CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Wow,” Serena said as they stepped into the stadium, “this place is huge. And loud. Really loud.”
Deliberately shaking off the dark cloud of his thoughts—his worries about the future and his grief over the past—Sean made himself focus on the here and now.
His family had been coming to games for as long as he could remember, and they’d worked their way up over the years to sweet seats right at the fifty-yard line. But if he and Serena sat there, it would make their disguises pointless. Which was why he’d sucked it up and bought a couple of crappy seats in the nosebleeds.
Clearly, though, she had no idea that their seats were terrible as she looked around her with such wonder on her face that he could read it from behind her sunglasses. “This is so great.”
He’d taken girls to games a couple of times in the past and had always regretted it. They were too cold, too hot, too bored, too annoying. But Serena was already perfect.
“How much do you know about football?”
“Nothing.”
He’d assumed as much, guessing that a supermodel with an always-there mother and no dad in the picture probably didn’t have many chances to watch football on TV or live at a stadium.
“The game’s pretty easy to understand. You have an offense trying to score and a defense trying to stop them. The offense has four chances to go ten yards to get the first down. If you don’t get at least those ten yards, the other side gets the ball. You score by getting the ball in the end zone, or depending on your field position you can try to kick the ball through the uprights for a field goal.”
“Surely it’s more complicated than that.”
“There are a bunch of extra details I could add in like penalties, turnovers and safeties, but if you just remember that the offense is trying to get the ball in the end zone, and the defense is trying to stop them, you’ve pretty much got the point of the game.” He waved over a teenager who was selling concessions. “I’m thinking popcorn, hot dogs, candy, and Coke. What kind of candy is your favorite?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say all of it.”
If she had to guess? Hadn’t she grown up eating teeth-rotting candy like the rest of them?
He told the teenage girl to give them one box of each kind of candy, along with loaded hot dogs, a huge bag of popcorn and two bottles of Coke.
“Tonight must be costing you a fortune,” Serena said when he came back with the pile of junk food in his hands. “I want to pay next time.”
He loved that she was talking about next time. “Nope. I asked, I pay.”
“Then I’ll just have to ask you first, won’t I?” Before he could interject, she said, “Will you go out with me next Friday?”
He had to mess up her green lipstick then by kissing her. “You know,” he said when he made himself draw back, “that means you’re in charge of finding something normal for us to do.”
That seemed to take the wind out of her sails a bit. “What if I blow it?”
“I have faith in you.”
She stopped then and stared at him as if he’d just blown her mind. But before he could say anything else, the ref blew the whistle for the opening kickoff. Together, they sat back in their seats, his arm around her shoulders, her head nestled into his chest, and both enjoyed forgetting about everything else in their lives for a few hours.
Everything but each other.
* * *
Serena quickly picked up the game and by the end she was so into it that she was screaming and jumping out of her seat along with everyone else when Stanford won in the final seconds of the fourth quarter.
She threw her arms around Sean. “We won!”
Who cared about the game? He felt like the biggest winner in the stadium just for getting to be with her. Her smile was so big and wide that he could see the face paint cracking at the corners of her lips. “Let’s go take off this goop so that I can kiss you properly.”
That was all it took for heat to rise between them. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the stands and down the stairs to the exit. For three hours he’d been close to her, had gotten to hold her hand and put his arm around her shoulders.
But it hadn’t been close enough.
Thank God their Friday night date wasn’t over yet. Not even close.
“Where are you taking me now?”
She was slightly breathless from the speed at which he was making them walk as they headed across the street from the stadium to the empty baseball field and the locker rooms.
“I’ve got this fantasy,” he teased her, “about you and me...and an empty locker room.”
She laughed, but it was a nervous sound. One that had him stopping in the middle of a patch of grass to tell her, “You know I’m kidding, right? I just figured it would be a private spot for us to take off the face paint and hang out for a while until the crowds thin out. I meant it when I told you that I would never do anything to hurt you. And I won’t do anything you don’t want, that you’re not ready for, either.” Even if he was beyond ready for all of it.
For all of her.
“I know you won’t. It’s not you, it’s me.” She gave another shaky laugh. “That didn’t come out right. I need to explain and hopefully, I won’t just end up making it worse.”
It was nearly completely dark out by then and they were far enough away from the crowds that she finally slipped her sunglasses up to the top of her head so that he could see her eyes. He’d missed being able to look into them. Missed being able to see what she was thinking, what she was feeling.
“My mom had a pretty hard time with my dad. It’s weird to even call him that, when he was more like an accidental sperm donor. When he found out she was pregnant, he split. And even before him, I don’t think she’d ever been with a guy who treated her well. All my life, she’s been worried that the same thing will happen to me. That some guy will use me or hurt me.” She shook her head. “Even though I know her experience with men is colored by what she’s been through, and that all guys can’t be bad, the truth is that it’s hard to forget what she’s taught me my whole life.” She paused before adding, “And it’s hard not to be scared that she’s going to be right.”
“I’ve been that guy,” he admitted to her. “I mean, I haven’t gotten anyone pregnant,” he clarified, “but I’ve been a dick who only thought with mine. I don’t want to be that guy with you, Serena. Let’s forget the locker room, okay?”
She surprised him by tugging him in the direction they’d been going. “I don’t want to forget it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve had an amazing time with you so far tonight. I know this part will be just as good.”
“I figured there was a pretty good chance that when you saw the clothes and face paint you were going to tell me to forget this whole Friday night normal-date thing.”
She looked down at her sweatpants, tracing the S on her thigh with her fingers. “No one has ever tried this hard to make me happy.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Thank you.”
Five minutes later, they were walking into the empty locker room. “Welcome to my world.” He’d never taken a girl here before, just as he’d never taken one to see the Ansel Adams photos.
“I did a photo shoot in a locker room once. They stuck me in an expensive couture dress and had a couple of football players hold me up.” At his look, she said, “It didn’t seem as strange then as it does now that I’m telling you about it.”
“Those poor guys, I’ll bet they were both in love with you by the end of the photo shoot.” When she flushed lightly, he knew he’d hit it dead-on. “They asked you out, didn’t they?”
“They seemed like nice guys, but—”
“You weren’t allowed to date.”
“No, I wasn’t. But there’s no one here to stop me now.”
He’d planned on waiting until they’d taken off the face paint, but he couldn’t keep from putting his hands on her hips and dragging her close. “Thank God.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. Tried to, anyway, but the paint started cracking off into their mouths the second their lips met.
“We’ve got to get this stuff off.”
“No kidding. I’m really good at taking off makeup. Let me do it.” A few seconds later, she was wetting a clean towel from a small stack in the corner. “Close your eyes.”
Her hands were steady and sure as she quickly wiped his face clean, and by the time she told him he could open his eyes, his skin was back to normal. Before she could do the same for herself, he said, “Let me.”
She closed her eyes and let him gently run a new wet towel over her skin. Everything about her was flawless, but he was always careful not to stare too much, not to let on that he was shocked by her beauty each and every time he looked at her. Not when he could tell that being the most beautiful girl in the world hadn’t always been easy for her, and that it hadn’t always made her feel good or happy. But here in the locker room, just as he’d been able to stare a little longer than usual as he’d put on her face paint, he was able to run his fingertips over the curves of her cheekbones, the hollows beneath them, the sweet arches of her eyebrows, and the sensuous curve of her lips.
He took his time restoring her skin to its usual smooth, soft glow. When he was done, he threw the towel into the linen basket across the room and straddled the long wooden bench. She moved one leg across it to face him. Her skin was flushed, the pulse at her neck racing. She looked nervous. But also aroused.
And happy...most of all she looked happy. It was how he always wanted her to be.
“Kiss me, Sean.”
He slid a couple of inches closer and reached up with one hand to cup her jaw. Gently, and oh-so-softly, he leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. Their kiss was barely more than a breath against each other’s lips, but he could feel the impact of it all the way down in the deepest part of him.
He wanted to take. Wanted to ravage. Wanted to possess. At the same time, he also wanted something he’d never known he could want before: for their kisses to be as emotional as they were sexy. And for each one to be more than just foreplay. More than just a way to tease, to tempt.
But though he could tell Serena was as affected by these kisses as he was, he also knew from the way her body was winding tighter with each one that she was hungry for more. He’d felt her hunger last week, too, but she’d hadn’t been ready for more than kisses. And even now that he swore he could feel the heat radiating from her, he didn’t want to make the mistake of pushing her too fast. But, he wondered as she made a little growly sound at his next super-soft, super-sweet kiss, could it finally be time to start gently leading them down the road in the direction they both obviously wanted to go?
“Is this how you want me to kiss you?” Yet again he pressed his lips against hers, no tongues, no teeth, just the sweet, simple pleasure of being close to her.
Her hands had moved to his thighs by then, and he didn’t know if she realized how tightly she was gripping him, her fingers loosening every time he kissed her, then tightening when he drew back.
“I really like it,” she whispered against his lips a beat before she surprised him by saying, “but I want you to kiss me like this.”