Page 96 of Skate the Line

Me: I’m aware.

Rhodes: I can help you face your fear of men.

My heart beats a little faster. I glance at the drawer of condoms. Surely this man, so untrusting of women—nannies in particular—is not suggesting what I think he’s suggesting.

Me: And how would you do that?

It takes too long for him to text back. My hands sweat so much my phone eventually slips to my lap. Too many scenariosrun through my head. He’s my boss, the grumpy hockey player who scowls when a woman looks at him for too long, and the father of the little girl I nanny for.

Surely, he isn’t insinuating that he and I…

I shake my head. Of course he isn’t.

Is he?

Why does the thought not make me cower?

I scramble for the phone when it vibrates again.

Rhodes: This is Malaki. Rhodes has asked me to take his phone because he clearly cannot be trusted to text his hot nanny at the moment. Ignore all previous text messages from our drunken grump. Goodnight, Sunshine.

Hot nanny?

Are those Rhodes’s words or Malaki’s?

Why do I want them to be Rhodes’s? Do I want him to think I’m attractive?

No, I most definitely don’t.

I’m only thinking about these things because I haven’t sex in what feels like a million years.

That’s my problem.

I’m desperate for affection, and I crave things that any twenty-five-year-old woman would…like the hot, grumpy, single dad thinking she’s attractive.

My stomach drops.

I push my phone away and flop backward onto the bed as punishment.

Of course Rhodes’s cologne would waft up from the pillow.

Thirty-Two

RHODES

My head pounds,and every noise sounds like a dying cat screeching.

I slept the entire flight home, cursing the team each time I’d stir. I can’t believe I let them talk me into going out after the game, but they made their case, and at the time, it made sense.

Since Emory signed with us, we’ve all gotten closer. We’re better than we’ve ever been, though still need to work out the kinks, but bonding is a big part of that, even if the thought made me itchy at the beginning of the night.

Two shots in and I no longer felt that way.

Four shots in and I had lost all sense of restraint.

Most of the single guys were on the dance floor with random women.

I was in the booth, texting Sunny in between watching those videos of her painting that she desperately wants taken down from the internet.

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