Page 14 of Checking All Her Notes
“Did you see that shot?” he asks, grinning.
“I saw you showboating,” Ivy teases.
Dax appears next, then Jett, who kisses Hadley’s cheek before high-fiving some kids waiting for autographs. Zane emerges, talking on his phone, waving as he walks by all of us.
And then Jude appears.
Towel slung around his neck. Hair damp and curling at the edges. He’s changed into jeans and a gray hoodie, but I can still see the flush of exertion on his face.
He looks at me. Directly at me. And my entire vocabulary disappears.
“Hey,” I manage.
“Hey.” His voice is rough. Deeper than usual.
Ivy and Hadley suddenly find reasons to be very interested in something happening down the hallway. Subtle, they are not.
I step closer, trying to gather my thoughts. “You were incredible out there.”
“We won. That’s what matters.”
“No, I mean you specifically. You were intense. Commanding. Kind of...” I search for the right word.
“Kind of what?” he asks, and there’s something in his tone. Something almost playful.
“Kind of a bruiser.”
He blinks, caught off guard. “A what?”
“A bruiser. You know, big, unstoppable, slightly terrifying.”
His mouth curves. Not quite a smile but close. “Terrifying?”
“Only in the best way.”
He laughs. Soft but real. The kind of laugh that makes his shoulders relax and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Never had a nickname before.”
“Well, now you do. Bruiser.”
He repeats it under his breath, like he’s trying it on. Testing how it sounds. “Bruiser.” Then, quieter, “Guess I like the way you say it.”
“That’s because you’re vain.”
“That’s because it’s you.”
The air between us hums. Electric and charged. My pulse trips over itself. I mean to joke again, to keep it light, but then his hand finds my cheek. Gentle. Questioning.
And suddenly there’s nothing funny left in me at all.
His lips brush mine first. Tentative. Testing. Like he’s giving me a chance to pull away.
I don’t.
Instead, I rise on my toes without thinking, my hands sliding to his chest where his heartbeat thrums hard and fast beneath my palms. His other hand comes up to cup the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair.
The kiss starts soft, then deepens. Slow and steady, like the rhythm I made him find with the metronome. Only this time, he leads.
When he pulls back, his voice is rough. Wrecked. “You shouldn’t look at me like that after a game.”
