Page 104 of Offside

“Come for me, solsken.” Low, wrecked, certain. “I want to watch.”

The orgasm rolled through me in slow warm waves and I let it, quiet but not silent, my free hand pressed to my mouth. He watched me with those gray-blue eyes and said my name once, low, like a fact.

When I came back to myself, I was flushed and slightly wrecked and he was looking at me with an expression that was satisfaction and raw want in equal measure.

“You’re so fucking beautiful when you come for me.” The lust in his eyes made me want to touch myself again.

“Your turn,” I managed.

“Couldn’t wait.” His voice was rougher than usual.

I let out a light laugh. “You⁠—”

“Solsken.” He said it quietly, the amusement still in his face but underneath it something steadier and warmer that he wasn’t naming yet. “One more day.”

“One more day,” I agreed.

We stayed on the call for another half hour, talking about nothing in particular. Theo’s goal, Jordan Holt’s sulking, a conversation I’d had with my mom about the playoffs. Somewhere around midnight I became aware I was doing the thing where I didn’t want to hang up, which was new and slightly terrifying and also completely unsurprising given everything.

“Go to sleep,” he said eventually, reading me somehow even through a screen. “I’ll text you when we land.”

“Okay.” I held my phone close. “Ryan.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you called.”

He held me in his gaze for a moment with his usual steady attention I was getting to be so comfortable with. Then, brief, real, the smile that only happened when he wasn’t managing it. “Me too, solsken.”

I woke at two a.m. to a dark screen and the lamp still on and the bracelet still on my wrist.

I plugged my phone in and lay in the dark.

I was trying, and failing, to be casual about this. I’d been trying since the beginning. Keeping it categorized, reminding myself of all the reasons this was complicated. His job. My job. Griffin. The season. The entire architecture of reasons I’d assembled to explain why this was manageable, something I could walk away from intact when the time came but with every passing day and every private moment between us, it was becoming more impossible.

The bracelet on my wrist said Always Yours in Swedish.

The jersey in my closet had his name on it.

He’d said jag saknar dig redan before he even got on the plane, which meant he’d been missing me before he left.

I pressed my hand flat against my heart and inhaled deeply. I was in love with him. I’d known it for weeks and hadn’t let myself believe it, let alone say it, even alone in the dark. I lay there and let it be true all the way down to my bones.

I glanced over at the jersey hanging in my open closet.

It was a little terrifying, and certain, and exactly right.

He’d been telling me quietly all week long. Between the tulips, the book, the bracelet…

Ryan had been saying it in a way that didn’t require me to say it back until I was ready.

But… When would I be ready?

CHAPTER 19

RYAN

The charter landed at Sky Harbor at eleven-fifteen at night.