Page 62 of Cocky Player

“So, are you not going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Do you not like surprises?”Humor laced his tone.

It took me a moment to consider that.“I don’t think anyone’s ever surprised me before.”

Outside of the typical surprises like what was wrapped beneath the ribbons and foil paper at Christmas time and my birthdays, it wasn’t like I’d ever had a vast social calendar filled with copious amounts of friends and surprise birthday parties or anything of that sort.

Connor made a humming sound and squeezed my hand.“We’ll see about changing that then.”

He maneuvered the truck through Raleigh with ease and took us north on Highway One, earning a curious look from me before I decided to not only enjoy my time alone with Connor but maybe do a little bit of snooping.

I grabbed his phone.“Do you have a playlist we can listen to?”

“On my phone?Why not yours?”

“Because you can tell a lot about a man by the music he listens to.”

“Have at it.Code is three eight three eight.”

I snorted as I tapped it in.“Your jersey number?”

“It’s not something I’ll forget.”

Laughing softly because I didn’t know what to expect when it came to Connor, I pulled up his music app and went to his first playlist.

Game Mode.I pressed play and placed his phone back into the cupholder and was immediately blasted by a deep thundering bass and rap music that made me wish I was at the club.

“You listen to this to get into the mood for games?”

He shrugged.“It’s a mix.Got some of that and rock and a bit of country on it, but they all get me focused.”

We jammed out for the rest of the ride, talking about work, the upcoming FanFest Shelly was certainly freaking out about over the weekend when he pulled off the highway, following the signs to Raleigh Theater.

“A movie?”If curiosity killed the cat, I was on my sixth life, getting closer to dying of curiosity with every moment.

But I was in no way at all prepared for Connor to pull off into a dark two-lane road, a country road so simple there weren’t painted lines down the middle.We drove in the dark for another mile before lights popped out of nowhere and suddenly we were surrounded by a parking lot of cars and an enormous screen at one end.

“A drive-in movie theater?”

Wow.I never would have considered it.My imagination ran away with me, the bed of his truck, making out like teenagers did, stealing gropes in the dark of night.Was this why he’d rented the truck?

He pulled into the line of cars, I assumed paying to get in and brought our hands to his mouth, kissing my knuckles.

“I can’t believe we’re at a drive-in.”A giddiness inside of me leaped for joy.

“I was trying to figure out a place we could go, minimize the chance we’d be seen in public before we’re ready to tell your family and it occurred to me from what you said earlier in the week that you probably haven’t spent the time as a teenager making out in dark movie theaters.”

He spoke about everything I’d shared with him with such ease, like he’d known about it for years and it was just a small thing.I appreciated it.“Uh.No, I can’t say I did that.”

“This drive-in only shows older movies, some of the most popular and it just so happens that the year you turned sixteen,The Hunger Gameswas the big blockbuster.”

He’d looked into what year it was when I’d been sixteen.Wow.“You put some thought into this.”

“Maybe I want to make sure you’re given everything you lost or weren’t ready for.”

Doublewow.I wasn’t sure if it was that moment, or dozens of earlier, smaller ones he’d sprinkled around in our time together, but that was most definitely the moment it hit me.

I was falling in love with this man.

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