Love Me Forever - Juliana Stone Page 0,68

on Molly.

Poppy’s eyes flew open, and she noticed some things as she looked through the donut-shaped hole in the massage table at the floor beneath her.

Big dirty work boots.

Gray work socks.

Tanned hairy legs.

Tanned hairy male legs.

“We need to talk.” Boone’s voice washed over her like cold water over a fire. Her stomach rolled, and she didn’t know if it was because of the anger that burned inside her or the excitement that accompanied it.

Imagine that. Excitement at the sight of those dirty, scuffed-up boots.

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

God, she was such a liar.

“You don’t need to talk. You need to listen.”

“Sir,” Molly’s masseuse interrupted again. “You need to leave.”

“I’ll leave when I’ve said what it is I came here to say and not before. Got it?”

“Well, I’m going to summon security.”

“Knock yourself out. It will take an army to move me away from her.”

Someone coughed.

Poppy held her breath.

“I’m not playing ball in New Orleans this fall. It was never happening. They could have offered me the fucking moon and I still would have said no. For a lot of reasons. And I think it’s time you heard them all.

“I don’t love football enough to give the game what it needs. To give my teammates what they deserve. I took the football ride all the way because my dad hated the game. He was a hockey man, and to him, football was nothing more than a bunch of testosterone-fueled apes pounding each other to the ground in order to get a ball across that white line. The sad thing is, I loved hockey as much as he did, and I could have done something with it, but no way was I giving him the satisfaction. You see, my old man was a straight-up bastard who liked to hit my mother when he wasn’t verbally tearing strips off her. He didn’t like me all that much when I was small, until he saw what I could do with a puck, and then he only liked me for what he thought I could accomplish. He was a mean drunk, a shitty father, and that last night when he found out I’d turned down a hockey scholarship from Bowling Green, he broke my mother’s jaw. When I tried to protect her, he nearly put me in the hospital. I left without saying a word to you because I was confused as hell. I was raw and angry and if I stayed, he would have killed me or I would have killed him. And my mom would have gotten caught in the crosshairs.”

He expelled a long breath, and she tried her damnedest to keep from sniffling, but it was no use.

“I’m sorry for that. I wasn’t man enough to deal with all that emotion. But, Poppy, you gotta know that you were the only good thing I had that summer. And call it serendipity or whatever you want, but we found each other again, and damned if I’m going to let my ex-wife’s poison tongue take you away from me. And she is my ex. I had her sign the papers last week before she left. Cost me a fucking fortune, but it was worth every dime. She gave up custody of Benji, and he and I can live our lives. We can be happy. But that’s not going to happen unless you’re in it with us. You see, I finally realized I deserve to be happy. I deserve to live the life I want with the woman I want at my side. Whatever that life’s going to be. I want it. With you.”

Oh. God.

Heart in her throat, Poppy gripped the edges of the table. The young man who’d been working on her rushed around and held up the towel so she could kneel on the table without her bits showing.

Boone stood in front of her. She could have spent minutes taking in every beautiful inch of his body, which, without a shirt, was impressive. But the look in his eyes took her breath away, and she found she couldn’t speak.

“I want you, Poppy. All of you. Tell me what I need to do to make that happen.”

She had to take a moment, and ignored her friends—Molly, who watched with tear-filled eyes, Blue, who sniffled like she had a cold, and Regan, who was watching with a small smile on her face.

“You could start by kissing me,” she said slowly.

She barely got the words out before he grabbed her to his chest and