Page 55 of The Game Plan

She lies under me, panting and laughing. “That was a filthy play, Sienna Jamieson.”

“It’s not my fault you have the attention span of a gnat, Jax Harris.”

Smiling, I shake my head. “You’re dirty.”

“You’re easy.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Ditto,” she says, with a wink that knocks my proverbial socks off.

This playful, smokin’ version of my wife is absolute dynamite. It’s the stuffy, perfectionist who drives me up the wall.

“Sorry you lost your impeccable record for success,” I tell her, still holding my weight on my forearms above her as something starts to shift between us.

Even through her shades, I see her gaze shift to my mouth. Then I’m looking at her lips and trying to think of anything other than the sudden realization that her body is pressed beneath mine, anchored by my weight, pelvis to pelvis.

“I think we both know I won,” she says, not laughing anymore.

My heart is jack-hammering as if I’ve scored in a power play as I ask, “What was your game?”

She doesn’t answer but I see her swallow deep in her throat.

“Alright, you two, let’s keep it PG for charity day,” Mitch says, offering me a hand to stand.

Sienna coughs, cheeks flushing adorably pink, as she comes to stand and dusts off her shorts. If I didn’t know her neuroticisms, I might want to put a ring on her for real.

* * *

I’m waiting for Sienna in the parking lot at the arena, now showered and wearing fresh training gear after the end of the carnival and our sweaty game of softball. There’s a soft toy dragon on the passenger seat, waiting for her, which I won in a last game of tin can against TJ as we helped some of the staff start to tidy away.

To be clear, there’s an army of staff working like little ants on the deconstruction of the event and they’ll have the area looking as if there never was an event in no time. I was killing time waiting for Sienna to drive us home, despite her protests that I head on without her, and TJ, well, he was making eyes at one of the girls running the fun house.

I’m glancing between my phone screen and the soft toy next to me, wondering if it’s too much. It’s only a fucking stuffed dragon, right? But on my phone, I’m replaying one of the stories Bianca has already uploaded to socials about today being for family and loved ones and there’s a clip of Sienna and me battling at softball. The moment I take her to the ground and I’m hovering over her. I screenshot the moment, homing in on the way I’m looking at her, and the way I think she’s looking at me right back.

Would we have kissed if we weren’t interrupted?

Would that have been a disaster, given we are on the countdown to divorce?

And if that’s the case, why in hell did I keep challenging the guys to play me at “one last game” so that I could legitimately win her a toy dragon?

I feel like I’m in one of those scenes in sci-fi movies, where the whole world trembles before something big happens. The big is unknown and it’s making me uncomfortable.

Sienna startles me when she opens the door to the passenger side of my car. I yelp, dropping my phone, as she bends into the car and hands me two takeout cartons of food that I instantly smell and recognize as curry rotis. Hell, yes!

“I made my hubby dinner like a good wifey,” she says, jokingly. She’s back in her summer dress and she’s braided her hair so it falls across one shoulder. It’s a softer look than her usual city sleek. It’s more Sienna at home, the one most people don’t get to see. I like that I do. “Don’t worry, I checked those cartons for spillage. I know you don’t do food in the car.”

She’s making me sound irrational. I would allow food in the car. I’m a twenty-four-seven hungry sort of guy, but the car’s on loan for the season as part of this year’s endorsement deal with the manufacturer. It’s a slick sports car but five doors and spacious inside, with a big enough trunk for golf clubs, which I consider a non-negotiable for my off days.

“What a woman,” I say, in a gruff voice that sounds like I’m teasing her right back, but it’s really grizzly because my head is still in that freeze-frame of us possibly, maybe, about to kiss earlier.

We kissed in Las Vegas. I’m certain now that I’m not wholly imagining the fire between us right before and after we got married. I remember my hand in her hair, and hers in mine, all over my body, as if she couldn’t get close enough. I think about it now every time I watch her lips move and when, like now, she’s drowning me in her scent, whether it’s the bedtime spritz she uses, the intense nighttime scent she wore in Sin City, or the sweet flowers she’s surrounding me with now. I want to go back in time and relive those moments, remember them and the exact way it felt to press my lips to hers, to taste the sacred place I want to devour time and time again.

With slightly trembling fingers, I accept the cartons and Sienna makes to get in the car, dropping her bags into the footwell. Then she pauses and we’re both staring at the dragon on the seat, who happens to be wearing my number on his jersey – 12 (part of the reason I chose him of all the dragons, which suddenly seems ill-thought out).

“You have a new friend?” she asks, though the way her blood moves to her cheeks tells me she knows the dragon isn’t for me.

I want to grab the toy and hide him up my jumper or toss him out the window, but I’m holding food cartons and Sienna is already reaching for him.