Loving Him Off the Field (Santa Fe Bobcats #2)(42)

“Hard to believe you’d care about a journalist. Just think, if I stroked out, you’d be free and clear.” She said it lightly, with no malice, but his hand viced around her wrist and forced her to stop her slow trek. “What?”

“Don’t joke about shit like that. It’s not funny.” He was staring at her as if he had blinders on, oblivious to the world around. A jogger approached, slowed, then sighed and detoured around their statue-like bodies. She heard him grumble something about them being *s before he continued.

“It was a joke,” she said slowly, tugging a little on her arm. He didn’t relent. “I’m sorry, it’s just a saying. I didn’t mean . . .”

He shook his head, then kept walking beside her. But she could tell he wasn’t happy with her.

Why had she made the joke in the first place? Death had never been an amusing topic for her, especially after her parents’ crash. All the sudden, she felt the need to make an awkward pun about dying? What was wrong with her?

She felt uncomfortable, that’s what. She was on shaky ground with Killian. Journalist/subject? Friends? More than friends? She’d let the lines blur in that hotel room in San Francisco, and that was her fault.

But worse than that, she wasn’t sure anymore where she wanted the needle to officially land when the fuzziness had cleared.





Chapter Thirteen




Killian approached the sad row of apartments. Each one looked more decrepit and ramshackle than the last, until she pointed to the final building on the right. “That’s me. I’m on the top floor.”

He glanced around, unimpressed by the area. A few beer cans littered the parking lot, the grass was either burned out or completely missing in patches, and . . . was that a bong, just sitting under that bush? Christ in-between the uprights, the place was filthy.

“Lived here long?” he asked in a neutral tone as he got out of the car. He hurried around to open her door, still concerned about how bone-white she’d turned after exerting herself on the trail. She was a bit too shaky for his taste, even half an hour later.

She raised a brow as she opened the door herself a second before he could reach it. “About three years. Why?”

“Nothing. Just curious.” He hovered, there was no other word for it. But he refused to be anywhere but right next to her, in case she actually did pitch forward and try to face plant on the cement sidewalk. He kept his hands to himself, however. That seemed to be where the trouble with Aileen always began. Touching.

She laughed, a little huff of breath. “Just curious, my ass. I know it’s a dump. But I’m saving up. Eventually I want to buy a condo, so while I do that, I put as little money as I can into rent and as much as possible into savings for my down payment. It’s an eyesore, but it’s not like I own it, so I don’t care if it looks run down or grosses people out.”

“Is it safe?” He avoided touching the railings as they went up. They were rusted. “I mean, ever had problems with break-ins?”

“Once, about a year ago.” She took her key from her jacket pocket and opened her door. “But then again, anyone can get broken into. I figure once in three years isn’t that big a deal. They got my spare change jar and my cell phone charger, sans cell phone. I’d had my laptop and phone with me, luckily. The TV was one of those old tubes, too heavy to grab and run. I basically live like a broke college student, so there’s next to nothing to take.”

She swung the door wide open, and he saw she wasn’t kidding. The entire apartment was likely less than five hundred square feet. And other than the bathroom, it was all one big room, studio-style. Clean, functional, but worn down in a way that had nothing to do with housekeeping and everything to do with the age of the building, and the clearly second-hand furniture.

He wanted nothing more than to scoop her up and run—not walk—to the nearest safe apartment complex and deposit her there. But there was no way she’d allow it. And he had no right. He took a few steps in and nodded, glancing around. “Not bad.”

She snorted and toed off her shoes, kicking them toward the end of the bed. He followed suit, though he placed his own running shoes near the door. “You don’t have to take your own shoes off. I’m not a dirt freak.”

“Habit.”

“Well, it’s cool if you want to keep them on. It’s not a great place, I know that. It’s pathetic. I mean, you don’t live in a palace or anything—”

“Don’t hold back,” he murmured with a smile.

“But I know it’s better than this. Some of us just don’t have the golden foot.”

He fought back the pang of guilt over that comment, joking though it was. He’d always felt a tinge of conscience about making the kind of money he did . . . for kicking things. It just seemed so absurd, especially since he had never been that little boy in Pee Wee football dreaming NFL dreams and wishing for a pro jersey. “Yeah, well, I’ve got the golden foot, you’ve got the golden pen.”

“Keyboard, but same thing.” She grinned and sat at the edge of the bed. It creaked a little. “Thanks for the ride home. I didn’t look forward to eating Ramen for a week to compensate for the taxi home.”

He sat beside her without thinking. It wasn’t like there was a sofa for him to use, anyway. “Why didn’t you call me and ask me to come bring you out there?”