Page 45 of The Longest Shot
“This never happened,” I say, the words steady despite the chaos in my chest.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then something shifts in his eyes—not agreement, exactly, but understanding—because we both know this can’t happen again but that it absolutely will. Because resisting this force is like trying to take on a one-on-five power play all on your own.
“Never happened,” he echoes.
But when I reach for the door handle, his hand covers mine for just a second. His thumb brushes across my knuckles, andthat simple touch sends me right back to wanting him again. Which is just great, because apparently he's turned me into someone who gets turned on by hand-holding.
“Morgan,” he says my name again, softer this time, a question and a promise and an apology all rolled into two syllables.
I meet his eyes, and what I see there terrifies me more than Galloway’s threats or my team’s struggles or any external enemy ever could. I see the possibility of a future where the stairwell and this janitor's closet aren't the end but the beginning, and it's everything I’ve spent three years protecting myself from.
“I have to go,” I whisper. "But watch out, because Galloway will be after you now that you've helped me…"
He nods, his hand sliding away from mine, and the loss of contact feels like losing a limb. But before I can rethink it, I slip out the door, leaving him there with a raging case of blue balls and the taste of me on his lips and the secret of what we’ve just done hanging in the air.
The hallway is blindingly bright after the dim stairwell.
Normal. Ordinary.
Like the last ten minutes haven’t fundamentally altered my reality.
I make it three steps before I have to stop, pressing my palm flat against the wall to steady myself. My legs are shaking. My whole body is shaking. I can still feel him everywhere—his hands, his mouth, the solid weight of him pressing me into that wall.
But no matter how much I lie to myself, it's clear the war between us is over, and a secret alliance has just been signed in the most volatile way imaginable.
And I have absolutely no idea what happens next.
eighteen
MORGAN
The wobbly tableat Pine Barren Bagels is trying to assassinate me.
Every time I shift my weight between the two elbows I've got leaning on the table, it lurches sideways with vindictive enthusiasm, threatening to dump my black coffee directly into my lap. The metal leg rocks against the uneven floor—click-scrape, click-scrape—like a countdown to disaster.
And that would honestly be a mercy at this point, because third-degree burns would give me something to focus on besides the fact that less than twelve hours ago, I had James Fitzgerald's tongue in my mouth, and his cock pressed against my stomach, hard and?—
The table wobbles again, as if it's warning me to stop.
I grab my mug with both hands, steadying it like I'm defusing a bomb. The ceramic burns against my palms, but I don't let go. Because physical pain is simple and makes sense, unlike the electrical storm still crackling under my skin, sending random shocks through my nervous system every time I remember.
The campus's main breakfast hangout is packed with Saturday morning chaos. Students are clustered around tiny tables, their laughter bright and careless. The espresso machinehisses every thirty seconds, and someone's playing acoustic guitar in the corner.
The normalcy of it feels surreal versus the confusion swirling inside me.
The couple next to me is sharing a bagel, feeding each other bites with nauseating tenderness. She has cream cheese on her nose. He kisses it off. They're performing their own personal Hallmark movie, and I want to lean over and inform them that real relationships are pain.
But maybe I want that?
Wanthim?
My body won't stop vibrating. Every nerve ending feels exposed and raw. I can still feel the ghost of his hands on my waist, those long fingers spanning my ribs. The heat of him everywhere, overwhelming, drowning me in want I thought I'd successfully killed three years ago after he'd hammered my heart into pieces.
The bell above the door chimes, and I know it's him before I even look up. Some primitive part of my brain recognizes his presence like a tuning fork recognizing its matching pitch. And when I look up and spot him, I take a sharp inhale of breath, because he looks terrible.
Notphysicallyterrible.Physically, he looks like he always does—unfairly attractive in worn jeans and a PBU Hockey hoodie, his hair doing that thing where it can't decide which direction to stick up. Objectively, he'd be a catch for any woman on campus, especially since most would find his humor endearing.
But there's something different in the way he's moving through the crowded bagel joint this morning. The usual frantic, kinetic energy that radiates from him has been replaced by something quieter, more careful, like he's carrying something fragile that might break if disturbed.
