Page 42 of Try Hard

Eve

T he sole reason I wished I’d zipped my coat up before dashing through the rain was because Ophelia was being pressed into wet clothes that I knew were soaking into hers.

Unacceptable behaviour on my part, but, even that wasn’t enough not to give the woman everything she wanted.

And, if what she wanted was me holding her, I’d sign up for that every day for the rest of time.

As she looked up at me, something in her expression shifted, moving from dreamy into grounded and she looked down between us, eyeing the wet spots on my shirt. “Sorry,” she said, stepping back, and I missed her already. “Do you want to take a quick shower? Something to warm you up?”

I warmed up plenty when she held me. The cold I was certain would be there in normal circumstances wasn’t even registering. I was in Ophelia’s former bedroom, holding her in my arms, talking about how she only wanted me. What cold in the world was there to feel?

Of course, I had an above average tolerance for wet clothes from years of playing rugby in the rain—somewhat unavoidable for most players, but especially so when you grew up in the UK. That had no bearing on my complete disregard of the current situation, though.

In truth, I didn’t want the time away from her that it would take to shower, but I wondered whether she needed a moment, and, if she wanted me to hold her again once we were dry, it would be nice to be warm and freshly clean for her. So, I nodded. “That’d be great, actually.”

She smiled and I could tell she was debating something internally.

I wasn’t sure if she felt the same way, but, when she’d showered at my mum’s place this morning, I’d barely been able to hold myself together as thoughts of hot water cascading over her soft skin filled my mind.

Whatever it was, I felt certain she’d tell me when she was ready.

Having Ophelia open up to me was the best gift I’d ever been given, and I loved how much more she’d been leaning into that the past few days.

Her parents’ house wasn’t really big enough to require an escort to locate the bathroom—it was incredibly obvious where it was, and you could lean out of her door to point at it—but she walked the four steps across the landing with me and paused at the door.

And I was absolutely not going to tell her not to.

“Have a great shower,” she said, seeming nervous in a way that set butterflies fluttering in my stomach.

Maybe the shower was a good idea after all.

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“I’ll, um, get changed while you…”

Words were not something I generally struggled with. Ophelia sometimes made me feel like I’d never learned them to begin with.

After far too long, I cleared my throat and nodded again, still unable to speak.

She stifled a laugh but seemed bolstered by my reaction, and I couldn’t help the way my brain stalled trying to make sense of that. I wanted to race through the shower, charge back to her room, and take her immediately into my arms again.

Even the fact that, as I closed the bathroom door, I could still hear Ophelia’s parents and my dad talking downstairs wasn’t enough to put a dampener on my excitement.

From the way they’d told us to have a good night, they definitely thought we were having sex.

Which, aside from being incorrect, told me far too much about what each of them had gotten up to in their parents’ homes over the years.

I had never once had sex in my parents’ homes, and Ophelia did not strike me as the kind of person who could ignore the context to get into the moment.

Which was the real point, after all. If she ever was ready to have sex with me, that whole thing required safety, so much more safety than I knew she’d feel with other people in the house.

Of course, I wasn’t about to explain that to any of them—but nor was I necessarily unhappy about the fact that they thought she liked me enough to do that with.

Consumed by thoughts of Ophelia, I was pretty sure I showered a little too quickly, but I couldn’t seem to slow myself down.

The pull of her from across the hall was too much to resist, and, after almost two decades without her, I wasn’t about to give the separation any more time than it had already had.

She straightened when I stepped back into her room from where she’d been leaning over a small table with a bluetooth speaker.

I was pretty sure quiet music was playing, but my brain was mostly caught on the fact that she was wearing a soft white t-shirt.

It clung to her body beautifully, and it was the most revealing thing I’d ever seen her in.

Ophelia had always been one for layers and long sleeves.

But there she was, gorgeous lightly freckled arms completely bare.

Then, she turned to face me, paused, and any capacity I’d ever had for intelligent thought departed my body.

“You… nipples… pierced.” Far too slowly, my own words registered and I whipped my head back up to look her in the eyes, slapping my hands over my mouth in mortification. That had absolutely been an internal thought.

Ophelia pressed her lips together and a blush was creeping over her pale, perfect skin, but she looked deeply amused. “Indeed.”

Last night, she’d worn a sweatshirt to bed.

She’d kept her bra on. A padded one. And I’d been foolish enough to think the pressure against my body was the appliqué on her clothing, the folds of material between us when I’d held her against me, when I’d been lying on top of her. Not once had I imagined that.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, pulling myself together and unclear about what exactly had just happened. I had never lost my cool like that. And Ophelia hated comments on her body.

She laughed, watching my horrified expression that I was keeping far away from her body. “Honestly, that wasn’t quite the reaction I was expecting.”

I cringed. “I really am so—”

“I think that was better.”

“Better?” My brain was spinning like it was running on ice, no traction .

She hummed and walked towards me. For half a second, I considered picking my stuff back up and launching myself out of the room, certain she wouldn’t want to be near me. But… she didn’t look particularly concerned.

When she was only a foot away from me, she stopped. “You asked if I had tattoos, and you heard me tell Sophie I wasn’t afraid of needles. And, you know, I’ve gotten very good at hiding them if I don’t want people to know they’re there…”

I definitely didn’t want to think about Soph, but her next statement whipped any thoughts of her straight from my struggling mind.

She was right. I’d been around her for days now, we’d shared a bed, and I hadn’t had a clue.

But I did now. She wanted me to know. The fitted, white t-shirt had been a very purposeful choice.

I cleared my throat, trying for words. All that came out was a garbled sound like I was dying. Emotionally, I was.

Ophelia laughed and took another step closer to me. “I’m guessing this reaction means you approve?”

“Approve?” I asked slowly. Thinking through the fog of emotion in my head was more difficult than it should have been, but I knew this mattered. “I do, but you don’t need my approval of your body or what you do with it.”

Her smile was mind-boggling—and my mind was already boggled enough. So sweet and calm and real. “I know,” she said, like she’d worked long and hard to know that was true. “But what if I want it?”

“Take it. All of it. Every bit of approval I’ve ever had. It’s always been yours.”

She moved right into my space, wrapping her arms around my neck, and I wasn’t going to miss a chance to hold her.

My arms around her back, pulling her close, felt like the most right thing in the world.

Perhaps that came with finally getting to hold the person you’d spent most of your life wanting.

Whatever the reason, I was just grateful to be in her orbit.

“I was right,” she murmured, looking up at me far more adoringly than I thought I deserved.

“About what?”

“Physical compliments from you feel different.”

“I, uh, don’t know if I really made it to the compliment part…”

She laughed, soft and musical and entirely mesmerising. “I beg to differ. That response was quite the compliment.”

Nobody in the world made me blush like she did. I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t so eager for her to spend the rest of time doing it if that pleased her. “Well, I’m glad that came across.”

“Ah,” she said, moving one hand to trace along my jaw, “your fancy British accent again.”

“Right.” When I thought about my accent, I couldn’t make it sound like it usually did. I knew Brits thought it sounded American, and Americans tended to know it wasn’t a fully American accent, sometimes hearing the British once I pointed it out.

But Ophelia, of course, had picked up on how obnoxiously British it became when I was… flustered beyond belief. That accent I’d never once in my life actually spoken routinely with.

She smiled at me, amused, for several long moments and, despite the embarrassment, all I could think about was how beautiful she was, how close she was, how it felt to have her touching me, and how badly I wanted to kiss her.

Eventually, she looked down at my throat. “They were another way of reclaiming my body.”

My mind came back in screaming clarity. Of course it was that.

She’d had her sense of self ripped from under her, and she’d been so strong and so brave, reclaiming who she was, her physical self.

Soph had been doing something similar—if less extreme—with a lot of her early tattoos.

Staking a claim on her body, doing what she wanted with it rather than what everyone else told her she should be.

Now, she was always so amused when people told her she’d regret them when she was old.

She knew she never would. They were her.