I gave him the cocked eyebrow again, worried for a moment my eye might stick like that, because that’s what my mom would say. Oh God, did I really just think about my mom right now?
“Seriously,” he said. “I keep the blanket here for me. I usually come out here after important games and look at the sky so I can thank whatever fucking lucky star for looking down on me. Boys don’t just get out of the trailer park, Cate. Guys like me don’t have the chance to go to school, to finish and get out, and then meet with agents and go pro. It just doesn’t happen. It’s a frickin’ fairy tale, and I can’t fucking believe it.”
That’s when I fell in love with Blane Steele. I’d secretly watched him play last year and had only met him in person at the beginning of this school year, but I was all-in. Hearing him speak about how lucky he was touched something deep inside me.
Of course, the love would have to remain my secret until the day I died, and I would lie to myself in order to keep having moments like this. Any normal woman would know this was a disaster waiting to happen. Boy meets girl, he has fun, she falls for him, and it ends in heartbreak. But I couldn’t be bothered right now with that.
“Maybe you’re just that talented,” I said. “Does it have to be a lucky star?”
“Cate, my mom was a teenage girl knocked up by a truck driver. This shit doesn’t happen in my world. We live in a trailer park, where all it takes is a tropical storm to rip our house off the ground.”
He pulled me back into his lap again and propped me up against his hard chest, and leaned forward a little to breathe in my scent. My heart stopped for a moment as his lips ran along my neck, sucking, licking, and nipping.
“And you too,” he whispered. “I met you, and I thank the fucking stars for that too.”
I pinched his leg.
Wrapping his arms around me tighter, he said, “I mean it. I was sitting there at Sonny’s, thinking about how I was sick of the meaningless nameless hookups, ready for something else. I didn’t know what the fuck else, but something else. And poof, there you were. All swearing and falling and knocking shit over.”
I warmed all over at his words. They were so genuine and sincere, I couldn’t help but allow myself to believe them. Letting out a little sigh, I relaxed some and leaned back into him.
“I think it’s that one.” Blane pointed toward the sky at a sparkling star, bright in the midnight-blue sky. “That’s the one that brought you to me.”
I lifted a hand and pointed it at another star, this one bigger and brighter. “And that’s the one that’s been watching over you your whole life.”
How could a girl not get swept up in this romantic game? With Blane’s aftershave stirring my senses, his hard thighs pressed against mine, and his minty breath warming my collarbone? I was doomed.
“What about you?” he asked. “Who looks out for you?”
I smiled, even though he couldn’t see my face. “My dad.”
“Yeah?” He brushed my hair back and ran his tongue along my earlobe.
“My parents divorced a while back, and I was always closer with my dad. He owns a little Italian bistro, and when I was younger, I wanted to live with him full time. But my mom said no,” I said, thinking I would eat my way into being a cow with him, “so I stayed with her and my two sisters, who are perfect. And well, I’m me. Flawed.”
“I don’t know about flawed, but definitely huggable.” Blane flipped me, tackling me to the ground, and squeezed me tight.
Squeals pierced the dark night, and it took me a moment to realize with surprise that they were mine.
I wanted him to kiss me, to place one of those delicious swipes of his tongue on my lips like he had my neck, but he didn’t. He just grinned as he tickled me silly and then walked us back to the car, his arm around my shoulders.
My head bumped against his solid chest as we walked. I wanted so badly to stop and turn to him for a kiss, but I didn’t. I took what I could get from the man, and if it was only kisses on the neck, then so be it.
Blane
“Hey, Hafton! Sonny B. here, taking over the daytime airwaves this Friday in gray and dreary Ohio. Let’s see if I can brighten up your day. Phish is in town tonight, and guess who’s going? That’s right, yours truly will be knocking boots before, during, and after. Oh, did I just get naughty on the air? I did. Lucky me, I get to take four lucky listeners with me tonight. Let’s play a little Truth or Dare, or just dare, shall we? How about I play Phish’s ‘Sample in a Jar’ and when I come back, we’ll announce our first dare.”
“Turn this fucking shit off,” Ashton called from the sinks in the locker room after practice. “I can’t listen to that white boy’s trustafarian hippie wannabe music.”
“No way,” Demetri hollered back. “Bet you a hundred bucks DJ boy is going to dare something here about our man or his princess.”