Page 109 of Dirty Hit
He looks down at himself, then up at me, cheeks flushing like he knows exactly what he’s doing and is nervous about it anyway.
“What?” he asks, defensively. “You said you didn’t care if I borrowed a shirt. I didn’t realize this one was sacred.”
“It’s not sacred,” I say automatically, and my voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. I clear my throat. “You just picked the one that has my name on it, Little Sin.”
He glances over his shoulder like he forgot, twisting a little to see the back. The fabric stretches over his shoulders, making the Beast in me preen.
“Oh,” he says, like he didn’t clock that before. “Well. Yeah. I mean... It was on top of the pile.”
Liar.
I stand there, grease on my hands, sweat cooling on my back, and feel my soul crack open further. Every possessive instinct in me spikes because my name is on his back, my cuff is on his wrist, and my scent is probably all over that shirt by now.
She would hate this.
She would take one look at him and see leverage. Weakness. She would see the way my eyes are stuck on him. She would smile that thin, cold smile that always meant something bad was about to happen.
I find myself walking toward him. “You know, that’s my lucky shirt,” I lie, just to watch him blink.
“Seriously?” he asks, already tugging at the hem like he’s about to rip it off and throw it at my face. “Why didn’t you tell me? I can take it off. I didn’t mean—”
I catch the bottom of it before he can strip, fingers closing over the soft cotton at his hip. “Relax,” I say, stepping in close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his skin. “You wearing it just means my luck’s improving.”
He swallows, eyes flicking up to mine. “You’re being sappy,” he says. “It’s weird.”
“Shut up,” I say, but there’s no heat in it. I let my hand flatten against his hip, thumb sweeping once over the bone there. “You know what this looks like, right?”
“A terrible fashion choice?” he says, but his voice is softer now, eyes dropping to where my hand rests. “Your fans would riot. They probably want to be buried in this shirt.”
“They can get in line,” I say. “You look good in my number.”
His blush deepens, creeping up to his ears. “You’re ridiculous,” he mutters, echoing that first night in the kitchen, when I held out my pinky and told him it was binding.
“Still binding,” I say reflexively, because apparently my brain is hardwired to make jokes when I’m on the edge of an emotional cliff. He gives a tiny huff of a laugh; that quick, sharp sound that always hits me harder than any applause.
He doesn’t get it; he sees a shirt, a player number, and whatever fucked-up intimacy there is in wearing something that smells like me. He doesn’t see the target it paints in my head. He doesn’t see the way every cell in my body fights itself, one side screaming to push him away, the other digging its claws in to drag him closer.
“You know this ends, right?” I ask quietly, the words thick in my throat. “You know I’m not… I don’t get the picket fence andthe PTA meetings. I get stadiums and spotlights and a whole lot of people who will notice if my TA keeps wearing my name.”
He doesn’t flinch. “Yeah. I know you’re leaving.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I push, because I need to hear it from his mouth before I can even pretend to follow through on my bullshit plan to distance myself. “With this just being… whatever it is until then?”
I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes, weighing the only two options he’s ever been given in his life: duty or desire. Then he shrugs one shoulder, small and stubborn.
“I’m okay with what we have right now,” he says. “I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t scare the shit out of me, but I’m not sorry either. If you want to start pretending you don’t care, that’s your call.”
I stare at him, the last shreds of my resolve fraying like the hem of that shirt. Then I rest my forehead against his, breathing him in—coffee and clean cotton and a hint of my cologne on his skin—and hate myself a little bit more for how much I crave this. How much I want to be the kind of man who can have it without the world burning down around us.
I am not that man.
But with him standing here, in my shirt, in my house, in my fucking life, I am also not the man who can send him away.
‘After the weekend,’ I lie to myself again, even as I press my mouth to his and feel his smile against my lips.
After the weekend, I’ll put some distance between us. For now, I let him cling without even trying.
And I cling back like my life depends on it.
