Block Shot (Hoops #2)(117)

Hell no.

“I am here,” he replies with a calm I know to be false. A muscle ticks in his jaw. His hands are knotted into fists in his well-tailored pants. “And you will talk to me.”

“Go talk to your date,” I snap, turning away from him, facing the diaper changing station.

He grabs my arm and wrenches me around.

“No, you don’t get to do that,” he says, rage burning like a gas light in his eyes. “Not when I just had to sit through the league’s patron saint telling the whole world he loves you. Had to watch him claim you in front of everyone and couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“Jared—”

“Haven’t been able to do anything about it for months.”

“Haven’t fucked for months, don’t you mean?” I fire back, jerking my arm from his grasp. “Isn’t that what she’s about? Your new Cindy? I said I didn’t expect you to wait, but you could have at least told me so I didn’t have to find out this way.”

“Find out what exactly?” His voice drops to subzero and his expression is the face of a cliff. “That I’m signing a Swedish soccer player who wanted to attend the awards tonight? Is that what I was supposed to tell you?”

My righteous indignation sputters, shrivels.

“What?” I ask dazedly, wondering if I’ve gotten it all wrong or if he’s just that convincing.

“As for fucking,” he grits out. “I haven’t slept with another woman. Haven’t wanted anyone else since you came back into my life. I haven’t kissed anyone else. Can you say the same? ’Cause you tasted like him last time I saw you.”

“I told you—”

“You haven’t told me shit, Banner.” With one impatient hand, he disrupts the neatness of his hair and paces in the small stall. “Except that you had to do this, and I couldn’t see you, and he was more important.”

“He was fighting for his life, Jared.”

“I get that, but he used it to keep you close, to keep you away from me, and I resent him for it. He was playing his own game. He knew it was me all along. He told me so when I was there.”

“I realized that tonight. Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugs, discomfort twisting his expression.

“He said it would distress you, only make it harder, and I believed him. I knew you wouldn’t leave him while he still needed you, and I agreed that it would only create more tension.”

He cups my face between his hands, his eyes losing some of the ice, warming with affection, with passion.

“I should have told you,” he says softly. “I wanted him to know from the beginning anyway.”

I nod, leaning into the warm strength of his hands.

“I’ve always known how to play the game, Ban. Always calculated what every move would yield and how I would come out the winner.” He shakes his head, helplessness foreign on his face. “But I didn’t know how to do this, how to handle wanting you for so long and then losing you again to someone we both know deserves you more than I do.”

And his words, so untrue, crystallize the truth for me.

We are a match, an unlikely perfect pair.

Neither of us fully seeing our worth. Not fully comprehending that our hearts were stitched together from the beginning with threads invisible to everyone else. With bonds that didn’t make sense to anyone but us—and sometimes not even to ourselves. Me thinking he deserved someone with a better outside, and him thinking I deserved someone with a better inside. When all along we deserved each other. And in that instant my heart puts words to this feeling that’s been growing and evolving and persisting ever since I saw the most beautiful boy on campus at freshman orientation. My heart articulates something I’ve been afraid of because I thought he couldn’t ever possibly fully reciprocate.

I love him.

Not in spite of his flaws. Not because he’s handsome. Not even though he is a ruthless bastard. I just love him, exactly as he is. If he never changes. If he never sees things my way. If he never gets better. He is exactly what I want and how I want him right now. And the liberty of that, of not needing the one you love to be something else, and finally believing that he wants you just as you are . . . that the constancy of his desire through years, fluctuating dress sizes, and barrier after barrier he keeps knocking down to get to you, is real. That you can trust his passion. That his desire is authentic, and even though he’s sometimes a black-hearted man, what he feels for you is pure. Who would chase something as hard as Jared has chased me if you didn’t want it badly?

“Kiss me,” I whisper, training my eyes on him. “I want to taste like you.”

A warning flare fires in his eyes.

“Banner, you can’t say things like that to me wearing this dress and looking the way you do tonight.”

God, and here I was fretting over my wide, square ass. Concerned about my Spanx-less jiggles, and he is looking at me like I’m his last supper. I turn my head to kiss one palm, framing my face and then to kiss the other. I suck at the warm skin of his wrist, pulling the pounding pulse between my teeth, feeling his life blood throb against my tongue.

“Jesus, Ban,” he rasps, sliding his other hand down to my waist, skimming over my well-rounded curves, cupping my ass. “I’m horny as hell right now. We probably shouldn’t. I won’t be able to stop.”