Page 48 of Penalty Box

She pulled back slightly and tossed the used cloth into the trash behind her. “I’ve had to be the strong one. Especially after my mom died. I think my dad still looks at me like… like I’m supposed to be parts of her, and me, all at once.”

My throat tightened with a wave of emotion. “That’s a heavy ask.”

“It’s not fair, no,” she said, almost too quiet. “But he’s harmless, and I love him.”

Silence came over us, like the space around us was its own living, breathing thing, taking time to feel.

“I think we’re more alike than you realize,” I said after a while.

Cass looked at me, her gaze searching, questioning.

“I lost my mom too,” I told her. “And nothing’s been the same since. Not bad. Just… broken. Like something cracked in a way that can’t ever heal. It doesn’t make our family wrong, but it’s—”

“Sad,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

The quiet came back, even more full than the last time. It wrapped around us like a warm cloak soaked through with shared pain and deep understanding.

Her hands moved slowly to my shoulder, fingers brushing my skin, trailing down to the edge of the bruise there. Her touch was gentle, almost reverent as she worked. She shifted slightly to sit beside me on the table, the heat of her body close enough to make me start sweating all over again.

Neither of us moved to escape it.

We just sat there, our faces inches apart, breathing the same air and feeling the same pain. The kind that nobody could see unless they felt it too.

My gaze flicked to the freckle beside her nose, the way her lashes lowered when she looked at my mouth.

God, I wanted to kiss her.

I leaned in against the warning voice in my head. Whether she had the warnings screaming in her head too, I didn’t know. But in that moment, it didn’t matter.

Cass parted her lips, wetting them with her tongue when we were nothing but a breath apart. But something inside me halted at the last second. It was bigger than us, the risk too real.

I stopped right when her lips grazed mine. “I want to,” I murmured. “But— Oh, God, Cass.”

She didn’t move. “If you want to, you should.”

Fuck. That didn’t make it any easier.

And still, we didn’t move apart. I was the one to stop, but that took everything I had in me. She was going to have to help me out and walk away, because there was nothing left in me capable of that feat.

Her hand was still resting against my side, warm against the bruised muscle. I could feel every beat of her pulse in her fingertips. Every breath she took brushed my cheek.

“Nothing good will come of this,” she whispered, her gaze flickering down to my lips and back up again.

I let out a low breath, one that ached in my ribs. “What is it you’re scared of?”

“What areyouscared of?” she countered.

And I didn’t answer. Where would I even start?

I was at the point where my career was set to take off. All eyes were on me, and one wrong move would screw that all up. Everything I’ve been working for my whole life. There was that, but there was another fear. Just as chilling. One that told me if I fumbled Cass, I’d regret it forever.

Her body was so close that whatever pain I felt didn’t matter anymore. Not the bruises. Not the fallout. Not the past or future…

Just her.

I leaned into the warmth of her hand and let my eyes drop to her mouth again. Her lips parted, waiting, like maybe she wanted me to be the one to cross that final line. The line that would wreck everything I was supposed to be protecting.