The Crush (26)

“That is ridiculous,” Poppy whispered.

Greer elbowed her.

My little sister gave her a wide-eyed look. “What? I know he’s Adaline’s, but come on. I have working eyes.”

“He’s not mine,” I muttered.

“He wants to be,” Greer shot back. “I saw the hair tucking and the swing positions. No point in lying, Adaline.”

Poppy laughed. “If that man wanted to be my anything, I would not be sitting here in this truck bed with my two sisters.”

Greer and I traded looks. “You just focus on your school, Pops,” Greer said, patting her arm. “There’s no rush in thinking about who you’d be sharing horizontal surfaces with just yet.”

“I’m the same age Adaline was when she had her raging hormonal crush on him the first time,” she pointed out.

Ugh. What a flattering way to put it.

“He didn’t say he wants to be mine,” I said. “He said he was excited to see me, and those two things are worlds apart.”

We went quiet when the guys started laughing. Cameron—the non-professional athlete—did an admirable job keeping up with Emmett and Parker when they sprinted downfield, but he flopped back on the grass when the sprinting turned into a series of races.

Poppy laid her head on my shoulder. “What if he transferred teams?” she asked.

“It’s not that easy.” I swallowed around a block of pesky emotion lodged in my throat. “Players can’t just up and leave whenever they want. Especially a guy like him. He turned the entire team around when they drafted him.”

Parker won the race, shoving Emmett good-naturedly, and a sweet ache unfolded in my chest. They’d only played together for two years before Parker got traded to the new Portland expansion team. He was young enough, his talent not rooted so firmly in one team’s identity, so he was an easier puzzle piece to shift around.

Emmett was different.

He was driven by different things.

The week after he was drafted, I remember sitting in my apartment, torturing myself with some SportsCenter, and his face appeared. He was signing contracts in the team’s front offices, and after, someone asked him if he’d grown up dreaming that he’d play for his dad’s team.

His eyes did that same intense gleaming thing that gave me thigh-pressing issues when aimed in my direction.

“I grew up dreaming I’d play football,” he answered. “And there was never a doubt in my mind that I’d need to prove myself outside of what my dad built. I’m excited to start that here, in Florida. This is where I’ll build my lasting career with great coaches and teammates. I’m excited to look forward, not focus on the past.”

And that’s precisely what he’d done. For five years, Emmett had cemented his handprint on that team, and it showed in the winning record, the individual accolades, and the fact that he’d brought them to the playoffs every single year, something that they hadn’t done in the ten years before his arrival.

There was absolutely no reason for me to assume anything would change now.

“Why don’t you ask him about it?” Poppy said.

Because I still held on to a single shred of pride, but I didn’t want to say that to my sweet sister, who was only trying to help. Poppy hadn’t had her heart broken yet, and there was no way I was going to plant the seed of cynicism in her head.

Greer smiled at me over Poppy’s head, and it held a tinge of sadness. “She won’t.”

“Because of Nick?”

Emmett tackled Parker, the two of them laughing as it turned into a wrestling match.

“That’s one reason,” I said quietly. Twice, I’d been put on the back burner because I had feelings for someone who played a sport for a living. I didn’t fancy putting myself in a position where it happened for a third time. And I couldn’t imagine uprooting my life, my business, the proximity to my family, for someone who’d already walked away once.

Men walking away. It was—in the most basic terms—a bit of a trigger for me.

Yet, I thought, my heart was not going down without a fight. This suspended little window of time, a break from the reality of our respective lives, it was a seductive whisper in my ear.

It was that question that had gone unanswered since I met Emmett.

What would it be like?

What would he be like?

Because I couldn’t stop it, watching him run and sweat and be … Emmett, I had a sudden flash of how thorough he’d be.

He wouldn’t be a selfish lover. He was so very, very focused when he set his mind to a goal.

What if the goal was breaking my single-night orgasm record? (Two was the answer. Not that it was a whole lot to brag about.)

Because I just might be able to get on board with that if he was the one delivering them.

As long as I could manage my expectations. As long as he was clear about his.

There was no way Emmett wanted a sudden serious relationship, someone who’d need to uproot their life in order to be with him.

Maybe it was possible that my brain and my heart could come to some sort of compromise. Find a middle ground where I could explore what happened when I turned down the volume on the caution and indulged in the want without worry about what would come the next morning.

It was a dangerous seed to plant, the idea that there was a concession to be made. But the thought was stuck all the same, deep, solid roots in the span of a heartbeat, and for the rest of the day, I made no effort to yank it out.