Page 111 of The Cheerleader

Then his mouth quirks up on one side, and I see his dimple, and triumph shoots through me. On the heels of that elation, a low-level hum settles in my lower belly, with unbearable excitement stirring there, more dangerous than whatever I’ve experienced before in my life. Or at least that’s how it feels. Unsettled, wanting the forbidden, and vulnerable to all manner of undoing and destruction.

“You get it. You get me.” His voice is low and raspy, and I’m not sure what he means because I’m too captured by my needy, wanton longing for him.

“That you don’t care about much? Or that you only pretend you don’t?”

He chuckles, and the smirk that breaks his hard, beautiful face makes him look like the wolf he is. The very dangerous big bad wolf. No one’s idea of a pet. Nothing cuddly about him.

“I care. Deeply and absolutely.”

“About…”

“My family. Their well-being.”

“And football.”

He laughs. “Football is a means to an end. Like farming, only more… fruitful.”

“I see. And do you care about your well-being?”

He gives me a look that says, What do you think? I’m afraid I think the answer is no.

“And your friends?”

“The friends I care about come under the heading of family,” he says without hesitation, as if he’s had this all worked out in his head. Or maybe it’s all self-evident to him, or taught, drilled into him from a young age. By his father?

“Like Liz.”

He nods. And stares like he’s waiting for me to ask.

But I have no intention of asking him whether he cares about me, whether he considers me a friend to the point of family. The idea confuses me.

The possibility that the answer is no scares me.

“You’re an unusual man,” I say.

He nods. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Recognizing me, that I’m a man, that I am who I am.”

I have nothing to say to that. So I reach for something flip to say, to diffuse the uncomfortable intensity, and to distract me from my cowardice for being unable to hear what he thinks of me.

“But you’re still a horny college boy underneath it all.”

He laughs. A real, normal laugh with no edge, no caution, just for the hell of it, because he thinks I’m funny. The things that sound does to me are indescribable, more than watching 4th of July fireworks over the breaking surf, or getting kissed for the first time.

“Touche, princess.”

I let out an exaggerated sigh. I don’t want him to know how he affects me, or that the princess nickname is growing on me—at least when he says it. But I’m afraid he can see through me, see everything.

God, I’m in trouble. I need to deflect.

“So are you going to play football in the NFL or not?”

“Million-dollar question,” he says, closing his notebook and closing his mouth on the subject of the NFL.

After Liz and Penderly bring the food back from Irma’s, Liz insists that Penderly stay, and they sit with Bryan and me.