Page 9 of The Longest Shot
I breathe through my teeth, short bursts that fog in the unheated stairwell. The concrete smells like industrial cleaner and decades of trapped air, but I gulp it down anyway, trying to replace the scent of him. Three years, and my treacherous brain still remembers what he smells like…
Argh!
I'd known he'd be here when I joined Pine Barren, of course. Galloway had beamed with pride when talking about him, the new captain of the reigning national champion. But Galloway hadn'tknown our history, and I'd had a plan: treat him like any other obstacle between me and my team's survival.
But plans don't account for biological treason.
He'd been ten minutes late, the boom of his gear bag slamming down announcing his arrival like a twenty-one-gun salute, his arms spread wide as he accepted applause for successfully finding the room. It was all classichim—turning incompetence into performance art that everyone somehow finds charming instead of grounds for homicide.
And I sat there, frozen, while every one of my carefully calibrated defenses started shorting out. But, worse than that, there'd been the heat crawling up my spine when he'd fired off that booming laugh that colonizes every available frequency…
No.
Refusing to let him cloud my thoughts any more, I push off the wall and take the stairs down two at a time. After a quick walk across campus, I arrive at the hockey arena and make my way to the women's locker room. It's tucked into what used to be a storage area before they grudgingly carved out space for us.
The thought alone angers me, and it feels good.
Because anger issomuch better than acknowledging that I'm wet.
Not metaphorically, but actually, physically, humiliatingly wet.
And all it took was five minutes of close proximity with James Fitzgerald, making all my delusions about having emotional armor look stupid, and undermining my entire identity as someone who makes decisions based on logic and evidence.
All of it, undone by some primitive limbic response to that crooked grin.
The locker room door swings open and, inside, forty thousand dollars of "startup funding" has bought us cinder block walls painted institutional beige, fluorescent lights that buzz, and lockers salvaged from a demolished high school that still have "GO WILDCATS" stenciled at the top of each.
But it's all mine.
Every meticulously organized and scrubbed-clean inch.
I head for my locker and strip, wanting to burn off all this anger and emotion on the ice. Blazer first and then the singlet and pencil skirt. As the items come off, I hang them with military precision while I focus my anger on grown men treating women's athletics like a charity case they're too polite to reject.
The underwear comes off last.
Black. Practical. Athletic cut because I'd planned to practice after the meeting. Designed to wick moisture during athletic performance, not… this. I stare at the evidence with clinical fascination, after three years of conditioning, of building my walls and keeping people at a distance.
And, now?
Damp.
On that hidden stretch of beach, with waves drowning out the rest of the world, I remember the exact moment I let my guard down and let him in. Every wall I'd built after Melissa's betrayal, demolished for a boy with chaos in his eyes and hands that shook when he touched me.
"Are you sure?" His voice was different in the dark, when he was stripped of performance.
"The statistics would suggest—" I started, because even then, even with his breath warm on my lips, I couldn't just say yes like a normal person.
He'd laughed, soft and private. "Fuck the statistics. I'm asking you."
"Yes." Raw. Honest. Terrifying.
The first kiss was careful, almost hesitant, both of us trembling. Then his tongue found mine, and careful went out the window. Cool air mixing with the heat of his mouth, his hands framing my face with a gentleness that contradicted everything about his public persona.
Our clothes disappeared in graceless, fumbling pulls. I remember the shock of air on bare skin, how my nipples tightened instantly in the ocean breeze, how his eyes went dark when he saw me naked. No one had ever looked at me like that, like I was something worth memorizing, worth worshiping.
His fingers had traced my ribs, mapping every sensitive spot until I was shaking. And when we were both naked on the sand, he was everywhere—mouth on my neck leaving marks, on my breasts drawing sounds I didn't know I could make, on my stomach making muscles flutter and contract.
"Jesus, Morgan." He pulled back, pupils wide in the moonlight. "You're?—"
