Page 45 of Meet Your Match
Vince
Two days after the win in Tampa, we flew to Pittsburgh for a Friday night game.
It was back-to-back away games — Pittsburgh on Friday and Baltimore on Saturday. We flew out Thursday evening to get settled, and with a home win under our belt and a three-game winning streak flying with us, we were confident.
I held onto that confidence, onto the fact that we knew what we were doing, and we had the chance to really have the league’s attention if we won these away games, too. That would be five games in a row.
Tampa hadn’t won five games in a row since 2015.
Nothing motivated me like the potential to make headlines, other than the chance to silence sports analysts and their assumptions about me and my team. I could do both with these wins, and I kept that in the forefront of my mind.
After the morning skate on Friday, I went back to my hotel room to do my usual pre-game routine. But something felt off.
I couldn’t place it, but Iknewwithout overthinking it that I needed to shake things up.
“I’m going somewhere.”
Maven peeked up at me from where she was working on her phone on the couch in my suite. She wore olive sweatpants and an oversized black t-shirt that swallowed her small frame. Her bare feet were tucked beneath her, no makeup on her face and her hair natural. I didn’t have to guess that she also didn’t have a bra on under that shirt, which killed me as much as it made me count my lucky stars.
It stole my breath a moment, seeing her like that — comfortable, relaxed, like she was just wasting away an afternoon in her own home.
I’d been buzzed the night after our home game, but I still remembered everything. I remembered following her out of that bar, remembered the exact moment I realized she wasn’t mad at me.
She was jealous.
I didn’t need her to confirm it, because when I’d backed her into that wall, her body had betrayed whatever lie she was trying to tell me and herself.
She’d kissed me.
It had taken everything in me not to take her right then and there. The way she melted into me when I kissed her back, how she trembled when my hands framed her face and my leg slid between her thighs. I loved pushing that skirt up to her hips, loved pushing that girl to the edge even more.
Neither of us had said a word about it since.
I knew whyIhadn’t. I told her all I needed to that night — that if she wanted me, she was going to have to admit it. She was going to have to use her big girl words and say it out loud.
But she hadn’t broached the subject either, either because she was still pissed at me, or she was trying to convince herself it didn’t happen.
Regardless, it didn’t bother me.
I was a patient man.
Or so I told myself.
“Okay?” she said carefully when I didn’t elaborate.
“You don’t need to come,” I said. “It’s nothing that needs to be covered.”
That made her eyes narrow in suspicion, and she set her phone aside before sitting up a little straighter. “Where are you going?”
I shrugged. “Just somewhere to clear my head.”
She watched me a moment longer before hopping up from the couch. “I just need to change real quick.”
“You really don’t have to come,” I said. “If you want a break.”
“Twenty-four-seven, remember?” she reminded me, and then she slipped out of my room and over to hers to change.
I smirked in victory. Reverse psychology worked a little too well on this woman. She was nothing if not stubborn, but sometimes, that worked to my advantage.
