Page 54 of Fever Dream
“Really?” I can’t help but ask, matching smile tugging up the corners of my lips.
“You really are monumentally oblivious,” he says, the words sounding extra posh in his crisp English accent.
“Yes. I think we can agree that is true,” I concede. We stare at each other, not quite sure where to go just yet—what this is between us now.
“I don’t know what to say,” he admits. “This is the last thing I expected to happen tonight.”
I step towards him, wanting to touch him again as I let my fingers linger on the thrumming pulse point of his neck. I don’t miss the way he leans into my touch, those eyes darkening just a tinge as his gaze dips to my mouth.
“Will you stay with me tonight?” I ask, knowing it’s only because he’s my Harrison that is making me this brave. “Will you stay and just … see where this goes?”
Harrison exhales a breath, head tipping back against the wall. His eyes find mine, breathlessly beautiful and conflicted.
“I want to, Case,” he says. “But I just … I think we need to slow things down before we … before we cross paths that we can’t come back from.”
“Why?”
“Because … this … I need you to be perfectly sure before we go down this path, Casey. Because this will change everything between us and I can’t risk that. I can’t risk blowing up our friendship unless I know you’re sure.”
“I am sure, Harrison” I tell him, that belief only firming with each passing minute.
Harrison looks down at me, desire and conflict warring in his dark brown gaze. “Maybe but … I can’t be your gay experiment, Case. I want this, I really,reallyfucking want this but I just … I need you to be absolutely sure first. You’re basically my entire life at this point and there’s just too much at risk.”
I can see it then, the earnestness in his eyes and I get what he is saying. We do have something too precious to risk, to blow up just because I finally had the guts to take what I wanted, even if it did result in the most incredible kiss of my life. Even if it has left me feeling so desperately horny and full of want that I’m almost out of my mind with it.
But Harrison’s right. And he deserves better from me. Especially after how I’ve treated him this week. So I nod, dropping my hand from his neck.
“Okay. That’s fair.”
He grabs my hand on the way down, holding it to his chest before pressing a kiss to my knuckles. “It’s not a no, Case. It’s just a not right now. Is that okay? Do you get what I’m saying?”
“I get it, H. I do.”
“Thank you,” he sighs with a breath of relief, pressing another kiss to my knuckles. The gesture is so sweet and loving that I feel my stomach swirl again, still choked up full with dopamine from that epic kiss.
And even though I want to take him and hold him and recreate that kiss with him again, I let him turn and leave the pantry, leaving me to recollect my thoughts once again—thoughts that Harrison Thornfield has obliterated yetagain.
CHAPTER 20
harrison
So. Casey kissed me. In his kitchen pantry. While Sonny and Izak were out in his backyard. He actually kissed me. And I don’t think I will ever be the same.
I think I might be getting a taste of Casey’s restless mind syndrome because I have not been able to stop thinking about that kiss. Not for one single solitary second.
Not the next day when the team flies down to Melbourne for Saturday’s game against the Mornington Rangers. Not for any minute of the pre-match preparations and not for any minute of the game where Casey fights valiantly to the end in the Fever’s heartbreaking two-point defeat.
Jaylen Briggs suffers a hamstring strain in the final quarter which gives me something else to think about as I treat his injury on the sidelines. But the momentary reprieve does nothing to quash my mind from replaying on repeat that incredible, stolen kiss with Casey in his kitchen pantry.
Ben takes over Casey’s post-game injury management while I am still dealing with Briggs, monitoring him in the ice bath and applying a compression bandage to his hamstring. The strain looks mild, but he will need an MRI when we’re back hometomorrow to confirm. Best case scenario will see Briggs sidelined for a week.
My eyes flick to where Ben is treating Casey on the treatment bed. I don’t miss the brief grimaces of pain when Ben prods him in certain spots—the spots I know exactly how to find like it’s second nature. It kills me, the way Casey carries so much pain. We’re getting so much better with his injury, have made vast improvements to both his daily and match time pain levels. But we’re still not there yet and watching him hide his agony after a game kills something fundamental inside me.
His eyes catch mine and he shoots me a soft smile, just a little one that’s full of secrets that nobody but us knows. And maybe Sonny Ingram. Quite possibly Sonny Ingram. But I don’t think it helps Casey to know that one of his best friends is highly suspicious of us.
Because I do not for one minute think that Casey has thought through the full implications of what it would mean if he and I do cross any more of those very blurred lines between us. He is already one of the biggest names in the game. This could blow up his career—and the entire league while we’re at it. And I don’t know if he can truly, honestly grasp the full magnitude of what that will mean for him.
I don’t think I truly know either.
