Lilly’s hand feels impossibly small in mine. Delicate and warm, even in the cold morning air. She’s taking a rare break from work to walk with me. It’s only fifteen minutes, but I’m grateful for it. I needed to see her. It’s why I came down to the bakery at six in the morning on my day off. I could be sleeping in. I could be in my sweats in front of the TV, shamelessly catching up on The New Girl, but instead I got up at dawn and came down here just to hold her hand for fifteen minutes. Well, that and to taste her tongue for seven minutes of heaven on the sidewalk in front of a sex shop. My morning wood has had a revival since then. I was hoping the walking and the cold would help lay him down, but that sugary scent that lingers in Lilly’s hair after a morning of baking is working overtime on my libido. He will not go quietly. He wants loud, hot, and sweat soaked. He wants hands in hair and teeth grazing skin.
I don’t blame him. I’m looking at Lilly in her tight jeans and oversized coat, and I’m thinking about that night on the couch. The wet, slick feel of her against me in the shower. It’s been over a week since that night and kissing is all we’ve done since. Maybe I’ve had roaming hands, yeah, but it’s the most innocent groping I’ve ever conducted, I swear. I’m taking it slow like she wants and it’s good because she’s worth the wait. For once sex isn’t the endgame for me.
Added bonus, my right hand is getting one hell of a workout.
“Are you hungry?” Lilly asks innocently. “I put apple fritters out just before you got to the store. They’re probably still warm.”
I smile, squeezing her hand gently. “You remembered my favorite.”
She laughs, her voice simultaneously rough and soft. “You eat like five of them every time you ‘help’ in the mornings. You’re a little transparent.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“My favorite donut?” She thinks about it for a second, her shoulder bumping mine as she walks. “Raspberry filled. Glazed.”
“Sexy.”
“How is that sexy?”
“Raspberries are always sexy.”
“I thought that was strawberries.”
“It’s both.”
She smiles to herself, shaking her head.
“What?” I prod.
“You have a fruit fetish. I don’t know why that surprises me.”
“I don’t have a fetish.”
“You have a small fetish.”
“I don’t think you know what ‘fetish’ means.” I stop, tugging on her hand to pull her back the other way. “Come on. We’ll go back to the sex shop and I’ll teach you.”
She laughs, letting herself be pulled easily into my arms. “I’m never going in a sex shop with you. I can see the headlines now. My mom would cry.”
“Do you see any paparazzi around here?”
Lilly searches the street, the sidewalk across from us, finally bringing her eyes back to mine. “Nope. Not today. But they’ve started circling. John said there were six outside the shop during your game yesterday.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Yours.”
“Yours!” I laugh. “You gave me chocolate dicks to eat!”
She blushes furiously. “I didn’t think you’d eat them on television! I thought it would be a private joke.”
“I don’t have private jokes.”
Her eyes cloud with the sky, darkening. It’s getting colder instead of warmer as the morning moves on. Thin, gray clouds are rolling over the weak yellow sun. It feels like rain is in the air.
It also feels like she’s pulling away, even though she hasn’t moved. She does this whenever my fame comes up. She gets wiggy. Nervous. She says it’s because of what happened to her brother with Cassie Carlyle, and I wish I knew how to explain to her that I would never do that. I won’t ghost her. Not in a million years. She doesn’t understand that I’m just as vulnerable as she is right now. That this is new territory for me.
She has no idea she could hurt me far worse than I could ever hurt her.
“Lilly.”
“Hmm?” she replies distractedly.
I reach out to run my fingers through her hair, smoothing it away from her face as the wind tries to hide her from me. “Tell me a secret and I’ll keep it.”
She chuckles faintly. “What are you talking about?”
“I want you to trust me. I want you to feel like there’s some part of this that’s not on the table for the public, but you’ve gotta give me a chance. You’ve gotta give me something private to let me prove that I can keep it private.”
She looks away, her eyes falling to the sidewalk where litter dances by in the wind, tumbling and spinning. She’s focused somewhere else, following that blue scrap of paper, but she leans her head into my hand. It’s a strange set a gestures, like she’s pulling away and burrowing in at the same time. Like she’s torn in so many ways that I wish I could understand.
“Is there anything that’s yours that you don’t share?” she asks quietly.
“My dad,” I answer immediately. “I never talk to the press or the team about him. No one knows his name or where he is.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. I found him when I was in college. I went to meet him.”
Lilly’s brow creases, her eyes returning to mine. I lower my hand from her head to her shoulder, wrapping my arms around her loosely. “I thought you said you never met him.”
“No, I said I never got to know him, and I didn’t.” I take a deep breath, filling my chest with air to ease the tightness growing inside it. “On spring break my sophomore year at North Carolina I told my mom I was going to Mexico with guys from the team. I didn’t, though. I lied to her and she still doesn’t know about it. No one knows but me and my dad.”