Chapter 39 When it's over and we can finally breathe again, Sly carries me into the bedroom. He lays me on the right side of the bed and kisses me on the forehead. "Don't move," he tells me before finally shedding his jeans and crawling onto the bed beside me, pulling me into his arms. I go willingly, burying my face against his chest. My body and mind and heart are blissed out from the most overwhelming orgasms of my life. I breathe Sly in, loving the salty, earthen scent of him. Loving even more the way he's holding me, like I'm made of diamonds-strong but priceless and worth every careful second of his attention. For the first time, I understand the sentiment, because right here, right now, I feel the same way about him. Several minutes pass before Sly slides a finger under my chin and tips my face up to his. It's the first time our eyes have met since he dropped me on this bed, and I realize he looks as dazed as I feel. I reach my own hand up to stroke his hair off his forehead, and he turns his head to kiss the inside of my palm. "You okay?" he asks, the fingers of his free hand playing with the tips of my hair. "I don't know." I smile up at him like a cat that just ate an entire flock of canaries. There's a tiny voice inside me warning me to be careful, that danger lies ahead, but for the first time in a long while, I choose not to listen to it. Besides, if I'm already fucked, I might as well enjoy the high before the inevitable crash. "You tell me." His grin is back. "So much better than okay that just using the word feels like a sacrilege." "I could say the same about you," I tell him. "I hope you will. Many times." He leans down and presses a kiss to my lips just as my stomach grumbles. Loudly. He pulls back with a laugh. "You hungry?" I think about it for a second. "Starving, actually. After the tacos in the park, I wasn't up for dinner, and the three cookies I ate before you got here have definitely worn off." "Worn off or worked off?" he asks with a waggle of his brows that makes me laugh as he reaches for his phone. "Let me see what delivers this late." I think about telling him we could probably get room service through the hotel, even though it's after hours. It's one of the perks the tour company negotiates with whatever hotel we stay at, but I try not to abuse the privilege my fame gives me. Thankfully, L.A. has several all-night options. Twenty minutes later, we're sitting cross-legged on the bed-despite there being a perfectly good table in the other room-sharing what I'm half convinced might be the best turkey sandwich ever made. That or I'm just really, really hungry. "What time do you have to leave?" I ask as I lean over to steal one of Sly's chips. "Is that a clever ploy to kick me out so you can have all my chips?" he asks. "Or are you tired of me already?" "A little bit of both, actually," I deadpan, then roll my eyes as I continue. "I just don't want you to get in trouble for blowing off curfew." "It'd be a much bigger problem if we had a game in the morning," he says with a shrug. "But it's just that fundraiser I mentioned." "What kind of fundraiser is it?" I ask. I'm always looking for a good cause to support. "It's a sports clinic and barbecue we host once a year to help raise money for athletic equipment and programs in underfunded communities in the area." He holds out another chip for me. I start to take it, but he shakes his head before leaning forward to feed it to me. I make sure that I nip at his fingers a little before I accept it, and that slow grin I'm beginning to adore takes over his face. "You're really hot when you do that," I tell him. His brows go up. "Feed you potato chips? Here, let me get you a few more, so you can see how sexy I really am." He reaches down to do just that, which makes me laugh all over again. What is it about this guy that makes me so happy? "I meant the slow-smile thing." "What slow-smile thing?" Now he just looks mystified. "Oh, no. I'm not buying that you don't know exactly what you do to people with that grin. I've seen you use it to your advantage too many times already to buy the clueless act." "Much as I'd like to take credit for my killer moves, I'm pretty sure that's just what my face does when it sees you." His words have my breath catching in my throat and my stomach dropping like I'm on a roller coaster. Or maybe it's the look in his eyes: warm and soft and in this. I have no doubt I've got the same expression on my face as well. The thought has me smiling right back at him, and for a second he looks as dazzled as I feel. "So what's the 'long story' behind how you got this?" I reach out a finger and touch the little star-shaped scar near his eye and watch his amusement die in an instant. "It was a fight," he answers with a shrug. "I kind of figured that when you said someone punched you with their Super Bowl ring on. But what was the fight about?" "Does it matter?" He says it so coldly that I feel the chill of it on my skin. "I'm sorry." I start gathering up trash before climbing out of bed. "I didn't mean to cross a line." But before I can take more than a step or two, Sly wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me straight onto his lap. "I'm sorry," he says, looking down at me with eyes as serious as I've ever seen them. "I wasn't expecting the question." "It's fine," I tell him quickly, because one day and night together doesn't entitle me to personal information about him, and neither does the fact that I shared my story earlier. No matter how vulnerable that made me feel or how much it feels like this day, this night, does entitle me to something. "I probably shouldn't have asked-" "You can ask anything you want," he tells me firmly. "And I'll answer. It's just...I'm not exactly proud of how I got that scar." "Then we don't have to talk about it." "It's fine." He drops a quick kiss on my lips before rolling off me to sit on the side of the bed with his back facing me. "I got in a fight with an ex-friend who happened to be wearing his Super Bowl ring when he hit me. The scar's from the team logo." "Wait a minute. I've seen Super Bowl rings. Are you telling me your friend hit you in the face while wearing one of those huge-ass things?" "They aren't that big." "They look pretty gigantic to me." A chill sweeps through me, and I scoot back against the headboard and grab a pillow to cover myself. "So what were you fighting over? A woman?" He doesn't answer right away, which causes another, deeper chill to move through me. It may be naive, but if someone had asked me, I wouldn't have said Sly was a violent guy. Sure, football can be a brutal sport, but throwing a ball isn't the same as throwing a punch. For a second, I flash back to Jarrod shoving me down in that pool, holding me underwater. I know a fistfight with another guy is a long way from that, but I still didn't think Sly was the type to get in random fights. Silence fills the room as I wait, breath held, for his answer. "We were fighting over my sister." Well, that's unexpected. "Your sister?" I repeat. At first I don't think he's going to say anything more, but then he sighs and shoves a hand through his hair. "He was one of my closest friends." "You mean like the romance novel trope?" I ask, relaxing a little because I can totally see Sly as the protective older brother. "Falling for your best friend's little sister, only the best friend doesn't take it so well?" "More like the idiot older brother who set them up at the beginning of our junior year. They started dating immediately and were together almost five years." His voice is tight, and though I can't see his face to read his expression, his tone isn't just distant. It's glacial. A shiver runs down my spine, and I almost back away from asking any more. But I'm the one who started us down this path, and now that he's fully on it, it doesn't feel right to leave Sly there alone. So I do the only thing I can think of. I take his face in my hands. I press a soft kiss to his hard lips, then another and another until they soften just a little and his arms come around me on a shuddering breath, like he's piecing himself back together one memory at a time. Then and only then do I whisper, "You can tell me." His jaw tightens, and for a second I think he's going to blow me off. But then he takes another shaky breath and nods. "Everyone thought they were the perfect couple. She's a little shy, while he's really outgoing. She's serious, while he likes to joke around. She likes to read, while he's a literal encyclopedia of movies. Opposites attract and all that. But where it mattered, it seemed like they really clicked, you know? They're both smart and interested in a lot of different things, the kind of people you want to have in your corner. Or at least, that's what I thought." He shakes his head, swallows convulsively. And for the first time since I met him, he looks as vulnerable as I always feel. Gone is the charmer with the slow smile and the dancing eyes. In his place is a devastated man filled with regret. Seeing him like this hurts me in a way few things ever have. Because I see him now, really see him, and I can't help but understand that the slick charmer he shows the world is just as much a shield to him as the Black Widow is to me. The knowledge would have brought me to my knees if I wasn't already on them. Sly tries to shake himself out of it, tries to force a smile that he's far from feeling as he rubs a thumb over my upper lip in a gesture that's fast becoming a habit. I kiss his thumb, then pull back enough to look straight into eyes that have gone nightmare dark. "It's not your fault," I tell him softly. "You don't even know what happened." "It doesn't matter. You're not responsible for the actions of others, no matter how reprehensible they are." It's a mantra my therapist has made me say over and over through the years. Most days I even believe it. "He nearly killed her." Sly shifts beneath me, but he makes no move to lift me off his lap, so I stay right where I am as he continues. "He abused her for years, and I didn't have a fucking clue. When we graduated, he went to the Grizzlies in Seattle and I went to the Twisters, so it's not like I saw them in person very often. And when I did, she always seemed fine. A little quieter than she used to be, maybe, but fine. Except for the bruises it turned out she hid under makeup and long-sleeved shirts. I still can't figure out how I didn't see it." "Because she didn't want you to." I stroke his hair back from his forehead, then burrow closer for comfort-whether for him or for me, I don't know. Maybe for both of us, and for his sister, too. Because I know what it's like to cover bruises no one's supposed to see, to hold my breath and smile through something that should have broken me. "It went on for years, Sloane." His voice cracks, and my heart cracks right along with it. "I found out after a game we played against him. It was a home game, so Lucia came with him for the weekend to hang out with the fam. As far as I could tell, everything was normal." He shakes his head like he still can't believe it. "It was my first year as starting quarterback, and it ended up being a brutal loss for the Grizzlies. He seemed okay with it when we went to dinner that night, even joked about it. But it turns out he wasn't...and I didn't have a fucking clue. "After dinner, they went back to the hotel he insisted they stay at instead of my house and...and because I embarrassed him in a playoff game, he beat the ever-loving hell out of my baby sister." 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