by Keeland, Vi
I could barely form words, and I was glad he hadn’t set me down yet, because my legs felt like jelly. “What?”
“Magic, sweetheart,” he said. “We’re going to make magic.”
The smile on my face was so big, I thought my skin might crack. “Would you…like to come up for a little while?”
Max gripped both of my hands in one of his behind my back. “I’d love to come up. But you’d probably never get me to leave, and I also have practice in the morning. Besides…” He pressed closer to me, and I felt his erection dig into my hip. “My brain understands going slow, but my body isn’t quite getting the message. Have dinner with me Friday night. Let me take you out on a real date.”
I nodded. “I’d love that.”
Max pushed the elevator button again, and the car doors immediately slid open. He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine once more. “I didn’t even leave yet, and I can’t wait to see you again.”
I stepped into the car with a fluttering heart and smiled as I shook my head. “No strings attached, right?”
He winked. “The only string might be one I use to tie you up.”
It all sounded perfect. Too perfect. As the doors slid shut, I felt sweat tingling my palms. I rubbed them together and squeezed my eyes closed a moment. I mean, what reason would there be for something to go wrong?
CHAPTER 8
* * *
Max
Ten years ago
“Ummm…what are you doing?”
I shrugged without turning around. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re filling an empty, half-gallon container with milk from that milk dispenser that’s supposed to be for coffee.”
“There’s no sign that says there’s a limit.” I held up the empty coffee cup in my hand. “I paid for a coffee.”
When the milk reached the neck of the plastic bottle, I pulled the jug away and twisted on the cap. I turned, expecting to see one of the ladies who worked here wearing her cafeteria uniform, but instead my eyes landed on a gorgeous blonde I’d never seen before. She looked a few years older than me. I glanced around the room to see if whoever had started with me about the milk might’ve walked away, but nope… No one was around except her. She had her feet propped up on the chair in front of her, and I did a double take catching a look at her ankle.
“What’s going on there?” I motioned to her leg. A dozen or so colorful ice pops were taped around her ankle with black electrical tape.
“I twisted my ankle playing volleyball. It’s starting to swell, and no one has an ice pack. So it was these or beers. I figured ice pops are colder and plus, Andrea will let me return them if I bring them back unopened.”
“Andrea?”
She lifted her chin toward the cashier. “The woman you handed a dollar for your empty coffee cup to justify stealing a half gallon of milk.”
I chuckled. “You’re a stickler for rules when it comes to me, yet you’re stealing ice.”
“I’m not stealing. I paid for them. I’m just going to return them when I’m done, unharmed.”
“But they will no longer be frozen, correct?”
“Probably not.”
“Right. So you’re stealing the ice. The school is going to have to pay the electric bill for that freezing a second time.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“I’ll tell you what, why don’t you return them while they’re still frozen to avoid becoming a thief? I have plenty of ice packs in my room. I’ll give you a few to ice your ankle properly.”
“Why do you have so many ice packs?”
“I’m on the hockey team. I’m always icing something.”
“You’re not just trying to lure me to your room, are you?”
I chuckled. “I’ll go get them for you. You can wait here.”
She tilted her head. “Why would you do that?”
“Because swelling should be iced and…” I shrugged. “You’re hot.”
She smiled, suddenly more shy. “Okay. Thank you.”
I lifted my chin. “What’s your name?”
“Teagan Kelly. What’s yours?”
“Max Yearwood. I’ll be back in a few minutes, Teagan Kelly.”
I jogged up to my room, grabbed a few instant cold compresses and a box of Cheerios, and went back to the cafeteria. Teagan was still sitting in the same place, but she’d removed the frozen ice pops from around her ankle and was now in the process of trying to unstick the pops from the tape.
She looked at the crap in my hands. “What are the Cheerios for?”
“Breakfast.”
“But where’s your milk?”
I grinned and lifted the empty coffee cup I’d bought earlier, pointing to the machine. I’d left my nice, full half gallon in my fridge back in my room.
Teagan laughed. “What’s your major, Max?”
“Math.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
“Why do you look so surprised?”
“I don’t know. Just doesn’t seem to go with hockey.”
“Ah.” I nodded. “Dumb jock stigma.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“So you expected me to be stupid because I’m so pretty?”
She laughed. “Sorry. I guess I was kind of labeling you.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ll give you a pass. What’s your major? Baton twirling? I mean, you are hot.”
Setting everything except one of the ice packs down, I whacked the plastic bag against the table to activate the cold. The inner bag made a popping sound and began to swell. After I finished getting the second one ready, I pointed to her foot. “Can I take a look?”
“I’m a third-year med student. I can get it checked at the hospital later. I just started ER rotations, and I stand for hours at a time. I just wanted to keep the swelling down before I had to go over there in a little while.”
My brows shot up. “You’re a third-year med student, and your treatment plan of choice was ice pops and electrical tape?”
“Shut up. It’s what was available.”
“Can I take a look anyway?”
She sighed. “Sure. Why not?”
Fifteen years of playing hockey, with doctors feeling all of my battered bones, had made me pretty damn good at guessing the extent of an injury. I put my hand on her anklebone and pressed. “Does this hurt?”
“Not really.”
Sliding my hand to the soft part of her ankle, I pressed again. “What about this?”
“Oww—yeah, that’s right where it hurts.”
“Any numbness or tingling?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s just sore right where you touched.”
I nodded. “Good. It’s probably not broken. You’d feel it in the bone if it were. My money is on a bruise.”
“Your money? You just bought an empty cup to steal milk. I hope you’re not insulted if I don’t think that statement holds a lot of weight.”
“Good point.” I held out the ice packs to her. “Where’s your sock? You should put it on and tuck these inside. It works a lot better than electrical tape.”
Teagan leaned to the floor and scooped up her backpack. She found her sock, pulled it on, and planted the ice packs inside. While I watched, my stomach growled, so I tore open the box of Cheerios, filled my trusty coffee cup, and poured in some milk from the dispenser before pulling a big spoon from my back pocket and taking a seat across from her.
She laughed. “You brought your own utensil, but not milk?”
I shoveled a heaping spoonful of cereal into my mouth and spoke with it full. “The spoons down here are too small.”
“Oh, I see.” She nodded. “You prefer a shovel.”
“I just burned twenty-five-hundred calories at practice. I’m starving.” I pointed to her colorful collection of ice pops on the table. “You better move those, or I might eat them next.”
When I finished the first cup of Cheerios, I immediately pou
red a second.
“Are you going to eat that entire box?”
“Do you want some?”
“No.”
I shrugged. “Then yeah, probably.”
Teagan laughed. She thought I was joking, but I did eat the entire box most of the time. I freaking loved Cheerios.
“So are you any good?” she asked.
“I’m good at pretty much everything, so you’re going to have to be more specific.”
She rolled her eyes. “At hockey. I mean, if you get injured so much that you can tell if bones are broken, that probably means you aren’t, right?”
I grinned. “You don’t know shit about hockey, do you?”
“Not really.”
“Injuries are part of playing. If you aren’t icing something, you’re not getting much playing time. I’m the team captain.”
“Are you a senior?”
“Freshman.”
“I didn’t think they named freshmen as captains.”
“They don’t. Usually.”
Teagan tilted her head. “Should I be impressed?”
“Nah. Got plenty of better things for you to be impressed about.”
“Like what?”
“Go out with me and I’ll show you?”
She laughed. “Smooth, Captain Yearwood.”
“So is that a yes?”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Why?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
I shrugged. “So? Doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you?”
She tapped her finger to her lip. “I’m not sure. If we did go out, where would we go? Is go out with you code for hookup in your dorm room? Or do you really want to take me out?”
“I’ll take you wherever you want.” I held up my cup of Cheerios. “Though I’m not a fan of eating O Toasties, so make it within reason.”
“O Toasties?”
“Yeah, you know, the knock-off brand. I eat a lot of Cheerios, and if I’m broke, I’m going to have to eat those things, and they taste like cardboard.”
Teagan grinned. “Too bad people don’t put Cheerios in their coffee and there’s no cereal machine you could rob, huh?”
I finished my second cup of Cheerios and downed the milk from the cup before shaking a third helping from the box. I looked around the empty cafeteria. “No Cheerios machine, but there must be a sarcasm dispenser somewhere, since you’re so full of it.”
Teagan tried to hide her smile. “How about a party with your friends?”
“As a date?”
She nodded. “I don’t go to a lot of parties anymore. But I think you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. It’s also cheap—and will keep you in those oh-so-important brand-name Cheerios. So why not a party? It’ll help me figure out if our age difference is just a number or a maturity gap.”
Shit. Most of my friends were immature idiots. A party wasn’t a good idea.
Teagan noticed my less-than-excited face. She arched a brow. “Unless you don’t want me to meet your friends for some reason?”
It seemed like she was daring me to say yes. I was nineteen and played hockey, which meant I never met a challenge I didn’t like. So I smiled. “How about Saturday night?”
CHAPTER 9
* * *
Georgia
I spent the next morning making lists, deliberating over the decision I’d already told Max I made last night. Obsessive overanalyzing didn’t stop after I came to a conclusion; it only meant I shifted from deciding how to handle a situation to wondering if I’d made the wrong choice. It wasn’t something I could stop. The problem was… I was having a hard time seeing any outcome other than me getting hurt at the end of this summer.
However, one of the many benefits of hiring my best friend to work in my office was that I had a built-in therapist whenever the need occurred. Maggie strolled into my office at 11 AM, assuming we were going to go over the latest graphics she’d been working on for an upcoming ad campaign, but right now she wasn’t going to get to show me even page one of what she’d brought with her.
Ready for business, she pushed a four-inch-thick deck of papers across my desk and looked up at the frown lines cutting into my forehead. “Don’t worry. It won’t take that long. It’s only a couple of concepts, but I did a few different colorations of each, so that’s why it’s so many pages.”
“I told Max I would have sex with him.”
Maggie blinked a few times. “Can you repeat that?”
I rubbed my temples. “He has an adorable little furry dog, kneels down to play with his three young nieces, and he wipes his stupid, sweaty head with the hem of his shirt, and underneath are rock hard abs. It’s awful.”
Maggie’s brows furrowed. “Yeah, sounds it. I like my men to kick puppies, be mean to children, and have soft, mushy beer bellies.”
I dropped my face into my hands. “He also makes me laugh—like, all the time—and he brings me chicken soup when I’m sick. Chicken soup! And drugs!”
“You lost me with that one, honey. Did he bring you crack? Is that why you’re so upset?”
I shook my head. “What am I going to do when Gabriel comes home, Mags?”
“Oh…” She nodded as if everything made sense for the first time. “You’re afraid you might grow feelings for Max, and that will complicate things when Mr. I-Want-an-Open-Relationship floats back into your life.”
“I love Gabriel, Maggie. I know you’ve had your doubts about him since he pulled what he pulled, but I said yes when he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. You know I don’t rush into things until I’m sure where I want to go. Last year I was absolutely certain I wanted to wake up next to him every day and have a family together. I’d agonized over whether it was the right time for me, whether Gabriel was ready, and if he was truly the one. I didn’t have any doubt.”
Maggie studied me for a moment before leaning forward in her seat. “What is really freaking you out here? The fact that it will be tough to say goodbye to Max when the time comes, or that you might not want to end things with him, which would mean the decision you made to say yes to Gabriel a year ago might not have been the right one?”
I rubbed my temples. “I have a headache.”
“That’s because you’re wound up so tight.” She grinned. “I bet sex with Max would fix that. Something tells me you’ll be a bowl full of jelly when that man is done with you.”
I sighed. “I’ve never had sex with anyone I wasn’t in a relationship with.”
“I know, honey.” Maggie reached across the desk and patted my hand. “But don’t worry, I’ve done that enough for both of us. So this is a subject I can help with.”
I smiled sadly. “When I’m with Max, I’m so caught up in things that I don’t think about anything else. But the minute he leaves, all the guilt and questions set in. I feel like I’m cheating on Gabriel.”
“Okay, let’s start with the simple stuff here. You are not cheating on Gabriel. That fucker is in England boning Brits. He’s the one who forced this situation. You can’t cheat on someone when you aren’t in a relationship.”
“I know I wouldn’t be technically cheating, but my heart still feels like it is.”
Maggie shook her head. “God, I can feel the tension radiating from you. You’re making me feel stressed just sitting in the same room. I think you need to put the meditation you learned a while back to some use so you can relax, and maybe things will become clearer.”
“I did meditate! For an hour this morning. That’s why I was late getting in.”
Maggie arched a brow. “So this is calm you?”
I took a deep breath and heaved a loud sigh. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Do you remember when you came home from that meditation retreat? You told me about these sessions you went to for over-thinkers and said they suggested implementing some rules to make decisions less stressful.”
I nodded. “The serenity six, they called them.”
“Umm... There was an acronym. What was it again?” I tapped my finger to my lip. “Oh, I know. STEP UP. S was for spontaneity, to work on being more spontaneous. T was for timeline. They suggested setting a timeline to make decisions and move on. Thirty seconds for little things like what you should have for lunch. Thirty minutes for bigger decisions, and to the end of the day for the biggest stuff. E was for exercise, which is self-explanatory. P was for present, to work on being in the present and not looking back at things. U was for ubhaya padangusthasana, which is a yoga balancing pose that they suggest you do when you’re under a lot of stress because it’s supposed to center your core, and the last P was for people. They suggest only associating with people who aren’t over-thinkers when you’re struggling.”
“Okay, well…I didn’t remember any of that, and honestly I just zoned out while you were explaining half of it, but the parts I heard sounded useful. Like setting a timeline—I’m sure you see this as a big decision, so maybe give yourself until the end of the day today, and then don’t look back. You’re either in or you’re out. If you’re in—stay in the present. Don’t think about Gabriel. He’s not here, and he’s not part of today. And I definitely think you could use some spontaneity. If you decide yes on Max, make a commitment to have fun with him and try new things. If not, you and I will make some plans. I’ve always wanted to jump out of a plane.”
I smiled. “I don’t know about the plane part, but I guess the other stuff is good advice.”
“You are great at making decisions, but sometimes circumstances change. You need to loosen up and be able to roll with the unexpected punches. It’s okay to just go out there and have fun without knowing what tomorrow will bring.”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
Maggie leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms out on the armrests. “Look at me. I’m the normal one now.”
I snorted. “Let’s not go that far. Are you still sleeping with Aaron’s lawyer?”
“We did it in a conference room in his office, right before Aaron was coming for another settlement meeting. He sat down in the exact spot where my bare ass had been not ten minutes earlier. I’m pretty sure if he had paid attention, he could have recognized my ass-cheek print on the glass tabletop.”