Page 112 of Wicked Minds
Her eyes soften, picking up what I’m not saying—since the end of my football career.
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Nu-uh, one question per game.”
Grumbling, she rolls her eyes. “Fine.”
Of course, she wins the next game and repeats her question.
“I dunno ifenjoyis the right word,” I answer. “It’s a thrill. An adrenaline rush. Do I love it the way I loved football? No. Itstarted as a way for me to let off the extra energy I carried in the off-season and has become a release that Ineedto function.”
Although, as I say that, I realize I haven’t been to The Depot in nearly two weeks—since that night Riley was there. It’s the longest I’ve gone without feeling that clawing urge to replace the pain in my chest with the one in my hands.
It strikes me that Riley replaces that pain, except instead of covering one hurt with another, she soothes it. Like a balm.
She deals the next hand, and I’m not the least bit surprised—even if a little aggravated—when she wins.
“What about drawing?” she asks the second she declaresgin.“Do you love it the way you love football?”
I have to think about her question. They’re two very distinct things, yet they each calmed a part of me. Football helped burn off all that excess energy. The anger that I’ve always harbored but became almost unbearable after what happened during my senior year of high school.
While drawing speaks to my quieter, introverted side. It also gives me space to just be. To be alone with my thoughts and actuallythink.
“It’s different,” I hedge, an uncomfortable prickle settling over my skin. Still, I push forward. This is what I wanted. IneedRiley to pry this stuff out of me because I suck at being able to just say it. “Both are a part of who I am, but they serve different purposes.” I pause, running my thumb over the permanent indentation at the knuckle of my middle finger from too many hours hunched over a sketchpad.
“When I was on the field, running, tackling, giving it everything I had, it was a release. A way to take all the pain and frustration and transform it into something physical, somethingIcould control.” There’s a lump in my throat as I confess, “Football made me feel alive. Powerful. In control. And it didn’thurt that the fans loved me,” I tack on with a wry smirk, but it doesn’t reach my eyes, which Riley astutely notices.
I force myself not to fall into memories of the roaring crowd, the feeling of coarse pigskin in my hands, or the adrenaline rush coursing through my veins during the game. Knowing that, for those sixty minutes, all eyes were on me. That the fans were screamingfor me.It was a far cry from the cold, empty house I grew up in, where my presence was never recognized. Where my absence was never noticed.
“But, when I’m alone with my sketchbook, I can shut out the rest of the world. I’m in a sanctuary of my own making where no pain or hurt can reach me, but it’s blissful silence instead of the crowd roaring in my ears. A contemplative space where I can think. Drawing is like meditating for me. It’s a way to process everything that’s happened, to make sense of the chaos. Unlike football, it’s not about control; it’s about letting go and allowing the lines and shapes to tell a story that words can’t.”
I chance a glance at Riley’s face. Her lips are tucked between her teeth, her eyes shining with an understanding. She gets it—perhaps better than anyone ever has.
Dancing is to her what drawing is to me.
And Halston is her football. Her way of fighting back, of gaining control.
34
RILEY
I’m half asleep when the first touch, a featherlight kiss, presses just below my ear, and it takes me a moment to recall moving to the sofa after I decimated Royce at Gin Rummy. I was reading silently on the sofa, curled up between his legs while he doodled in a sketchbook, and I must have drifted off.
The gentle touch is followed by another and another, slowly stirring me awake and coaxing my body to life. Each one serves as kindling, stoking the fire burning low in my belly to life. Loosening a breathless sigh, I arch into it as the thin top strap slips over my shoulder.
“Royce,” I moan as his large, coarse, firm palms glide over the soft fabric around my ribs, clutching me with reverence as he presses me against the ridges of his body.
He continues to adorn me with light touches and barely-there kisses, which only serve to stoke the flames, building them higher and higher.
As if his earlier confessions hadn’t already ignited a fire inside me.
I saw straight through his suggestion of Gin Rummy, and it only has me falling harder for this man who is trying his hardest to open himself up to me.
“Please,” I moan, hand on his thigh and feeling the sheer strength lying dormant beneath my fingers while I press my ass against the firm erection prodding my backside. My nipples are sharp peaks, poking through the thin fabric of my top in a demand for attention.
“Fuck, I love hearing you beg for me.” Royce’s tone is a guttural rasp in my ear. “I didn’t mean to wake you, but I couldn’t keep my hands to myself any longer. I needed to touch you.”
“Touch me.” The plea is a near-desperate whimper, my every sense consumed by him. I can smell him all around me. Can feel every hard, masculine plane sliding against my softness. I’m fuckingburningfor him.
