Page 96 of Forecheck
A girl could dream, right?
March passed in a flurry of school and studying. After the trade deadline drama, I’d been unable to stop myself from clinging tighter to Brent. When he was on the road, I missed him like I’d miss a limb. Only the utter end-of-semester madness kept me from going crazy without him.
The neediness scared me in a bone-deep way. It scared me how few reservations I’d had about opening my heart and life fully to him. After Lee had cheated on me, after he’d hurt me so thoroughly and embarrassed me so badly, I didn’t think I’d ever love someone again.
Leave it to Brent Jean to prove me wrong.
On the surface, everything looked perfect. But looks could be deceiving, and the thought that he could’ve been traded and left me—and that I would’ve rearranged my entire life and career aspirations to follow him—had resurrected insecurities within me I’d thought I’d buried deeper than that.
While my parents’ marriage had proven to me time and time again that it was okay—wonderful and necessary, even—to share my life with someone, that it was okay towantthat for myself…the more serious I got with Brent, the more difficult it became for me to hang onto the things that had been so important to me before he’d come into my life. To keep him, I’d conceded on things I’d once stood firm on. And the further they slipped from my grasp, the more I felt like I was spinning out of control, losing myself in the process of giving myself to Brent.
When Brent wasn’t on the road, we spent every spare moment together, alternating between his place and mine, if only so we could come together at night and wake up together in the morning.
At this point, with his hectic work schedule and my equally crazy school schedule, it felt like we were simply going to the motions. The sex was still mind-blowing, everything I’d secretly hoped for but never dared ask for from previous partners. As a lover, Brent was attentive, inventive, and utterly devoted to pleasing us both fully. I’d never been so sexually satisfied.
And emotionally—God, every time I looked at him, I fell a little more in love. For his part, Brent practically worshiped the ground at my feet—would happily get on his knees and do just that if I asked. This love was more precious to me than anything, more than I’d ever dreamed of for myself.
And in those moments, when his arms were wrapped around me or when he looked at me with his heart in his eyes, I forgot myself. My world narrowed to a pinpoint, where all that mattered was him and us together.
But when he was gone, and I could once again see reason, how quickly I’d become one of those girls I never wanted to be left a sour taste in my mouth.
I was at an impasse. There wasn’t anything wrong, and yet I couldn’t shake the dread that settled over me without warning.
Why did I feel like everything was about to blow up in my face?
“You should move in.”
I stilled.
There it was, the proverbial other shoe.
It was early April, and with the regular season rapidly drawing to a close and the Warriors ramping up for a playoff run, time together had been harder and harder to come by. This was one of the rare mornings when one of us hadn’t had to run off early for class or practice before the other had awoken. Instead, we’d risen with the sun and spent the morning lazily making love. Afterward, we’d curled together, my back against his front, his arms caging me against his chest.
The moment had been perfect until he’d dropped that bomb.
I shifted over until I faced him. “What did you just say?”
“I said you should move in. We spend all of our time together anyway. It doesn’t make sense to keep leasing two places when we could just have one.”
“No,” I said quickly, shoving his arms away and rising to sit. The response was so automatic, so rapid fire off my hip that I almost laughed at Brent’s expression—mouth flattened into a line, eyes wide enough that the sclera dwarfed the irises, that muscle in his jaw ticking.
“And why the hell not?”
I really should’ve been asking myself the same question. Logically, there was no reason not to. But I wasn’t working with my logical brain here. No, Irrational Berkley was in charge, and I was simply along for the ride. Irrational Berkley knew that if we moved in together, I’d be relinquishing the final piece of my independence. If things went south, extricating myself would be impossible. As it stood, untangling all the parts of me and my life that were tied so tightly to Brent would surely kill me anyway. But living together?
That wasn’t a step I was ready to take.
“Berk?”
I knew I needed to answer, to give him some sort of explanation for why I wasn’t even considering this.
“It’s just too soon.”
Woefully inadequate but the best I could offer.
For a beat, Brent didn’t move. Then he disentangled himself from the sheets and stood.
“Where are you going?” I asked, the sheet slipping to my waist, forgotten. Normally, the sight of my bare breasts would have Brent closing the distance between us and sinking into my body faster than I could blink.
