Page 80 of Playing for Keeps

I knew I had to push it all out of my mind and concentrate solely on rugby. Because I’d come home to make the New Zealand team, and I had one more game to convince the New Zealand selectors that I should make the squad.

But forgetting the kiss wasn’t an easy job. It took active concentration to keep the thought out of my mind. And when I was falling asleep and relaxed, it was back in a flash, taunting and tormenting me. The feel of his lips against mine. The taste and warmth of his mouth.

Ethan didn’t want to risk wrecking our friendship. And I didn’t want that either.

I’d promised him nothing would ever alter our friendship once before, and then, almost immediately, I’d broken that promise. So I couldn’t give him reassurances that nothing would change if we took things to the next level.

We were teammates. I was the uncle of his kid. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend.

So many reasons we shouldn’t take this thing between us further.

But that kiss had cemented something for me. I would never ever want anyone else the way I wanted Ethan.

It drained me, thinking of all the years ahead of battling to carve out some sort of personal life while living with that truth. I’d already failed with Jonathan.

I tore my mind away from that now. Concentrate on the moment. We had a rugby final to win.

“So, you ready to go crush the hearts and dreams of over a million Aucklanders?” Ethan came to stand next to me at the airport.

Yeah, that was the thing about distracting myself from Ethan. It was difficult to do when he was constantly around.

“I was born ready for that,” I answered him.

“Spoken like a true Cantabrian.” Ethan flashed a smile at me that I automatically returned.

I assumed Ethan was desperately trying to reset things between us back into the normal zone. I was trying my hardest to play along.

As I walked beside him across the tarmac I tried to tamp down my body’s reaction to being in close proximity to him. I caught a whiff of his aftershave and my stomach twisted with longing. Not a good start.

We boarded and were greeted enthusiastically by the flight attendant.

Ethan looked at me. “Sit together?”

“Of course.”

Would it get to a point where being friends with Ethan was too painful? But I knew from experience that cutting him out of my life was a pit of agony too. Let’s face it, I was fucked either way.

And wasn’t that a happy thought.

Ethan checked his phone and his smile changed into a scowl.

I was immediately on alert. “What’s wrong?”

“My dad just sent me a message on Facebook wishing me good luck. He’s probably cursed the whole team now.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah, apparently I have one. He crawled out of whatever swamp he’d been living in the first year I made the team.”

“He did?” I blinked. “Shit.”

Ethan had been a kid when his dad left, leaving him with a semi-invalid mother and a never-ending succession of her loser boyfriends. I couldn’t begin to imagine all the crap his reemergence would’ve stirred up for Ethan.

“What did you do?”

“I told him to fuck off.”

The venom that Ethan said those words with had me flinching.