Down By Contact: A Making the Score Football Romance Read online

  As I debated, Gia took the choice out of my hands. She pushed herself up so that she was half-sitting, leaning on one arm as she shifted closer to me. She was moving slowly, and I sensed that she was still making up her mind, looking for the courage to do what she wanted. I didn’t move, not wanting to spook her or make her second-guess this moment.

  Her warm breath brushed over my cheek as she drew closer, her face nearly even with mine now. She paused again, and her eyes raised to meet mine, holding steady, letting me read both her trust and her uncertainty, before her gaze dropped to my mouth.

  I wanted to touch her cheek, slide my fingers into her hair and bridge those last few inches, but I knew this had to be wholly her choice. And so I remained motionless until she lowered her lips to mine.

  I’d fantasized for a long time about what it would be like to kiss Gia. I’d stared at her lips when I was pretty sure she wasn’t paying attention, and I’d imagined them to be soft and pliant, her face smooth against my rougher skin. I’d wondered how she’d taste. Minty? Or like strawberries, maybe, since I often picked up a hint of that after she’d put on lip balm.

  But nothing in my mind had prepared me for the reality of kissing Gia. She was soft, yes, and smooth, too, but her lips were firm as well—she wasn’t passive at all. At first, she was a little tentative, as though this was a test. When I answered her, silently, moving my head just enough to make us fit together perfectly, the way we were made to be, she hummed a little, the sound coming from deep in her throat.

  Using one hand to keep her balance on the mattress, she rested the other on my chest, gravity deepening our connection for us. I was dying for her to open up to me, to let me in, but I didn’t push. I stayed in the moment, wondering if she could feel the way my heart was galloping against my rib cage, centimeters from where her fingers curled into my shirt.

  When her lips parted, I let my tongue wander forward a little bit, skimming over the inside of her mouth, testing and tasting. She was sweeter than any berry I could imagine, with the merest suggestion of mint and something else, some elusive flavor that made my blood burn. Gia responded by sliding her tongue over mine, and I couldn’t hold back the groan of want and need that had been building within me.

  For a half-second, I worried that I’d ruined the moment and that she would pull back. But she didn’t. Instead, she lowered her body so that she rested on me, her soft boobs squished against me. With a burst of eagerness, I lifted one arm to wrap around her back, rubbing between her shoulder blades. It was probably a move that most guys would consider the least sexy, one boys perfected back in middle school, but for me, the freedom to touch Gia at all was heady. I’d have been content to keep brushing my fingers over her back, through her cotton shirt, for the rest of my life.

  She brought her hand up to my face, cupping my cheek, lifting her mouth a little to nibble on my lower lip. My eyelids slid open just enough to appreciate the view at close range. Gia’s face was relaxed, and a few strands of her dark hair fell onto her pale skin. I ventured one finger up to brush them away. The corners of her lips curled up, and she opened her eyes, raising up so that she could see me better.

  “That was me, making my move.”

  I cast my eyes upward to the ceiling, my smile threatening to split my face in half. “Oh, thank God.”

  She giggled then, and it was the sweetest sound in the world. “Would you think I’m a wimp if I told you I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, but I just wasn’t brave enough?”

  “No.” I let my finger sift through the hair at the back of her head. “Your timing is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Although . . .” I settled her more firmly across my chest, splaying my fingers over her back. “I have to ask you what this means. Was it just—this? For now? Something you felt like doing? Or does it mean more?”

  A bit of trepidation flashed through her eyes. “I hope it’s not just for now. I want it to mean more. I think I want more with you, if you’re still, um, interested. But I need to move slow, Tate. I’m still terrified. I’m still not ready to trust my own heart.” She lay her cheek on my chest and sighed. “But I do trust you.”

  I’d never known it was possible to feel so much hope and joy at once. I wanted to shout, and I wanted to do one of those crazy touchdown dances my teammates loved. But being here, holding Gia, was better than anything that had ever happened to me on the football field, and if we could make it happen, I’d have stayed right there for the rest of my days.

  “I can take everything as slow as you need,” I assured her. “I mean, we can wait for sex until after dinner, if you want.”

  Gia lifted her head to stare at me in shock, her mouth opening to give me hell until she saw the twinkle in my eyes. And then she just began to laugh at me.

  “That’s so understanding of you.” Curling her fingers, she rested her chin on top of her fist on my chest. “If we’re being totally honest—and I know, I know. You always are.” She gave me a lazy smirk. “But if I’m being honest, there’s nothing I’d like to do more right now than to ravage you.”

  At those words, my cock, which was already very interested after that kiss and by Gia’s body pressed into mine, stiffened to a nearly painful extent. “Honey, I’m all yours, whenever and wherever and however. All the evers.”

  “Thanks.” She touched my chin with the tip of her finger, rubbing the bristles there. “But I don’t want to jump into that too fast. I’ve never had anything like what we have with any other guy. Moving slow is good for both of us. I think.”

  “You’re right. As much as I’d like to turn over right now and . . . find out what it is I’ve been missing all this time, I’m just as excited to walk into Amico’s with you, holding your hand.” I paused. “Am I allowed to hold your hand?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’ve been holding my hand anyway, for weeks. You’ve just been slick about it. But yes, it would make me very happy if you held my hand.”

  “Then I’ll never let it go. I’ll never let you go.” I raked my fingers through her silky black hair, framing her face with my hands. She was so small that my huge palms completely cupped her cheeks. “If I’m overwhelming you, Gia, you only have to tell me, but if you don’t, I’m planning to take every opportunity to let you know how I feel. I never want you to doubt me for a minute.”

  She circled her fingers around my wrists, holding on loosely, and then slipping her hands up to rest on mine. “Bring it on.”

  That day was like living in a dream I’d convinced myself would never come true.

  Gia and I turned on the next episode of Veronica Mars eventually, but we didn’t pay very close attention to it—or at least I didn’t. I was too busy pinching myself, making sure this wasn’t some hallucination I was having after one tackle too many on the football field. I was lying in Gia’s bed, with one arm wrapped around her, while she lay with her head on my chest, her fingers drawing absent-minded circles on my arm. Each touch of her fingers set me on fire, and it was all I could do not to do what I’d said I wouldn’t, roll her over so that she was beneath me and kiss her senseless. I wanted to feel every inch of her body against mine, to feel her writhe and stretch and press into me.

  But I hadn’t been lying before. I could control myself, especially now that I knew we were moving forward. We were going to have the chance I’d been afraid we never would. So sure, I could be patient. As long as I knew that we had a future, that my time with Gia wasn’t limited and finite, I could wait for a long time.

  “Tate.” Her voice was soft and muffled against my chest.

  “Hmmmm?” I nuzzled the top of her head, loving the intimacy of holding her this way. It was new, and for some people, maybe simply lying together wouldn’t be such a big deal, but for me, it was heaven.

  “Why have you waited so long . . . you know . . . to have sex? I know you said you just never really had a girlfriend, that you were focused on other things, but I’ve got to admit, I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that a guy
like you didn’t have girls dying to be with you.”

  “Who says they weren’t?” I wiggled my fingers on the hand resting by her waist, and Gia squirmed.

  “Then why didn’t you take advantage of that? Not of the girls themselves,” she added quickly. “I know you well enough to be positive that you’d never intentionally use someone that way. But I know there’re women out there who would be down for a casual hook-up with someone like you.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I shifted a little, tucking Gia closer to me. “But that’s just it. I wasn’t looking for casual. Never was. I understood the attraction, because when you’re turned on by a girl and know she feels the same, there’s definitely the temptation to act on it. If you’re both on the same page, it feels like a no harm, no foul situation. But you know, I grew up with Pops, and for all his bluster, he’s a man who believes in true love. He never preached at me, but he taught by example. He let me know that it was possible for a man to be with only one woman for his whole life. He didn’t tell me that was what I should do, but I decided pretty early that I wanted what Pops and Grammy had. I might not have seen it between the two of them, since I never got to meet her, but hearing about their marriage from Pops . . . it made me feel like I knew her. Like I knew the two of them together.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Gia murmured. “I wish I’d had that kind of example. I wish . . .” She exhaled, and I felt her sadness. “I wish that I could be untouched and unspoiled, too. I wish I came to you without all the garbage in my past.”

  “Hey.” I twisted so that I could see her face more fully. “You’re not spoiled, Gia. Not by a long shot. You and I both come into this—into being us—in different ways, but that’s okay. Our paths might not have been the same, but that doesn’t make where we are any less valid. We are who we are, and I wouldn’t change a damn thing about that, even if I could. Everything that you’ve been through makes up the Gia you are now. And I happen to think that Gia is pretty wonderful.” I kissed her forehead, just because I could. “I probably shouldn’t show my cards this early, but you know, I can’t hide anything from you. In case you haven’t noticed, the truth is that I’m pretty crazy about you. I’d do anything for you, babe. Anything at all.”

  She bit her bottom lip, and her eyes were glowy. “I believe you.”

  “Good.” I ran my hand down her back and pinched her fine ass. “Now get off me, woman. We need to get ready for dinner. Believe it or not, I’m—”

  “Starved,” Gia finished for me, shaking her head as she untangled herself from me. “Color me shocked. Don’t worry, it’ll only take me about ten minutes to change and be all set.”

  “Ohhhh.” I sat up, mock leering at her. “Now that we’re moving into the more-than-friends territory, do I get to watch you?”

  Gia opened up the small wardrobe that served as her closet and pulled out a dress on a hanger. “Sure, you can, sweetie.” She batted her eyelids at me. “You can sit right there and enjoy me putting on my makeup and brushing my hair, if that’s what gets you hot. Tell me, do your alpha male teammates know that you like that kind of thing?”

  I grabbed for her hand, and she laughed as she dodged me. “Smart ass. No peep show for me, then?”

  “Nope. I’m all for maintaining the mystery. I need to preserve something, or you might lose interest in me.” She draped her dress over one arm and headed for the bathroom.

  “Never, sweetheart.” I kept my voice light, but Gia must’ve heard the underlying thread of truth. She turned and looked back at me, her eyes holding mine. “Not in this lifetime. I think you’re stuck with me.”

  She smiled, but a ghost of something else, something sad, flitted over the happy. “Promises, promises.”

  Chapter 9

  Gia, Then

  “Hey, gorgeous. I thought you were going out tonight.” Zelda glanced up at me from her laptop, frowning as she took in the yoga pants and baggy T-shirt I was wearing. “Isn’t it Saturday?”

  “It is.” I flopped down on the worn recliner in the corner of our small living room. “But I decided I didn’t feel like going out. I’ve got a shit ton of work to do. I’m behind on reading in two classes, and I have a paper due in four days that I really should get started on.”

  “Hmm.” She gazed at me over the top of her reading glasses. “Yeah, that’s probably smart.” She didn’t have to add what I was sure she was thinking: I hadn’t been making smart choices for a while now, when it came to school. I’d been skating by, phoning it in, and it was only by the grace of some last-minute scrambling that I was still getting mostly B’s.

  “How about you? Staying in, too?” Zelda, for all of her outrageous sexual behavior earlier in our college days, had calmed down in the past few months. I could almost mark the change to the summer before our junior year, the same year Matt had moved back to his grandparents’ house to go to summer school with me at Birch. I winced a little, remembering those months. For Matt and me, they’d been marked by dizzying highs, when we’d spent weekends together in bed and he’d promised me the sun, the moon and the stars, and by heartbreaking lows, when we’d screamed at each other for hours on end after he’d fallen off the wagon, getting drunk or high. I suspected, too, that he’d hooked up with other girls, even though he’d sworn it hadn’t happened.

  Since then, we’d existed in an uneasy kind of truce that passed for a relationship. Matt still called me his girlfriend when he introduced me to people, and I still went down to Carolina at least once a month to see him—or more accurately, to sleep with him. Any time I tried to initiate a real conversation, we ended up fighting—mostly because I always brought up his present, which he was doing his damnedest to fuck up, and our future, which seemed murky at best.

  Zelda hit a key on the computer and nodded. “That’s the plan. I’m going to make dinner for Quinn, Nate and Tuck. You want in on that?”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I might just buckle down and get through this paper, with some chips and dip to help me out. I’m not much in the mood for socializing.” I paused before adding, “And it’s still hard to stomach the Nate and Quinn show. Is it just me, or does she look a little sadder every day?”

  “It’s not just you.” Zelda blew out a long breath. “I hate this. And I’ve told her that. We all know she’s still crazy in love with Leo. Even Nate realizes it. I’m supremely pissed at him for putting Quinn in the position of having to choose.”

  “Yeah.” I fiddled with a thread on the knee of my pants. “I love Nate, and my heart breaks for him, but he could’ve just asked Quinn to be with him until . . . the end. He didn’t have to propose. Now she’s going through the farce of a wedding, knowing it can’t ever be a real marriage.”

  “And what if he doesn’t die?” Zelda glanced over her shoulder, lowering her voice. “I asked Quinn that. I said, what’re you going to do if Nate has a sudden, miraculous remission or if they come up with a cure? Then she’s stuck with him, unless he’s man enough to bow out—and let’s face it, Nate wouldn’t do that. He’s always been hung up on Quinn, and I think if he knew he was going to live, he’d fight to hold onto her.”

  I smothered a sigh. Zelda’s anger at Nate wasn’t new, and I understood how she felt, but I’d known him longer than she had, since I’d gone to school with Quinn, Leo and Nate from junior high on. I genuinely liked him. He was quirky, funny and straightforward, and the truth was that I’d had a big crush on him in high school. But even back then, anyone could see that Nate only ever wanted Quinn. She was everything for him, and that had never changed.

  “As I understand it, there’s no chance that he’ll live. Quinn told me that the doctors say he might not even make it to the end of the year. His parents wanted him to leave school, to buy some more time, but Nate’s stubborn.” My phone vibrated in my back pocket, and I arched my body to pull it out, scanning the screen. “Shit. Matt got the dates mixed up and thought I was coming down today, not next weekend. He’s freaking out.”

&nbs
p; Zelda snorted. “What the hell does he expect you to do? Snap your fingers and transport yourself down there?” There wasn’t any love lost between my friend and my boyfriend. Zelda hated the way Matt treated me, and she didn’t hesitate to call him on it, either. Matt, in turn, taunted Zelda for being a bitch, telling me often that he couldn’t understand why I was friends with her.

  “No, he’s just mad. Because, you know, this is all my fault, as usual.” I turned off the phone and put it back in my pocket. “I’m going to ignore him and bury my frustration in a ten page, in-depth study of the character Laertes in Hamlet. And some chips, too.”

  My phone was on the table next to my bed, and I’d managed to ignore it for the last two hours as I wrote, even though it was vibrating almost non-stop. I knew I should’ve just put it on silent completely, but I also knew that if I picked it up to do that now, I’d get sucked into looking at Matt’s texts to me. I wasn’t ready yet.

  I made it through another forty-five minutes before I stood up to stretch and reluctantly reached for the phone. I had eight messages from Matt, but I chose to ignore those a little longer, tapping instead on my favorite social media site.

  Moments later, I wished I hadn’t. Because I had my feed set up so that I saw Matt’s posts first, I also saw pictures where he’d been tagged, and that was why the very first photo that filled my phone’s screen was of my boyfriend, shirtless, lifting high a bottle of whiskey, while a blonde woman knelt in front of him. I couldn’t quite see what she was doing, but I had a pretty good idea from the way Matt’s other hand covered the top of her head. It was the same thing he did to me whenever I was giving him a blow job.