Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(20)

Sweat beaded on my neck, sliding down the crevices of my chest and along my abdomen the more I moved. My breath became shallow and ragged, and yet I kept on, finishing one trick sequence only to start another. Tricks turned into flows which slowly turned into dance, and before I knew it, I was slinking on the floor, exploring movement with my arms and legs and torso.

I didn’t come up for air or consciousness until my body demanded hydration, and I padded barefoot over to the kitchen long enough to fill a cup up with water, drain it, and fill it again. I ambled over to the window then, sipping from my glass as I watched the sun’s warm rays spread across our lawn and the one across from it.

The longer I stood there, the more my breaths evened out, and I let my mind wander to Holden.

He had been moody the past couple of days — though, rightfully so. I knew without probing too much that he likely wasn’t sleeping well with his injury, and the fact that he was in the stage where all he could do was rest had to be driving him mad. He wanted to skip this part. He wanted to get to the day when he could start doing something about it, start working toward recovery and, ultimately, his return to the team.

So far, he’d only been able to sit on the sidelines in the shade and watch his team practice. And he did. He watched every second of practice, showing up early like he usually did and always being the last to leave, too. Then, he came to us in the training room, and we checked in on him.

There was nothing for us to do yet, either.

Right now, he just needed to rest.

I was staring up at what little of his window I could see from this angle, wondering if he was sleeping in or trying to make up some new morning routine since most of his usual one was off-limits. But then, I saw movement through the old, rotted, wooden gate that led to their side back yard.

I could only see through the slats of it — though they were wide from poor installation or passage of time or both — but I saw enough to know it was him piddling back there in the garden.

Mostly, because I’d put money on no one else in that house even being awake at this hour, let alone working in the back yard.

I gritted my teeth, slamming my cup down on the coffee table.

And then I whipped open our front door.

OceanofPDF.com





Holden



“What the hell, Holden?!”

I paused where I was bent over my cucumber trellis, a knife in my left hand while I held a ripe cucumber in my right.

“Drop the vegetable,” Julep ordered as she stormed up behind me, and before I even had the chance to, she leaned down and ripped the knife out of my hand before tearing the cucumber out of the opposite.

“Whoa, relax,” I said, standing before she knocked me backward.

“What part of limited movement do you not comprehend?” she asked, slicing the cucumber stem before she started using it as a weapon to threaten me with.

There was more emotion rolling off that woman in those few seconds than I’d seen in the entire time I’d known her. She was radiant in her fiery, raging glory — an absolute vision of messy hair and tired eyes as she worried over my injury.

I smirked, holding my left hand up in surrender. “I was using my healthy arm,” I noted, wiggling my fingers.

“I literally pried this behemoth out of your injured hand,” she pointed out.

“Technically, it’s not my hand that’s injured. And nothing about this was triggering pain in my shoulder.”

“You’re impossible. Why didn’t you ask one of your roommates to do this?”

I snorted at that, hooking a thumb over my shoulder. “These guys? They would never.”

Julep glared at me, using the cucumber to point at the old white bench behind where I stood. “Sit down, shut up, and tell me what to do.”

I frowned, trying to decipher the meaning in that juxtaposition. But then she pointed at the bench again and, out of fear she might beat me over the head with that cucumber, I sat.

That’s when I realized what she was wearing.

The black shorts she wore reminded me of the kind the girls’ volleyball team sported, Spandex in nature and hugging every slight curve of her ass. They were heartbreakingly short, the tight band at the top stretching across her lean abdomen and wrapping over her hip bones. The sliver of her stomach that usually showed in the crops she wore was completely exposed now, along with the rest of her navel, all the way up to the band of the tiny sports bra that matched her shorts. It was simple, black and without any sort of logo or pattern, but it was cut in a deep V that accented the ample swells of her breasts.

My eyes hooked there, something primal stirring in my gut before I blinked and tore my gaze away.

I was met with a bored blink. “Are you done ogling me now?”

“Probably not.”

“You act like you’ve never seen a girl in a bikini before.”

“I haven’t seen you in a bikini.”

She rolled her eyes, then dropped to her knees right where I had been in front of the terrace. “What were you doing here, anyway?”

“Just harvesting the ones that are ready.”

“How can you tell?”

“If they look big enough to eat,” I said simply. “And if any of them are too big or have yellow at the bottom, they’re probably overripe. You can toss those to the side.”