“He hit me, man, but the sucker punch glanced off. I don’t know. He hit the wall or something.”
I look down and Olive is crouched on the ground beside Tim. She’s running her fingers along his back, along his neck and shoulders. She’s totally calm. Kevan rests his forehead against Tim’s while Olive checks Tim out, and I finally figure out that Kevan and Tim have a thing.
Maybe it’s like how Olive and I have a thing, but we also don’t. Either way, I can tell my quarterback is really upset that Tim is in pain here.
I squat down. “Olive, tell me what I should do.”
She doesn’t look up, keeps her thumb along a spot on Tim’s shoulder that makes him groan. “He dislocated his shoulder,” she says. “Call an ambulance for me, Bax, ok?”
I stand up to do that, and watch as Olive murmurs to Tim. “I’m going to help you fix this,” she tells him. “But it’s going to hurt, ok?”
I start explaining to the dispatcher that there’s a guy with a dislocated shoulder, that he’s got an athletic trainer with him, and hang up when she says the ambulance is on its way.
I watch Olive get Tim up to a seated position and he wails as she puts his injured arm on his knee. She’s got Kevan helping her support Tim’s back and Kev is chewing on his lip, looking totally grossed out at the way Tim’s arm hangs. Tim’s shoulder is dangling at a gross angle. I’ve seen dislocated shoulders before, but usually the guys are all wearing pads at football, so you can’t tell how wonky the bones look when they’re not in the right place.
Olive braces Tim’s good hand on the bad one on top of Tim’s knee. I crouch down next to her to see if there’s anything I can do, but she shakes her head rapidly, so I back up. Olive starts rocking Tim backwards. I see sweat break out on his forehead, but Olive is totally calm. She nudges Kevan out of the way and rocks Tim back a bit more. I hear an awful sound—part Tim groaning, part his joint moving I guess—and then Tim exhales as I watch his shoulder slide back into place.
“Fuck yeah, Livvy!” I want to give her a high five. That was incredible. I always saw guys getting their arms tugged and snapped to get the joint back in. She just rocked him back and forth like a ball.
Tim sort of whimpers and sinks into Kevan, who leans his head to the side and pukes, most of it splashing on Olive.
“God damn it, Kevan. What the fuck, man?” I want to jump in and be useful and clean up this disgusting mess, but Olive doesn’t seem to mind.
“Shhh,” she whispers. She starts lowering Tim back down to the floor. Kevan adjusts his posture so that Tim can rest his head in Kevan’s lap, and Kev starts stroking Tim’s hair. Definitely a thing together, I think.
I hear a commotion behind me, and turn around to see that a crowd of people from the banquet room has spilled into the hall to see what’s going on.
A bunch of dudes start jostling their way to the front, yelling that they are doctors and some bullshit. “Olive took care of it,” I say, as I see the paramedics coming in the sliding doors in the lobby.
The EMTs start asking questions, the doctors start pointing and yelling, and everyone is talking at once, until Olive stands up and cups her hands over her mouth. She shouts, “The patient had an anterior shoulder dislocation. I assisted him with self reduction using the Boss-Holzach Matter technique.”
Everyone is kind of quiet, then, and I’m all smiles. “Like a boss, Olive.” I nudge Kevan with my foot. “Get it? Boss technique?”
Kevan wipes his mouth with his sleeve and works his way to a standing position while the EMTs get Tim on a gurney. “This is the worst date I’ve ever had,” I tell him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. He shakes his head.
“Now is not the time, Morgan.”
“You riding in the ambulance with your boy or should Olive go with him?”
Kevan looks horrified by my words. “Of course I’m fucking going with him.” I nod and drape my suit jacket around Olive, who is still sort of dripping with Kev’s puke.
“Ok, we’ll meet you there, all right?” Kevan jogs off after the gurney and I can’t stop grinning at Olive. I don’t even care that Coach is trying to hustle all the big wigs back into the banquet. Nothing exists for me right now except her. I can’t even believe how amazing she is, and I really can’t believe I haven’t been telling her so.
“Olive,” I say, dropping a kiss on top of her head. God damn, her hair smells good today. Everything about her looks amazing and so damn sexy. But she also rocked that crisis like a goddess. “Baby, you were incredible just now. Do you fucking know how incredible that was?”
She smiles and her eyes are sparkling, almost like she’s not covered in quarterback puke. “Thank you, Bax. Can you take me to the hospital? I really want to check on him. Make sure I didn’t damage anything…”
“I will absolutely drive you there so everyone can thank you and reiterate that you did everything textbook perfect.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Olive
I am absolutely exhausted when I sink into the passenger seat of Baxter’s truck. God, I stink. I’m covered in Kevan’s vomit, but I’m not really wearing enough clothing that I could take off any one layer and still look decent in public. “Do you have anything in your truck,” I ask Baxter. But he only has some old practice towels lying on the jump seat.
He’s parking at the emergency room entrance by the time I mop up what I can with the towels. It’s going to have to be good enough, I decide, slipping out of Tia’s blazer and into Bax’s huge jacket. I don’t miss his eyes lingering on my chest in the lacy camisole, but there’s no time for me to stop and wonder what it might mean that Baxter Morgan is finally paying attention to my body.
I quickly walk up to the front desk, making note that the hospital floors are a bit slick under my heels. The security guard looks up from his newspaper. “May I help you?”
“Yes, hi. I realize I look a mess. I’m looking for Tim Peterson. He came in via ambulance a few minutes ago…I’m his athletic trainer and I was hoping—”
The guard points a thumb down the hall. “He’s in room 106,” he says. He eyes Baxter curiously, but I grab his hand. “You two can head on back.”
When Bax and I get down the hall to Tim’s room, he seems to be asleep on the bed. Kevan sits beside him on a folding chair, holding Tim’s hand and kissing Tim’s knuckles. Kev looks up when we walk in and seems relieved.
Springing up from the chair, Kevan pulls me and Baxter both into a big hug. “Guys, I’m so fucking sorry,” he says. “Jesus, this is exactly the kind of shit I try to avoid. This is why I don’t date guys who are in the closet.” Kevan starts pulling at his hair and then sinks back into the chair, picking Tim’s hand back up.
Tim has one arm in a sling against his chest to keep the joint stable. He must have gotten some good pain meds if he can sleep right now, because I know this injury is quite painful. I pat Kevan’s back, trying to reassure him, but Baxter isn’t one to offer soft words.
“Kevan, you have about five minutes to tell me what the fuck is going on with this whole fucking day before the paparazzi gets here,” he says, gesturing down the hall. “The guard definitely knows who I am and the staff probably knows who you are, so spill it before we’re on the top of everyone’s Instagram.”
“Tim’s story breaks my heart,” I tell Baxter, reaching for one of his fries in the cafeteria. We spent the past hour listening to Kevan explain how he and Tim grew up together, were friends all through high school. “Pence, Peterson,” Kevan said. “We were always together. Always.” Kevan has been out since elementary school, but Tim only admitted his feelings for Kevan senior year, after a drunken prom night.
Tim is absolutely terrified of losing his family, of losing their support, of what they’d say if they found out his true feelings for the boy next door. And so Tim and Kevan spent the summer before college hiding their relationship.
Baxter frowns into his fries and says, “Kevan said it was a relief when they went off to different schools.
I don’t get that at all.” He takes my hand. “I could never be happy at a different school from my best friend.”
I shrug. “Yeah, but Kevan was probably exhausted from having to hide. At his other school, it sounds like he could date whoever he wanted and just be open about it.”
I swallow. Kevan said he tried to stay away from Tim when he transferred here to SCU, tried to give him space, especially when he learned Tim was still in the closet. Loving him is killing me, Kevan said, quietly crying in Tim’s hospital room. But being apart from him was killing me, too.
Kevan apologized for not being totally honest with Bax, that bringing him to the banquet was mostly a ploy to see if he could still make Tim jealous. It certainly worked, and it definitely didn’t make Kevan feel any better.
My breath catches as I watch Baxter take a sip of his drink and, holding me in an intense stare, Bax says, “Dating and fucking a string of randoms isn’t freeing, Olive. You think it’s going to erase what you’re really trying to hide, but it doesn’t work like that.”
The air is heavy between us and my hands start shaking. I want so badly to tell Baxter the truth—to stop hiding how I feel and just take that leap. Ask him what he’s trying to hide. Let myself be with him.
Down the hall, Tim is probably coming to and having to make a choice.
Baxter was right about the rabid paparazzi. Social media “influencers” and sports reporters flooded into the hospital as soon as Kevan was done talking. I saw online pictures from the banquet hall, with Kev stroking Tim’s hair in his lap after I set his shoulder.
Tim’s either going to have to lie to the media to keep up the ruse that he’s straight, or he’s going to risk losing his family to be with the man he loves.
Baxter and I both lost our families a long time ago. We know how dark that path can be. But right now, sitting across from him at the shitty hospital cafeteria, it doesn’t feel so scary to reach out and rub his leg. So I do. “Bax,” I whisper. He rests his hand on top of mine on his rock-hard thigh. “Take me home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bax
By the time I get Olive back to my place, she’s shaking all over. I don’t know if she’s cold, or if it’s the adrenaline. It’s probably both, if memory serves. I don’t say much in the car. Something definitely shifted with us after hearing Kevan’s story. The way she put her hand on my leg in the cafeteria…that was different.
I’m not expecting any of my roommates to be home yet—they’re probably all still at the damn banquet gossiping about what the hell happened with me and Kevan. But I’m relieved all the same when the suite is empty. I get Olive right inside the door and start peeling her out of my suit jacket.
“Livvy,” I say, my voice quiet. My throat tight. “You’re trembling and you stink.”
She laughs a little, but her teeth are chattering. “You always get the shakes after something intense. We need to get you in the shower, baby,” I say to her, and she nods, pulling her arms across her chest, shivering. I step into the bathroom and crank on the hot water in the shower, and then come back out to her. Olive is struggling to unstrap her shoe, hopping on one foot with shaking hands.
“Let me do that,” I tell her, kneeling on the floor in front of her. I gently lift one foot and try to get the straps unhooked. The buckle is tiny and I have huge fucking troll fingers. That’s what Olive calls them. I finally manage both shoes and I see that her knees are knocking together. It’s definitely adrenaline. She must have been totally holding back how shaken up she was to have to help Tim like that at the dance.
“Hey,” I whisper, helping her out of her pants. Trying not to look. I’m just helping her. Just helping my friend. “You never told me what had you upset at the banquet. When you ran off.”
She shakes her head. “It’s ssssstupid,” she says, through chattering teeth.
“Not stupid,” I tell her, rubbing my hands up and down her legs, trying to warm her up a bit before I help her get in the shower. Fuck, the skin on her thighs is like silk. “You could never be stupid.”
I move my hands to her bare arms, rubbing her soft skin. I feel her start to relax under my hands and I see so much trust in her face. God, she’s perfect. “You knew just what to do today, Livvy,” I tell her. “I’m in awe of you. You’re magic,” I tell her. On my knees in front of her, my face is just about level with hers. I extend my head up and kiss the tip of her nose. She sucks in her breath in a little gasp. “Your touch always makes me feel better, Olive. Always.” I’m rubbing her face now, her collar bones in that sexy fucking tank top that reeks of Kevan’s puke.
I can see her nipples standing out, straining against the fabric. I swallow, trying my hardest to remember that I’m trying to help her here, that it would be totally sleazy to make a move on her when she’s shivering. “Let me put you in the shower,” I say, and when she nods, I pick her up.
I love the weight of her cradled in my arms. I love the feel of her curves against me. “I wanted to look sexy,” she says, her voice quiet.
“You what?”
“At the banquet,” she says, shrugging out of the stained tank top. I grab it from her and throw it away, trying not to look at her body as she stands in front of me wearing just a bra and panties. “I wanted to look sexy so someone would want to sleep with me,” Olive says.
I close my eyes and rest my head against the tile. I’m trying to maintain discipline and it’s not going well. “Are you ok getting in the shower?” I need to get out of here. I need to keep my eyes shut. I need to respond to what she said in a way that doesn’t ruin everything.
“Bax,” she says. I hear her pull back the curtain and climb in. “Come in with me.”
Come in with me, like it’s nothing. But at this point my control is gone. I have the woman of my dreams standing in front of me, naked and wet.
“Warm me up, Baxter,” she says, so I climb into the shower in what’s left of my tux. I blink beneath the water and stare at Olive. I stare at her from the tips of her painted toes and all up her magnificent body to her brown eyes, that are scanning mine and looking for an answer.
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” I tell her in a hushed voice.
My hand reaches out and cups the back of her neck, pulling her against me beneath the spray of the water, and then I’m kissing her and everything else melts away.
Like my dream the other night, her lips are pillowy and soft, hungry and wanting. I increase the pressure, the intensity, needing more of her. My tongue explores her mouth and I feel little moans escape her while her hands gather the wet fabric of my shirt.
Olive pulls back from the kiss. “I need you, Baxter,” she tells me. “I’ve always needed you.” And then she delves in, her tongue running along my teeth. I feel her teeth close in on my lower lip and my eyes fly open in surprise.
“Livvy.” My voice sounds hoarse and ragged. “I need you so fucking bad.”
One of my hands snakes around her waist, rolling along the swell of her hip. The other moves from her neck to her lower lip and as I rub my thumb along her sensitive skin, she sucks it into her mouth and groans.
Shit.
I take a step back and start peeling out of my wet clothes. As I struggle with my belt, I feel Olive’s hands on my waist. She helps me slide the wet pants down in a clump with my boxers and my cock, achingly hard, springs out. I hiss when she reaches a hand out to stroke my length.
“Christ, that feels good,” I tell her. I’ve imagined this moment thousands of times over the years. I jerked off repeatedly to the idea of touching a naked Olive. But the reality of doing that is so much better than any fantasy I dreamed up. To be here with her, actually holding her—she has me on fire.
Olive’s hands dance across my chest in the water, igniting my blood and sending shivers of pleasure through my spine. Suddenly everything about her feels too far away. I lift her up and she wraps her legs around my waist as I settle my hands against her ass.
�
�Bax, yes,” she whispers as I back her up against the tile wall. We fit together perfectly. Her center is pressed right against my crotch and I can feel her pert nipples against my chest. I find her mouth again with mine and dive in like a man starving.
Biting at her lower lip, I whisper, “tell me what you like, Olive. I want to make you feel good.”
She closes her eyes as I pull one hand up to cup her breast, my thumb tracing the rosy peak of her nipple. “I don’t know, Bax. I’ve never done this before.”
“Really? Never?” I knew I was a bear about keeping guys away from Olive, but I didn’t know she was a virgin. The thought of being the first man inside her, of claiming her and never letting go…I almost finish right here in the shower before we begin.
“I want you to be my first, Bax. Please.” Olive wraps her hands tightly around my neck and pulls me in, nuzzling her nose against mine and kissing me again. I start to worry about what this means, about where we go next. But that all fades away when I hear her moan my name. I’m left with pure want and need, laser focused on Olive and making her mine. As she begins to rock her hips and I feel her moist heat against my cock, I realize I’m going to need more space than a shower stall to do this properly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Olive
I can’t believe this is really happening. I can’t believe I finally took the leap and told Baxter that I want him. I worried so much about what it would feel like, that I’d be awkward or he’d be turned off by my inexperience, but he has my blood singing in the shower and his little moans make it seem like he’s as into this as I am.
Bax reaches behind me and shuts off the water and, still carrying me, stalks down the hall to his bedroom. I laugh, because we’re both still soaked and dripping wet, but Baxter doesn’t seem to care. He places me gently in the middle of his bed and runs his fingers through my wet hair.
“Olive,” he says. “I want to make you come.” I feel the blush creep up my body, but one look at the hunger in his eyes and my timidity slips away.
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