Page 213 of Break the Ice
“Forever,” I say, and mean it, this, the girls, the ache, the joy, the life that’s finally starting to feel like mine.
CHAPTER 65
JAYDEN
Another cheesy fry lands in my mouth as Eli excavates for the plain ones like a surgeon, digging past bacon and molten cheddar. His thumb pauses on the iPad, scrubbing back through the clip until the ice reappears in slow motion.
“Watch it carefully,” he tells me, patting the space next to him. He shifts to the middle cushion, and the iPad ends up balanced across both our thighs. “Bruce lost his footing when you passed him the puck, and Barkley was right there to snatch it up. He dekes, Rio falls for it, Weismann is taken out, and?—”
“I missed it.”
“No,” Eli shoves a fry in my mouth when I’m about to argue. Salt, grease, his knuckles brushing my lip. “You were marking two fucking guys at once. It’s what Philly do best, they split the defense and create traffic. You and Weismann are still finding your sweet spot and?—”
“He’s not you. I can’t read him like I…”
The sentence unravels when I glance over and find his eyes on my mouth. Everything inside me jolts. He licks the corner of his lip, slow, like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it, and that hooded look drags over me like a hand.
Contact turns loud. The press of his thigh to mine, the heat of him underneath the iPad, the light brush of his pinky aligning with mine like a secret. My bare foot bumps his, and he doesn’t move away. The room narrows to where we touch.
Fuck. My heart hammers up into my throat. Air gets thin, thoughts scatter, and the only word left is his name.
Eli.
Don’t leave me hanging. Please. I can’t take it. I?—
The trill of our phones drills through the moment, vicious, yanking everything back into shape.
“Umm…” Eli clears his throat. “Probably Finley.”
I brace for him to pull away, the way I always do, steel for the retreat that hurts worse than the waiting. But he doesn’t. He leans back into the couch and thumbs open his screen, thigh still pressed to mine as I swipe the notification.
Our girl fills the glass—bright smile, eyes lit up—and my chest reassembles itself around that one image.
“She looks beautiful,” I murmur, zooming in until her grin eats my phone.
“When doesn’t she?”
I cut a look at him. The way he’s thumbing the side of his screen is almost reverent, like he’s stroking her cheek through the pixels.
“Never. She’s incredible, you know? Like, no one should be so fucking perfect ever.”
Not just her. Him. That crooked quirk of his mouth when he glances at me. The soft dent at the center of his chin deepening with his pout, the light spray of freckles you only see this close, the pale gold strands falling forward when he tilts his head to really look.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, voice roughened to something that sounds like my ribs feel.
He knows… He says.
I say…Not a chance.
If he knew the first thing about how good he is, he’d hear it in the way I breathe. We’ve been here for hours, looping the same clip, and he keeps finding new angles to convince me I didn’t screw up. No impatience. No snap. Just Eli, quiet and relentless, shouldering my blame like he can carry it for me.
Now we’re both staring at the photo of our girl, like we weren’t a breath away from giving in to this thing between us, this drag that never lets up. The flush along his cheekbones bleeds down his throat, and I feel the echo of it under my skin.
He’s all in or he’s gone. He always has been. And lately everything is blurred except the wanting. The wanting is razor-sharp and constant. It’s choking me.
“JJ…”
I swallow. “Yeah, Eli.”
