The Anti-Boyfriend(22)

“Yes. Be right back.” I headed for the kitchen.

My heart pitter-pattered as I grabbed a bottle opener and two glasses before returning to the living room.

My hand brushed against his as he took the opener. Heat zipped through me at the fleeting touch—proof of how desperate I’d been for the slightest contact. It was pretty pathetic that I hadn’t been with anyone since Charles.

The cork made a slight popping sound as he opened the bottle and poured the wine. We sat down across from each other on the couch. I was starting to get a good buzz on as he asked me more about my new job.

Then he took a deep sniff. “Whatever you’re making smells fucking amazing, by the way.

I was just thinking the same thing about you—how good you smell. I stood up. “Shall we eat?”

“Hell yeah. My stomach is growling.”

He followed me into the kitchen, and I sensed every movement of his body as we plated our food.

“Holy crap, Carys. This looks fantastic. I might have to keep creating reasons for you to cook for me.”

You’ve read my mind.

We brought our plates back out to the living room and sat next to each other on the floor, so we could use the coffee table.

Deacon and I were well on our way to polishing off the bottle of wine as we enjoyed the chicken and risotto I’d made.

“How did you learn to cook like this?”

I wiped the corner of my mouth. “Self-taught, mostly. I feel like everyone should be able to follow a recipe, but most people believe they can’t for some reason. It’s not that hard.”

He drank the last of the wine in his glass. “I’m one of those people who assumes I’m gonna burn the place down if I try. I need to get new pans, too. The ones I have are so damn cheap, they burn my hands when I touch the handles. I take that as a sign that I should just stay the fuck out of the kitchen altogether.”

I laughed. “Well, it’s nice to have someone to cook for.”

“I’ll be your guinea pig anytime. I haven’t had a home-cooked meal like this since the last time I went home to Minnesota.”

“None of the women you’ve met have cooked for you?”

“Not that I can recall. But I don’t expect anyone to cook for me.”

I smirked. “Yeah…they don’t need to know how to cook.”

His smile was hesitant. “I know what you’re thinking. Despite what you may believe, it’s not all about that. They have to have half a brain, and they have to be decent human beings. Honestly, there are more duds than not out there.”

“It must be expensive to go out all of the time, huh?”

“Yeah, and it costs the same whether it’s a bomb or not.”

“I never thought about how costly it must be to have a social life.”

“If you’re gonna date in this city, you expect to pay a fortune in drinks and restaurant bills. Secretly, my favorite thing to do is stay home. But I know I’ll regret it if I don’t push myself to go out. I feel like that’s what I should be doing at my age.”

“I envy your freedom. I wouldn’t change my current situation, but I do miss being able to come and go as I please.”

“I really understood that on Monday,” he said.

“Yeah.” I chuckled. “My life is basically the opposite of yours.”

He paused, looking into my eyes for what felt like much longer than normal. “You say that—that our lives are so different—but we have more in common than you know. There’s something I’ve never told you about.”

I blinked. “There is?”

He nodded. “I feel very connected to you. And you don’t even know why.”

I put down my glass and inched a bit closer to him. “Well, now you have me curious.”

He emptied the last of the wine into our glasses before turning to me again. “You said once that when you stopped dancing, it felt like the death of the future you’d always imagined. I can relate…because my career was cut short by an accident, too.”

My heart sank. “Really?”

“I don’t talk about it much. In fact, I don’t talk about it at all. I don’t think I’ve told more than one other person since I moved here.”

I leaned in a little. “What happened, Deacon?”

He stiffened, as if gearing up for what he was about to divulge. “My father is Jed Mathers, the head college football coach for Minneapolis. And I was the star quarterback for Iowa, one of their biggest rivals in the next state over. We made headlines in those days because of that.”

I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. “Okay…wow. You played football?”

“I was on track for a career in the NFL. Our team’s record was twenty and six. But…everything ended one day when I crashed my car.”

My stomach felt sick. Oh no. Instinctively, I reached my hand to his arm.

He looked down at it and continued. “I hit an oncoming vehicle on a foggy night. I was lucky to survive, but my leg was crushed, and my professional football days were over.”

I felt his pain intensely. “I’m so sorry. How long ago was this?”

“A little over nine years. I was twenty, a sophomore in college. My whole life had been about the dreams my father had for me, the same dreams I had for myself. From a very young age, everything had revolved around football.” He stared off. “After the accident, I didn’t know who I was anymore.”