Page 73 of Cross Checked
I had been one second away from begging him to kiss me. Not wanting him to. Not imagining it. Begging. That was the part starting to scare me most.
Because somehow, even after moments that should’ve made everything awkward, we always found our way back to steady ground with each other anyway. Nothing betweenus stayed uncomfortable for long. Not tension. Not emotional conversations. Not even the kind of near-line-crossing moments that should have changed the atmosphere between us completely. We just recovered naturally afterward like both of us instinctively knew how to pull the other person back from the edge before things got too heavy.
It made everything feel dangerously normal.
And the sexual tension alone should’ve made this impossible already.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew exactly what was happening every time Cade looked at me too long or his eyes dropped toward my mouth mid-conversation like he was thinking about taking it. I knew what was happening every time I caught myself staring at his arms, or his chest, or the way his hands looked gripping weights in that stupid gym. I knew what it meant when my whole body lit up because he told me to breathe like he had any business giving orders that close to my neck.
Honestly, if I forced myself to fully acknowledge the situation, I wanted Cade Mercer in ways that were becoming deeply inappropriate.
Which was genuinely humiliating considering I’d spent the last several years swearing hockey players were emotional terrorism wrapped in expensive cologne and inflated egos.
I snorted softly to myself while pulling into the apartment parking lot because at least I was self-aware enough to recognize the disaster unfolding in real time.
Fantasy wasn’t reality.
Plenty of women fantasized about men they’d never actually date. That didn’t mean I was emotionally spiraling into some tragic hockey romance just because Cade happened to look insane shirtless and occasionally stared at me like he was trying to figure out if my mouth tasted good.
Except whatever existed between us was starting to feel too real to dismiss as fantasy.
The attraction was real. The chemistry was very, very real. And unfortunately, the friendship being real was probably the biggest problem of all because friendship meant comfort. Trust. Routine. It meant getting attached. It meant stealing time together and pretending it was for school. It meant laughing too easily after almost falling apart under his hands.
And relationships with athletes?
Hard pass.
I already knew too much. Saw too much. Athletes loved attention almost as much as they loved themselves, and everything in their lives revolved around performance, image, ego, and the sport always coming first no matter what they promised otherwise.
Even Cade admitted he didn’t really understand emotions properly. He’d never had his heart broken. Never experienced unconditional love the way I understood it. Never learned what healthy emotional attachment was supposed to look like inside a family that actually stayed warm after the cameras and money and expectations disappeared.
What kind of idiot would trust someone like that with their heart?
Apparently me.
Potentially.
Which was exactly why I needed to get my shit together immediately.
The apartment was mostly quiet when I walked inside. Soft music drifted faintly from Aura’s room while Charm’s television played low somewhere behind her closed door, but I didn’t stop to talk to either of them because honestly, I was already too far inside my own head to survive human interaction right now.
At the rate things were going, one of us was eventually going to slip because the tension between us was becoming impossible to ignore now. It existed in every room we occupied together like something living and breathing between us. Every glance lasted slightly too long. Every joke carried undertones neither of us acknowledged directly. Every accidental touch felt loaded now.
And after tonight?
There was no pretending my body didn’t know his.
Not fully. Not the way some reckless part of me wanted to. But enough. Enough to know the heat of him behind me. Enough to know the weight of his hands when he was being careful. Enough to know what his restraint felt like when it strained against both of us.
Maintaining a platonic friendship with him was starting to feel like trying to hold a lit match without getting burned.
Still, I’d fight for it because no matter how much I wanted him sometimes, I would never let another man destroy me again.
I changed into one of Cade’s stolen hoodies before climbing into bed with my laptop balanced against my thighs, twinkle lights glowing softly around my room while a cold breeze drifted in through the cracked window. The hoodie smelled faintly like him, clean laundry and cold air and something warm underneath that made my chest tighten before I could talk myself out of it.
Pathetic.
I tugged the sleeves over my hands and opened my notes for the project, determined to focus on literally anything besides Cade’s mouth, Cade’s hands, Cade’s breath against my neck, Cade’s voice telling me that was him holding back.
