“Yes, Trey, I’ll let you do it. But you’re buying it for yourself, not for us. We’ll live in it and take care of it and someday when you come home to Hawaii you’ll have it for yourself.” She pauses, prepping her own killing blow. “You can have it for you and your family.”
“That ‘someday’ is a long ways off,” I remind her.
“I know. You have a career to think about now. I’m not pushing.”
I chuckle. “Aren’t you?”
“Not yet. Give me a few years and it’ll be all you hear from me. For now I’m happy to see that you’re not popping up in the tabloids every two seconds with a new girl on your arm anymore.”
I sit up, running my hand over my head roughly. “Yeah. I’ve been busy. I’ve been focused.”
“Focused on the game or on a girl?”
“The game.”
“Have it your way. I need to get to bed if I’m going to wake in time for that flight to Louisiana, and you should get some sleep too.”
“I’m wide awake.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” she scolds lightly. “Goodnight, baby. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
“See you tomorrow. Remember to have fun!”
“I will. Bye.”
“Goodbye.”
I let her hang up, watching the phone’s screen go dark in my hand. I swipe my thumb across it twice, each time watching it light up only to let it go dark again without doing anything. I shouldn’t do anything. I should go to bed. I should hit the gym or go for a run, or one of a million other things I could do to calm the rising in my veins, but there’s only one thing that will help it. Only one person who can bring me down, because just speaking her name is what brought me up.
I bring up my text messages. Her name is at the top. It always is because she’s always the last one I message before I go to bed. She’s the first one I hit up when I wake.
I can’t sleep.
I wait only three minutes for a reply.
You should try. Busy day tomorrow.
I have tried. I can’t make it happen.
I can’t help you.
You’re the only person who can help me.
I wait five minutes this time. I’m sweating by the second.
We can’t.
I just want to sleep.
You just want to get laid.
I want to lay down next to you. I don’t have any condoms, don’t bring any with you. We won’t go there tonight.
Then where are we going?
To sleep. That’s it. I swear.
I wait seven minutes. Eight. Nine. My heart is thudding in my chest, my stomach knotting and dropping low where it aches with anxiety. No one calms me the way Sloane does, and no one winds me up like her either. She can make or break me in an instant and it’s a power I never intended to give to anyone. It’s not something I especially enjoy.
But when that soft knock comes on the door, I don’t give a damn. I jump up off the bed, swing the door open, and usher her in with an arm around her waist. I dip my face low into her neck where I can feel her hair around me, smell her scent wafting warmly from her skin, and I inhale her like she’ll save my life. I haven’t seen her in days. Weeks. It’s too long to go without her.
She takes hold of my arms, laughter on her lips, but I silence it with mine. I kiss her deeply until she melts in my arms, going soft. Going weak.
She’s in her pajamas. Short shorts, a Kodiaks hooded sweatshirt, and probably nothing underneath. It makes me desperate, and I struggle to remember my promise. I try to remember if I have a condom stashed somewhere in my bags.
As if reading my mind, she pulls back, shaking her head. “You promised,” she reminds me softly.
I drop my forehead to hers, nodding faintly. “I remember.”
“Well, remind him,” she tells me, looking down at my waist, “because he’s not listening.”
“He has a mind of his own and fuck, he likes you a lot.”
She wraps her arms around my neck slowly. “I like him too,” she purrs.
I grimace. “That’s not helping.”
“What will?”
I stand up straight to reach behind her. I turn off the lights. All that’s left is the glow of the TV and the ghostly shade it casts over her. I pull her with me to the bed where I sit down and pull her to stand between my legs. She releases me to lift the sweatshirt up over her head, tousling her long blond hair into a mild mess. Underneath the sweatshirt is a tank top. Orange and yellow. It has ‘Domata’ written proudly across her breasts.
It’s the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
“You’re killing me,” I accuse her gruffly, reaching for her hips. Raising my hands slowly.
She puts a stop to it with her own. “Can you handle it or should I go?”
“You probably never should have come here.”
“I think we both already knew that.”
I push past her hands. She lets me. She lets me raise my palms flat across her body until I take my name, take her, in their grasp and hold them firmly. I love it when her breath slides out of place. When it hiccups in her throat and her pulse begins to fly in her neck. I love it even more when my mouth finds her peaks through the thin material of the shirt and her body goes stiff in my grasp. When she straddles my leg and grinds her warmth against my thigh. When she sighs my name like a curse.