But you play for a team that goes from zero to hero in under a year, with more press than the team that won the whole damn thing, all of us getting near-daily calls from our agents with sponsorship and endorsement offers, interview inquiries, and discussions of next year’s salary negotiations, and there’s pressure.
Get stronger. Faster. Throw harder. Every day counts. Your body is a machine. Rest. Lift. Run. Stronger. Faster. Harder.
Win more.
It hasn’t been a full week since we got here for winter training, and the pressure’s solid. People think the season makes you.
They’re wrong.
The off-season training makes you. And I’m starting it wrong.
Fuck.
I’m a block away when I realize I’m going the wrong direction, and when I turn, there she is.
Again.
“Go away, Tillie Jean.”
Her brows are furrowed as she stands there right outside the bar. “You heading back the long way?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to glitter you. Or throw the paint water all over you. Or—no, wait, okay, I did mean to flirt incessantly with you to annoy you and Cooper.” She smiles.
It’s a friendly smile. An olive branch smile. The kind that promises she’ll quit trying to annoy me if I quit making it so easy for her to succeed.
She glances at my bare chest, then starts to shrug out of her Fireballs hoodie. “Do you want my—”
I cut her off with a grunt and cross the street. No idea if she drove or not, but I discovered two seconds after I unpacked my suitcase that she lives next door to the house I’m renting here for the winter, which means if she’s done for the night, she’s probably going the same way.
And yeah, if she’s going the same way, I’m taking the long way.
The very long way.
My pants will dry eventually, and then they’re going in the trash too, right next to my favorite shirt.
Dammit.
“We could call a truce, you know.”
“Go away, Tillie Jean.” Not sure why I think that’ll work the second time I say it, but it’s all I have in me.
Her footsteps sound on the empty street as she jogs along behind me. “I’m not saying I don’t deserve having my house toilet papered. Or something way more creative than that. It’s a rule. I get it. I glittered you. You get to pay me back. I wouldn’t even argue if you got me back for the dirty paint water, even though that really was an accident. But maybe it’s time we call a truce on the other thing.”
And she just went there.
Of every memory I have in my adult life, the memory of the first time I met Tillie Jean is one that I have apparently not actively scrubbed hard enough out of my brain. And there it is again, popping up in technicolor glory, with all of the complicated shit that went with it. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of the two of us, I’d be giving more here.”
It’s forty degrees, I’m shirtless, in soaked jeans, and I’m breaking out in a sweat. “Go back to the bar.”
“Max.”
I swing around and glare at her. She’s three inches from me, all blue eyes and dark hair and tight shirt over breasts that I regularly pretend I’ve never seen while she holds her hoodie between us.
“What?” I snap.
“Can we please call a truce?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re here all winter and it’s frankly exhausting pretending to like you all the time. Also, if we call a truce, you might not growl and glower every time you see me, and then Cooper might start wondering if there’s something going on between us, and what’s better than torturing Cooper?”
She smiles again, eyes lighting up with mischief and an offer of friendship, which is something she gives so damn freely without having a clue how much of a privilege it is for her to be safe and happy and loved in this adorkable little town where she can offer that friendship without hesitation.
Reason number three hundred seventy-six why I hate Tillie Jean Rock.
“Fine. Truce. Whatever.”
Her lips purse. They’re painted a deep rose, and I should not be looking at Tillie Jean Rock’s lips when I’m on edge. I don’t do smart things when I’m on edge.
I don’t date. I screw around.
And if Tillie Jean wasn’t Cooper’s sister, I would’ve screwed around with her a long, long time ago.
She’s living, breathing temptation when she’s not talking, which, thank god, she does all the time.
Reason seven hundred forty-four and reason sixty-two.
She crosses her arms over her shirt—her clean pink Anchovies Pizza T-shirt that’s so tight I can see the outline of her bra under the streetlamp, and fuck me, it looks lacy.
I rip my gaze to the sky, turn, and stroll away again.
And again, she chases after me. “I grew up as the baby after Grady and Cooper. I know when I’m being told something just to shut me up.”
“It’d go a long way toward a truce, then, if you shut up, wouldn’t it?”
“Chicken versus egg. Are you cranky because I flirt with you, or do I flirt with you because you’re cranky? And why’s it only me? You flirt back with everyone, but not me.”
My fingers twitch. My palms are getting clammy. And I can’t slow my heart rate. “I’m cranky because you flirt with me.”
She jogs along beside me. “So if I quit flirting, you’ll quit being cranky?”
“No.”
“That’s not how truces work.”
“We don’t need a truce. We need you to shut up.” And I need to get home. Shower. Breathe.
Quit being such an asshole.
But she laughs.
She laughs, and it’s pure joy and uninhibited happiness dancing through the night and leaving dents when it bounces off my personal bubble.
Reason five hundred.
“If you only knew the number of times my brothers told me to shut up,” she muses. “Pro tip: that doesn’t work on me.”
Of course it doesn’t.
“Now, if you’d—mmph!”
I’m possessed.
Possessed by the anxiety devil that wants peace and needs quiet and sees only one possible way to make a woman stop talking for three damn seconds.
You kiss her.
You kiss her, because she can’t talk when her mouth is busy, and she’s been flirting with me for four damn years, and yeah, there’s no small part of me hoping she’ll realize this is a bad idea and rack me in the nuts.
Nothing distracts a guy from worrying about stupid shit months down the road like immediate pain.
But this is Tillie Jean Rock.
And I have underestimated her.
She’s not kneeing me in the nads. Nor is she shutting up.
She’s making gaspy little moans as she leans into the kiss, her tongue darting out to swipe at my lips, tasting like coffee and rum and temptation under the stars, her hot, silky hands settling gently on my bare chest like she’s afraid if she touches me, I’ll melt away like cotton candy in the rain, and kissing isn’t enough.
I want to pull her behind the nearest building and rip her shirt and pants off and screw her hard and fast. The only thing better than a solid racking to knock an anxiety attack out of the ballpark is a good hard screw.