a sandwich!” Hanson yelled, laughing into his phone as he recorded. The comment distracted Reese, and she tripped over the orange 20-yard marker on the sidelines. The fumble made Hanson howl with laughter, screaming over the roar of Mills’ whistle as he turned his phone from Reese to his own face. “This is what happens when women play ball and—”
The man stopped mid-insult, his entire body going still as Ryder stood behind him, one hand clamped around the running back’s neck. Reese couldn’t hear a thing they said to each other, but she understood the look on Ryder’s face and the warning behind it.
“Is there more drama?” Gia asked, standing next to Reese as she grabbed a black and gold aluminum bottle from the stack on the water table.
Reese followed Gia’s gaze as she drank, sweat already collecting on her lower back. “No idea,” she told the woman, squinting when Ryder glared at Hanson, dropping his hand. “I have no idea what’s going on with those two.”
“So this isn’t about you?” Reese turned back to Gia, eyebrows up at the woman’s expectant expression. “Well?”
“Not everything is about me, you know.” She turned to the table, leaning one palm against it as she stretched her ankle.
“You’re funny,” Gia said, grabbing her cell from her pocket. She gestured at Reese to give her a second with one raised finger, silently telling her that she had to take the call, and Reese kept her attention on Hanson as he handed over his cell to the captain.
Huh, Reese thought, wondering what Hanson had on his phone, wondering more why Ryder cared so much.
In the lull of waiting for the balls to be reset and Gia to finish her call, Reese stared at Ryder, thumbing through Hanson’s phone before he returned it and hesitated, shooting a glance her way.
He was impossible to ignore. More impossible to forget, and despite the irritation at herself for allowing one kiss between them to distract her for the past two days, Reese seemed incapable of letting it go.
Ryder watched her, saying nothing, doing nothing but looking at her for the longest four seconds of her life, and she didn’t drop her gaze. Not immediately. Instead, she let herself take in the arch of his mouth, how he looked on the verge of a smile. Those lips had been over hers Sunday, and though it was stupid, Reese thought she could almost taste him, feel the powerful search of his tongue against hers.
Gia approached at the same time Hanson spoke to Ryder, and they both looked away.
“Now,” Gia said, pulling Reese’s attention back to her. “Did something else happen?”
“No,” Reese answered, handing over her drink. “Nothing that I know of.” And she ran back to the field, away from her manager and the heavy focus of her captain across the field.
She let Mills direct her, not even bothering to pay much attention to his passive-aggressive commands, ones that he didn’t also give to Wilkens. Reese didn’t care, at that moment. Again, she pulled the recent memory of Ryder’s kiss to the front of her mind.
There had been no excuses, no reasons for that kiss, except their mutual grief at Rhiannon’s loss. It had been an old wound, but the scar was still a pulsing, aching mess. Only Ryder’s soft, sweet mouth and demanding tongue had made her forget the loss. It had been a reprieve, the smallest pause in the aching pain that had filled every minute of that day. Sunrise to sunset, August 15 was torture for her.
It was only natural to cling to someone, even someone you knew hated you. Loss breeds hopelessness. It provokes weakness. In that moment, Reese suspected that just like her, Ryder wanted something to cling to. He wanted life and a moment of active living. They could have been total strangers to each other, but Reese was glad it had been Ryder who’d saved her from that pain, if only for a few small seconds.
And now he was saving her from whatever plans Hanson had for her. She glanced back, mouth twitching when she spotted Gia standing next to Pukui, barely speaking to the man, not remotely clued in on the way he looked at her, all hunger and desire and greedy need.
Shit, Reese thought. One kiss from Ryder, and she was seeing lust in the most mundane places.
But then Mills’ whistle sounded and Pukui looked up, spotting Reese’s smile, then shrugged, meeting her in the middle of the field.