Page 27 of Cocky Player

How was it possible such a simple compliment felt so damn good?I grunted out a thanks, poured a glass of wine for me and settled at the table.

Slowly, we fell into conversation about work.Our week.Upcoming training camp where I’d be gone for almost two full weeks.It was jilted, maybe we both felt the tension.Her hesitancy.My craving for her.It mixed into a weird swirl between us, putting distance where I didn’t want it.

But there was one thing I knew would definitely pull her out of her shell.

“What’s your family really like?”

She laughed softly.“What do you mean?”She was twirling noodles around a fork and brought it to her mouth.

“Your dad’s a great man.I respect the hell out of him and not what he’s done for the team, but the way he always talks about his family.But I guess I’m curious what it was like for you, growing up in a house with so many siblings.”

She chewed and swallowed, took a sip from her water bottle.I noticed she’d been alternating between the wine and water.“It was loud most of the time.The way my dad speaks to his team?That’s the way he always was with us, our own personal booming cheerleader.And my brothers were older, you know?Aiden was thirteen years older than me, so he was always more like an uncle than a brother.I mean, he was dating when I was still in pre-school.”

“Are you close with him?”Families confused me.Especially stable ones.I didn’t know if I was hunting to know more about her or trying to figure out if they were all as perfectly happy and adjusted as they seemed to be.

“Aiden?Yeah, I’m close with all of them.In a sense, they all helped raise me just as much as my parents did.”

A cloud of something dimmed her expression as she spoke.She grabbed her wine and took a hefty gulp.Like she was remembering being raised by them and wasn’t quite so thrilled about it.It made me more curious.I didn’t want to considerwhyit was so important to me.

I set down my burger and picked up my wine.Something didn’t add up.“So tell me something?”

“What?”Her head tilted in curiosity.

“If you love your family so much and if you’re so close to them, why did you spend so many years away from them at boarding schools?”

She reacted like I slapped her.Or kicked a puppy.Her face went ashen white and her spine shot up straight.

“What’d I say?”And what could I do to make it all better?And goddamn why was there a sudden pain inmychest?

Brenna shook her head, and in her hand, her wineglass trembled.So much for switching back and forth.She was clinging to the wine like it was a sudden lifeline.What the fuck?

“It was best for me,” she finally said through a whisper that sounded like she was spitting nails.

“What does that mean?”The question came out like a bark and she jumped in her chair.“Shit, Brenna.I wasn’t trying to scare you, but you get how odd that seems?I mean, there are dozens of pictures of your family, always together, and yet you’re barely in any of them.For someone who claims to be so close to their family, you don’t really seem to be a part of it.”

That ashen white on her cheeks turned a furious shade of red.“I was studying.Going to school.That’s all.”

She’d been at a school no more than a few hours away.I’d looked, because apparently, when it came to Brenna, I was losing my balls.

Still, her reply left no room to respond.Somehow, I’d pushed her into something that made her lash out.That wasn’t at all what I wanted to happen.

Plus, there was somethingmorerunning through me at breakneck speed that terrified me.

I was feeling too much.Wanting too much.This had to get reined in before we both lost our heads, and more importantly, before I gave away my heart to a woman who couldn’t have it…a heart I’d just discovered was actually alive and well beyond the beating necessary for survival.

Eleven

Brenna

This wasn’thow I planned for the night to go.When I sent the text earlier this morning planning on canceling it was because I’d spent hours awake, thinking of Connor, my desires…the risks involved in getting caught.

It was a dangerous game I was playing.But wasn’t it a game I’d wanted to have the confidence to play my whole life?The dichotomy paralyzed me with fear and yet it was my fear I insisted on trying to vanquish as forcefully as Daenerys with her dragons.If only I could be her when I grew up.

When I received Connor’s text earlier, it took me hours to respond.I racked up a mental list of reasons why continuing to see him was a bad thing versus what I’d wanted.When I capitulated, I assumed tonight would go differently.That we wouldn’t be sitting at his kitchen table, food spread out all over the place, conversation flowing as easily as the wine he always seemed to have on hand.

He didn’t seem like a wine drinker, but like so much about what I’d been able to find out about Connor through conversations with Shelly as well as a quick Google search confirmed all my worst and most exciting ideas of him.

He was a man who didn’t date, at least not publicly.He lived a quiet life with limited social media, only reposting photos on his Instagram where teammates or professional photographers tagged him, no caption of his own included.The same with Twitter.There was essentially no social media footprint or anything personal about him and it only increased my curiosity.

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