm toward Shamblin’s exit, barely conscious of whether Mase is even behind me, but his arm curls around my waist and pulls me back toward the elevators instead.
“Where are we going?” I demand.
“Up to my room, so you can take a breath before you go back to the room you share with my ex in a ball of rage. Especially since I can’t exactly walk you inside.”
Fair point. I hadn’t even known he lived in Shamblin—I would’ve steered clear far more often if I had—but of course he does; the entire eighth floor is full of singles for student coaches. I don’t say anything, but I watch in silence as he presses the button, keeping his arm around me, and then brings me up to his room.
The familiarity of the Sixers poster on his wall sloughs only the roughest edge off my anger; I’m too tense to notice anything else. “I am so sick of all this shit,” I say as soon as he closes the door behind us. “All I’ve wanted this entire semester is the captainship I’ve worked my ass off for, to go to the championships my team has earned without getting in a family feud over it, to help a friend, and to get the guy back who was mine in the fucking first place. None of this is unfuckingreasonable.”
A little smile plays on Mase’s lips. “The guy who was yours, huh?”
That stops my rage in its tracks with flames lighting up my skin. “You know what I mean.”
He cups my chin in his hand, stroking a thumb over my lower lip. “Fuck it; I was. I am. I always have been. I’m man enough to admit it.”
Christ, that might be the hottest thing any guy has ever said to me, and he’s close enough for me to feel his body heat, to kiss with nothing but a tilt of my head. But I need to clear the air, first. “I’m so sorry for all the shit you’ve had to go through for us to find our way back here,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “I hate that I fucked things up with you and Andi, and with you and the team. I know at least one of those was necessary, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“I can handle it.”
My man of few words, I think, but however spare he is with his conversation, I know he always means what he says. He can handle anything. I just can’t. “Fuck, I wanna hit something.”
He steps back. “Go for it.”
“Not you.”
He grins. “I know, but do it anyway. It’ll make you feel better.”
“I feel like you’re mocking my strength here.”
“Never,” he says seriously.
Fuck it. I step toward him, aim a hand at each of his broad shoulders, and shove. And he’s so surprised I did it that he actually stumbles back. I do it again, and again, until he falls back onto his extra-long bed.
And then I climb
over him, straddling his hips on my knees. “I feel mildly better now.”
“Me too,” he says, skating his hands up under my dress. “Me too.”
The heat of my anger is slowly but surely morphing into something else, and even though this is gonna be our first time since officially getting back together, I can’t slow this down into the sweet, loving thing it should be. I bend forward to cover his mouth with mine while my fingers rip his shirt apart, the clinking sound of flying buttons hitting their marks like firecrackers in the quiet room.
As if in revenge for destroying his shirt, there’s a quick burn on my thighs from the tear of fabric, and I see a flash of black out of the corner of my eye as my collection of good underwear dwindles to zero. “I liked those,” I say as I work open his belt.
He flips me over in one smooth motion and shoves my dress up to my waist. “My guess from the fact you soaked through them is that you’ll like this better.” He pushes a finger inside me easily, then adds a second and grazes my clit with his thumb. I couldn’t feign indignation over my breathless moan even if I wanted to.
“Feeling any better about those panties yet?”
I rock into his hand harder. “Shut up.”
“How about those assholes downstairs? They still bothering you?” He brushes against my clit again as he withdraws his hand and slides it back in.
“Shut up,” I just barely manage on another moan.
“And—”
“Lawrence Mason, so help me God, you better put that mouth to better use right now.”
There’s a low chuckle and then the only sound in the room is my howl as he shifts back on the bed and licks around his fingers. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m aware that I’m chanting “fuck” like a sailor while I writhe against his firm hand and maddeningly playful tongue. Still I’m missing something, craving a little more of an edge, a little pain. I push back harder, and am rewarded with the addition of a third finger.
“Good,” I gasp out. I’m not particularly articulate when I’m this horny, apparently, but it’s enough for Mase. He closes his teeth around my clit and flicks his tongue mercilessly until my brain explodes in white light and I come so hard I couldn’t recall my own name if you asked.