I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SAY that teaching German to English children is easier than teaching English to grown adults, but bloody hell, no wonder this job pays so well. The next few weeks of teaching are a nightmare. If I’m not hand-holding the small Vietnamese grandmother as she weeps about having to do homework, then I’m shouting at the Italian Godfather wannabe to put out his cigarette. Cultural stereotyping is something I am very conscious of, but these people walk right into it! Though I will say the group of Scandinavian men—Denmark I think—are a laugh. They have no clue what I’m saying, but they smile through every lesson. I think they were even trying to ask me out for a drink one day after class. My Danish is a little rough, but I was able to politely say, “Nej tak, no thank you.”
Quite honestly, though, I wouldn’t mind a little company. Booker has had some away games, so I’ve seen very little of him. The bit I have seen him, he’s been busy stretching. One day I came home and he was in the living room bent over with his arse high up in the air in the downward dog pose. When he took off his shirt and started massaging Deep Heat onto his lower back, I had to get the hell out of there. Avoidance seems essential for my mental health, especially when he looks like that.
After being at the Harris house a few weeks ago, my old feelings for Booker started to creep back up. And the way he looked at me at his game and across the table with his family all around didn’t help matters.
But tonight is a new night. It’s Friday. I’m done with my final course for the week, so I’m plotting the beverage I’ll make myself as I let myself into the flat. When I walk inside, I’m shocked to find Booker sitting in the living room.
“Oh hi, Booker,” I say, dropping my keys on the kitchen table. “I’m surprised to see you home.”
He stands up from the sofa, thrusting his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans. His dark hair has been freshly cut—close on the sides but with a longer quiff in the front. It’s lightly gelled back away from his face, which displays the full moody colour of his eyes. “Our last match was Wednesday night in Sheffield. We got back late last night.”
I walk over and stand near the sofa, trying to ignore that he was sitting exactly where we got naked. “Erm…right, I saw the score. Congratulations.”
He nods, running a lazy hand through his tresses. “Thanks. I’m glad the season’s over, though. I’m ready for this break.”
“Oh yeah?” I drop down and perch on the arm of the sofa, far enough away that I can’t smell him but close enough to be friendly. “So, what do you do in the off-season? Pig-out and become a lazy sod?”
He laughs. “Hardly. I might eat a little more indulgently, but I still workout nearly every day.”
“That’s cool. The gym here is brilliant,” I say stupidly. Of course he knows the gym here is brilliant. It’s his flat and he’s probably been in it tons of times.
“When do you use it?”
“Mornings usually. Around ten o’clock.”
“We should work out together tomorrow.” The corner of his mouth pulls up into an adorable boyish grin that reveals one of his dimples. “I want to see this exercise lover, Poppy McAdams, at the gym. Is it awful that I’m imagining you falling arse over tit on the treadmill like a cartoon character?”
“Yes, it’s awful,” I baulk and immediately try to school my features so he doesn’t see recognition dawn on my face. I have fallen off a treadmill not once, not twice, but three times. “I’m much more agile on my feet these days. It’s been at least a week since the last time I fell.”
He laughs and it sounds good. I’ve missed his laugh.
“Want to watch a film?” He lifts his brows hopefully.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Only if I get to pick it.”
“No,” he argues, shaking his head and moving to guard the TV. “No bloody way. I’m not watching a Twilight vampire marathon. Or Step Up, or Center Stage, or some other ridiculous dance movie where the kid from the wrong side of the tracks gets a big break at a prestigious dance academy and then saves a puppy.”
My jaw drops. “No one ever saves a puppy.” He pins me with a hard look. I cross my arms and add, “Fine. If you pick the movie, I get to pick the workout music tomorrow.”
He chuckles and replies, “Deal.”
I do a mini victory dance on the spot because what I listen to for workout music will probably kill him. I move my dance down the hallway toward my bedroom to change into some comfortable clothes and call back over my shoulder, “Let’s order takeout!”
Nearing the end of Moneyball with our bellies full of Chinese food and legs stretched out on our respective sides of the sofa, Booker is shaking his head at the screen. “I have a newfound respect for what my father does.” He pauses to lean forward and tosses some popcorn in his mouth. “But I haven’t a bloody clue how to play baseball.”
“I know! I can barely keep up with football. With baseball, I have no idea what they are going on about.”
He chuckles and then looks sideways at me. “Are you ever going to tell me how you’re liking your job?”
I shrug. “It’s all right. The majority of my students are complete lunatics, but it’s temporary.”
“Then you’ll be teaching German,” he states.
“Ja, das ist richtig,” I reply with a wink.
“You’re completely fluent?” He looks impressed.
I nod.
“Well, that’s one good thing that came out of you moving away.”
This makes me frown. “There are lots of good things that came out of my education.”
He nods his head. “Right, of course education is good. But did you have to go all the way to Germany to achieve it?”
“It’s not the moon, Booker,” I snap. “It’s a two-hour flight.”
“But why Germany?” I don’t like his flippant tone.
“I needed a change.”
“A change from what?” he barks.
“From the normal! I was stuck in a rut, and everybody else was having adventures but me. And I’ve always been like the queen of adventures, so I wanted to reinvent myself a bit.” I sit up and sass the last bit for dramatic effect.
“And Germany is where you got your…” He stops midsentence and waggles his finger toward my chest.
Heat moves across my cheekbones and I reflexively curve my shoulders in. “Yes.”
“Was it that Nigel bloke who did it?”
I cringe as flashbacks hit me all at once. Nigel was the best kind of distraction at a time when I needed a distraction. Booker and I had such a rough goodbye before I left for Uni that I was in an odd place. I was hurt by him taking Sidney to our tree in the woods. That betrayal was still fresh.
So when I met Nigel at an international student mixer my first year in Germany, I dove in head first. I was struggling with the language, and he was simply…easy. And a bit naughty, which is precisely what I was looking for at the time. He’s Irish and rough around the edges. He has piercings in places I never knew you could pierce.
Eventually, he convinced me that piercing my nipples would increase sensitivity and make our sex even more enjoyable. I was excited to do something a little wild, but after the first barbell pushed through my nipple, I cried like a fucking baby. It was horribly awkward. I had planned to pierce both, but I couldn’t stomach the pain again. Instead, I rushed out of there with my tail between my legs, cupping my tender nipple.
Quite honestly, I probably would have taken the piercing out right away if I could have stomached it. But every time I looked at it, I remembered the pain and my belly heaved.
When Booker and I slipped the other night, I thought I was going to explode in my knickers when he put his mouth on it and sucked. After the traumatic piercing experience, I never let any guy near it. Not even Nigel. Actually, guys rarely saw me without my bra on because I was so protective of the area.
But with Booker, I lost my mind. I didn’t even have time to think before he gripped it in his rough hand and claimed it as his own. The entire scene was the most erotic thing I’ve ever felt.
And Nigel was right. Holy fuck was my nipple sensitive.
Booker’s posture straightens as he scoots to the edge of the sofa. His shoulders seem broad and tense, his eyes extra shiny as he watches me with a determined stare. He repeats himself. “Did Nigel pierce your nipple?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“But he was there,” he pries.
“Yes.”
“Did he pressure you to do it?”
“No.”
“Bollocks,” he snaps, his tone assertive, making me feel three feet tall.
I examine the way he’s looking at me and note the slight lift of his shoulders. The tension in his arms. Is he trying to fucking keeper me again?
I straighten my posture, brushing back some wisps of blonde hair from my eyes so I can meet his stare. “He suggested it, but in the end, I did it for myself. He never got to…play with it or whatever.”
“What?” He’s staring even harder at me now.
“It was bloody painful!” I exclaim. “I was so traumatised I couldn’t do the other one and I blamed him. I never let anybody…” My voice trails off as I realise what I’ve admitted out loud.
The room is quiet as Booker processes what I’ve just said.
Thankfully, he shows mercy by changing the subject. “Did you date a lot of guys in Germany?”
My shoulders slump. “Didn’t we already try talking about this?”
“No,” he scoffs.
“Something close at least.”
“So what?” he baulks.
“Well, Booker, considering we’ve never talked about relationships, I don’t see why you’re so curious now.”
“Things change.” He shrugs like we’re having a normal conversation.
I exhale heavily. “What do you want to know?”
“How many?” The question is instant. No pause, no hesitation. He’s been sitting on it for a while.
I’m going to make him sweat. “How many what?”
He rolls his eyes. “How many blokes did you sleep with?”
I scoff, “I wasn’t a virgin when I went to Uni, Booker.”
“You weren’t?”
“No!” I screech.
“Who was it?” he asks, sitting up and looking almost perturbed by the revelation that my innocence was taken without his knowledge.
I cross my arms over my chest and shoot him as much attitude as I can muster. “I don’t see why it matters, but it was Giles Windsor.”
“What?” Booker says with a laugh. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying!” My fists clench.
“You let that prat Giles Windsor take your fucking v-card?” Now he looks really unamused.
“Yes.” Why is this so hard for him to believe?
“When?” he asks flippantly, obviously thinking he’ll be able to trip me up and catch me in a lie.
I huff hard and lean forward, pinning him with my own keeper stare. “The same night he threw that party after we all finished our A-Levels.”
This knocks Booker back on the couch, the wind evidently taken out of his puffy keeper sails. He frowns, trying to cycle back through his memory bank to see what clicks into place. I recall plenty of things that click into place that night.
“What about you?” I ask, a sharpness to my voice.
“What about me?” He looks distracted.
“How many girls have you shagged?” My head jerks with challenge. Now it’s his turn to be in the hot seat.
He looks prickly, so I add, “Whatever you say, I’m going to multiply it by two. That’s what a quiz in Cosmo says to do.”
His jaw clenches. “I’m not sure without really thinking, but I’d guess like…twenty.”
I pull back. That’s actually not as bad as I expected. Unless it’s really forty. He looks uncomfortable, but I continue, “Most of them after secondary?”
He frowns. “I don’t see why that matters.”
“Did you sleep with Sidney Carmichael?” It’s my question that is instant this time. On the tip of my tongue, waiting to be unleashed.
A flicker of confusion in his gaze doesn’t go unnoticed. I want to scream at him that I know what he did. I want to push him back on the couch and ask him why he did it. Why he brought her to a place that was supposed to be sacred. That was supposed to be ours. Of all the trees in the world, he had to tell her that he loved her and fuck her there.
But I don’t. Because I don’t care. Because I’m not a naïve little girl anymore who thinks her best friend is the man of her dreams. Booker is a good mate and that’s enough. It’s not his fault my adolescent fantasies tried to twist him into something more.
After a moment of tense silence, I exhale. “Don’t answer that. I’m knackered and I really don’t need to know. I’m going to bed.”
I pick myself up off the couch and walk past a frozen Booker. He’s evidently still processing, but there’s no need to continue a conversation that doesn’t matter anymore. This has all gone far enough.
My feet feel like a hundred pounds as I trudge down the darkened hallway. The dim lamp in my room is on, providing a clear path to my reprieve. I hear Booker’s footsteps behind me. Suddenly, a warm hand wraps around my forearm, bringing me to a spinning halt as he presses me up against the wall.
I don’t have time to react before he rushes out, “I’m sorry, Poppy.” He presses his other hand on the wall beside my face, caging me in. Regret colours his features, but I’m not sure what he’s actually apologising for. “I shouldn’t have pressed you so hard about Germany.”
I restrain myself from rolling my eyes and try to ignore his hardened torso brushing up against my chest. I’m also trying to ignore the way his grip on my arm has softened, and how he’s rubbing soft circles in the crook of my elbow. His callused thumb in that tender spot apparently touches a direct nerve that shoots right between my legs.
My knees wobble. He’s doing that tall and intimidating thing, consuming my senses so all I can do is breathe in his fresh primitive scent. I clear my throat and say, “I just want to get back to normal with you, Booker. We seem so different now.”
Irritation tremors in his square jaw as his eyes flash back and forth between mine. “We’re still Booker and Poppy. We have to be.”
He slides his hand through my short hair to cup my cheek. I inhale a shaky breath as he closes the distance and presses his lips to my forehead. That simple caress on a seemingly innocent part of my body sends shivers up my spine. What is it about a man kissing you on the forehead that’s so damn sexy?
Murmuring against my skin, he adds, “We’re just a bit more grown up now.” I’m limp in his arms as he rubs his nose down my temple and my cheek, his breath mingling with mine as he nears the corner of my mouth. A soft gasp escapes me when he presses his body flush with mine. He feels so good. So warm. So…right.
“What are you doing to me, Poppy?” he whispers, his voice trembling.
His words are a kick to my heart. As I lift my chin for him to kiss me, he pulls back and presses himself against the opposite wall. His hands are still frozen in the position he was holding me. Eyes wide and haunted. With a shudder, he turns and strides into his room, closing the door behind him.
Closing the door on me.