Page 73 of Overtime
“Can’t steal someone who wants to be to be taken. And no. Thankfully. I guess she wasn’t on reporter duty since he was playing. Conflict of interest and all that. And I didn’t stick around after to chat. Just got on the bus to get to the airport.”
“Well, she’s clearly insane to choose the lesser option and marry it. Ugh.” Joss shakes her head in disgust. “Although I guess she gets what she deserves. Because she definitely doesn’t deserve you.”
“I don’t care about her.”
“No? Don’t want a little revenge for old times’ sake?”
“No. Barely crosses my mind. The woman who gets me obscene cupcakes and waits for me in my kitchen after the game though… I can’t ever stop thinking about her. And now, thanks to her sheer robe neither will my brother.”
She grabs a pillow off the bed and launches it at me. “I had no idea your brother was coming home with you.”
I laugh and kneel across the bed to grab her and pull her down onto it with me. She falls under me, a pile of giggles and limbs, and I grin at her.
“I mean, I think that’s what you get for pulling a stalker move.”
“See, I thought it was cute until I was sitting there in the dark. But then it was already too late.” She looks up at me, her fingers wrapping around the back of my neck, delicately tracing lines over my spine.
“I mean it was hot as fuck. We might have to reenact it when he’s gone. Take the icing from one of those cupcakes and paint you with it.” I kiss her, and she parts for me, letting me taste her and her legs wrap around me.
“I think I did it partially out of jealousy though,” she whispers the confession.
“Jealousy?”
“I don’t know. I have a wild imagination. I imagined her realizing how much she fucked up and chasing after you to tell you,you’rethe one she really wants.”
I sigh because I really don’t want to talk about Kate right now when it’s late, and all I want to do is be buried inside of Joss. But I don’t want her to think I’m keeping anything from her.
“Oh my god.” Her legs drop away from me, and she starts to sit up. “Did she? Because she better stay away from you, or I will kick her ass. But if she’s trying to cheat on him with you, I mean I guess good for you.”
I shake my head, running my tongue along the inside of my cheek.
“No, she didn’t chase after me. But she’s a sports reporter, and she’s interviewed me a few times. A couple of them when it was just one-on-one with the videographer.”
“And?” Joss’s brow raises.
“She’s implied she’d be open to it. Nothing blatant but obvious enough all the same.”
“Well…” Joss lets out a little sigh. “I guess I can’t blame her. Do you want her back?”
“Fuck no.”
“Are you sure? Because I remember what you were like when she got with him. You really loved her a lot. It broke my heart to see you like that. I know even with all the stuff Ben had going on with Violet he was worried about you.”
“That was years ago, and I was young and stupid. I didn’t even know what love was then.” I realize what I’ve said as soon as it comes out but before I can backtrack, she smirks.
“I mean, I did try to tell you that.”
“I don’t mean with you. I mean with her. With you—”
She puts her fingers to my lips. “You don’t have to explain, Colt. Jesus, real love or not you were still heartbroken over the fucked up shit they did to you, and finally getting head for the first time in your life. So I didn’t blame you for the confusion.” She laughs a little to try and disrupt the tension between us but my chest tightens all the same.
My heart thuds in my chest as I remember confessing I was in love with her and her looking at me like I’d lost my fucking mind. Scrambling out from under me a second later and putting her clothes back on while she made excuses about forgetting she needed to meet someone and running out of my place a second later. Another memory of trying to go to her at her apartment and explain the next day, and her telling me she thought I should probably just go to a party and fuck someone my own age comes just after... And I’m surprised when the wound still reopens just that little bit all these years later. I open my eyes, and her hand slips over my jaw as she studies me.
“I’m sorry I was such a heinous bitch to you back then. You scared the fuck out of me. You were so sweet. So raw and honest, and just everything I had no idea what to do with. I didn’t deserve you, and you deserved better than me.”
“You were exactly what I needed, Joss. I just wasn’t what you needed. That’s the problem for us in this universe—we’re never the right people and it’s never the right time.”
“But I like pretending it is,” she whispers, her green eyes so intense that I get lost in them for a long minute as I look at her and run my fingers over the long line of her neck and over her chin and lips.
