Page 13

Micah

Davis: He’s ready.

T he text pops up on my screen as I pull up to the curb outside Raeann’s apartment. Davis, one of our beefy linebackers, owns a restaurant here in town, and he’s been known to do a favor for a couple of us guys. One not nearly as time sensitive as mine, though.

Me: You’re saving my ass. Thanks. I owe you one.

Davis: You bet your ass you do. Ignore all the social media accounts saying we had a gas leak.

I shake my head. For real, that’s some true brotherhood shit. I owe him big time.

Me: You’re invited to the wedding.

Davis: I’m sorely tempted to loop in the guys to show them how soft you are right now. We knew shit was going down when you got back to your sets and PR’d your squat.

Talk about having pent-up energy. I seriously considered going into the bathroom to rub one out, but thought I’d better channel my sexual frustration into the gym. It was the best workout I’ve had in a long time.

The door to the apartment opens, and I jump out of the car, storing my phone in the cupholder. “I was coming up,” I tell her as I round the vehicle.

She lifts to her tiptoes and then back down. A silk emerald-green dress fits snugly against her body, the deep V cut showing off her breasts, and suddenly, I’m certain I made the right decision in buying the restaurant out. No distractions. None.

“I saw you from the window,” she says. “Tab’s on a tear tonight, and I thought…” She shrugs. “I thought maybe I better not subject you to her crazy.”

“But Tab likes me.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. She’s all…” she brings her hands to her head and shakes them, “talking nonsense.”

“Like?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I most certainly do want to know.” I sense the apprehension in her voice, but I have to pry. Her doubt about us is a slow disease. When she refuses to say anything, I shrug, “I could just call her.”

She peers up at me, startled. The fire in her gaze wants to call my bluff, but she knows me better than that.

Clearing her throat, she says, “She thinks you, you know, like me.”

I smirk. “I’m insulted you think that’s nonsense. I thought I made that pretty obvious.”

“No, it’s just that…” She takes a deep breath, clearly uncomfortable. “She thinks you really like me.”

Her voice comes out in a whisper that wraps around my insides like a noose.

We’ll have to work on her confidence. This is something she should be shouting from the rooftops with a bullhorn, not murmuring it like she’s afraid of being reprimanded.

“Raeann Gorman. I don’t know what kind of lies you’ve been telling yourself, but let me be very clear. Are you listening?”

Her eyes widen incrementally, holding my gaze.

“I don’t date, but I’m dating you. I don’t talk acquaintances into an orgasm over the phone, and I certainly don’t give random people I have no interest in a credit card that draws on my account. Understood?”

“But—”

I step closer, aware of how intimidating I can be next to people of normal size, and certainly, even more so to women who are at least a foot shorter than me like Raeann.

“This is our first date, and I intend on wooing you enough to claim a second and a third until you’re happily proclaiming to everyone that you’re my girlfriend, then fiancée…

” She sucks in a breath, and I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

“…then Mrs. Raeann Freeman. If Tab said any of those things, then she is a genius, and you should listen to her until you can believe it yourself.”

I hold my hand out for her, and it’s so much more than a kind gesture, it’s a lead in as to whether she’s willing to go on this journey with me.

One I’ve already mapped out for us, including our country home we’ll retire to after my football playing days are over.

We’ll sit in rocking chairs on the wraparound porch and tell our grandkids how we fell in love.

She stares at me, then at my offered hand. In the end, she slips her long fingers into mine, despite not appearing truly convinced. It’s as if she’s willing to play along, but I want her all-in, chips in the middle of the table.

Baby steps , I remind myself as I lead her to the passenger seat.

The fabric of the dress hugs her hips, making me second-guess the decision not to relieve myself earlier.

It’s going to take some mental fortitude not to think about her sexy moans.

But she wants to see that I don’t only want to fuck her, so that’s what I’ll show her.

The drive to the swanky part of town isn’t far. Raeann’s perfume fills the car, and I’m happily entranced, like floating on the waves of the ocean.

I park in back, like Davis said. When I help Raeann out of the car, she peers up at the building, scanning, and I wonder if she’s looking for any identifying signs of where we are so she can text Tab, just in case I turn out to be a serial killer.

The nondescript door at the back of the restaurant opens easily, and we’re greeted by Davis’s Michelin chef. “Mr. Freeman, Miss Gorman.”

He leads us to a table in the back, the same place we’ve had several team dinners before.

“Where are we?” Raeann whispers while a waiter dressed in all black fills our water glasses.

“Don Dilelo’s.”

Her eyes widen in surprise.

My shoulders pull back. “Have you ever been?”

Her brows pinch together as if they’re yelling at me. We’re interrupted when Chef hands us the menus. “Please let me know if I can accommodate anything.”

He walks away, and Raeann’s gaze darts everywhere once again, at all the empty chairs and tables. When she returns her gaze to me, she holds it for a long time.

When she doesn’t ask the question burning in her eyes, I answer anyway. “I decided I wanted to be the only one who got the chance to look at you tonight.”

“But…”

“I bought out the restaurant, Raeann. One of my teammates owns the place.”

“Davis Hawks.”

I nod, taking a sip of water. She does the same, keeping her eyes on me. “You didn’t have to.”

“I know I didn’t. I just didn’t want to get jealous every time someone else looked at you.”

Her cheeks blush, and I wonder if the same heat runs lower. “Sounds like you might be the jealous type.”

“With you, yes.”

“Past relationships?”

I smile, wondering how long she’s been wanting to ask me that question. “I date occasionally. I haven’t had a serious girlfriend in a couple of years.”

“Stella Collins, the actress.”

I shift uncomfortably.

“Sorry,” she blurts out. “I swear I don’t know everything about you.”

“It wasn’t that you knew her name,” I explain. “Stella makes me uncomfortable because of what I thought I lost when we broke up.”

“You thought she was the one?”

I nod. The waiter comes over, and I ask for their best bottle of red. “Do you have someone like that?”

She laughs to herself. “Davey Perkins. We were nine.” She giggles into her napkin. “I was in love with that boy. His daddy owned the sawmill in town.”

“Gold digger.”

Her mouth drops and a bemused laugh pops out. “Hey, he was my first kiss. Back then, I thought that meant we were practically married.”

“Tell me about her,” I ask.

“Who?”

“Little Raeann.”

She looks away wistfully, but there’s a sadness there, too. “I used to run wild in the fields. The little creek by our house was my friend. For most of my life, it was just me and…Daddy. And Granny and Pawpaw, of course.”

Her light dims a little when she mentions her dad.

“You?” she asks.

“Oh, you don’t know?” I joke.

She laughs, her voice filling the empty space. Chef comes back out then, and we both concentrate on ordering our meals. I get a steak, and surprisingly, so does Raeann.

“I’m excited about this,” she states as Chef walks away.

She takes a sip of red wine. “Let’s see, what do I know about you?

You went to UNC. When you got drafted to the Wildcats, my pawpaw did a little dance around the room.

Can’t say I know much about your pre-college career, but I’m almost one hundred percent positive you’re not from around here. ”

I grin. “Rhode Island.”

“Is it pretty?”

“Parts.”

“Family?”

“Mom and dad, two sisters.”

“Are you close?”

“Yeah? About as close as we can be when I live about a sixteen-hour drive away from them. I try to spend time up there in the off-season, and of course, they like to come see a game or two.”

“Why did you and Stella breakup?”

I’m relieved that my body has no further reaction to hearing her name other than I wish Raeann wouldn’t sully her tongue like that. “We wanted different things. I wanted marriage and babies and she…didn’t.”

It’s as simple as that, yet it feels so much bigger. It took me a long time to heal after I realized she wasn’t the one. After meeting Raeann, though, those thoughts are all completely silly.

“Is that a big deal for you? Marriage and babies?”

“And someone to call me Pawpaw? Yeah. Though I just added that one to the list.”

She sighs. “You just know how to say all the right things, don’t you?”

If it gets her eyes to sparkle at me like that, I hope I keep doing it.

Luckily for me, Raeann is as content to skip the small talk and go right to the real stuff.

Throughout the meal, we talk about anything and everything.

From most embarrassing moments—me: I peed my pants in peewee; her: on an eighth-grade school trip, she accidentally flashed a teacher when the wind caught her dress and nearly flipped it over her head—to the scariest things we’ve ever done.

My heart skipped when it seemed as if she was deciding between a few different instances, but then she said, “How about letting the pro football player you barely know talk you into an orgasm?”

Knowing Raeann’s past, she’s holding back on me, but I respect her right to keep things like that private. For now. “By the way, thank you for sharing that moment with me,” I tell her.

She drinks her second glass of wine. “Tell me what it’s like to have all those people looking at you. During a game,” she clarifies.

“It’s sort of like…the biggest rush,” I answer honestly.

“You stay in the game because it’s your job, but it’s a culture shock to go from high school with a couple hundred spectators to college with tens of thousands, and now?

The Wildcats’ arena is one of the biggest in the league, and then there’s even more at home, watching from their couches. ”

I pause for a moment, really looking at her. “You understand some of that now, Miss Viral Video.”

“Ooh, didn’t I say that should be off-topic? If I didn’t, I should have.”

“I don’t remember setting any ground rules.”

“Truth. When was the first time you saw that video?”

“Two seconds before I met you in real life.” Her jaw drops, and I trudge on. “To be fair, I try to stay away from social media.”

“I know. Tab wanted to tag you in the video, but there was no one to tag.”

I snicker. “Well…” Taking out my phone, I tap on the Instagram app and flash her my screen. “I did start an account recently.”

“You’re only following two people.”

“You and Pet Threads.”

She peers over my phone at me, then takes it from my grip, pressing on the screen. “WC34grneyes. You don’t have green eyes.”

“No, but you do.” She hands the phone back, taking a big gulp from her wine glass. I watch her intently. “Wildcats, my number, and?—”

“Green eyes.”

“Well, I didn’t know your birthday or if you played any sport where I could’ve added your number.”

“So you added my most attractive feature?”

I grin, shaking my head. “There are a lot of things about you that are attractive. I added your most soulful. It’s like I can look into your eyes and see everything you’ve seen.”

“I hope not everything.”

She’s quiet for a while after that, and I don’t push. Chef brings out a decadent cheesecake for dessert, and we eat until she sets her fork aside and wipes her lips with the black cloth napkin.

“What would Pawpaw say about my choice of restaurant if he liked my choice of pro teams?”

“I think he’d give you a ten.”

I bite my lip, wanting to push, but not too much. “Thoughts on a second date?”

“I don’t know. What do my green eyes say?”

This close, I almost don’t trust myself to look, but chickening out now is out of the question. How this girl isn’t tied down yet, I don’t understand.

Or maybe I do. She said she likes freedom. She wants to do things on her own. I could be jumping into a Stella scenario again…

My body rejects the thought as soon as it pops up. I won’t let it happen. Failure isn’t an option when it comes to Raeann.

“They say…” The outer green is a halo around the brown closest to her pupil. It’s almost like I can see myself reflected there. “You’re scared, intrigued, hesitant, but willing. And you really want to know what my dick looks like.”

She bursts out laughing, the sound sending a shiver up my spine. She stands, and I immediately get up to help her out of her seat.

When we get to the door after she says goodbye to the staff, she turns to me. “I’m really glad you were the only one looking at me tonight. I think I like getting special treatment.”

Of anything she could’ve said, that was the one thing that makes my dick twitch. She was completely mine tonight, and she liked it.

“Should we do it again?”

She shrugs. “Young Raeann thinks you’re the greatest catch in Tennessee.”

“Even better than Davey Perkins?”

“Definitely. He got the prom queen pregnant, and Granny told me she thought she saw him leaving Leslie Johnson’s—decidedly not the prom queen—house one early morning when she was heading to the doctors to get her eyes checked.”

The way her accent thickens when she talks about home makes me think I might actually know young Raeann. I fake gasp. “Rake.”

“That’s if Granny’s eyes can be trusted. She once mistook a weather vane for a crow. She had us thinking we were going to be cursed the entire year.” A ghost of a smile crosses her lips. “Turns out we kind of were, but she still can’t see for shit.”

I place my hand on the small of her back to lead her out of the restaurant. I need to lock her up and hide away the key because I won’t be the only one who notices Raeann Gorman.

They’ll have to get through me first, though.

“So that’s a yes to a second date, right? Your year will be anything but cursed if you agree.”

She pretends to think. “You’ve swayed me, Micah Freeman.” Her gaze holds mine. “Yes.”