Page 80 of The Romance Line
When I open my eyes, I feel like I’m melting. I’m not sure I can walk. My phone buzzes again. Tingles spread down my spine as I open the next message.
Max: Wear it to bed. Send me that picture. Because you’re so incredibly beautiful, I can’t stop thinking about you. Guess I’m bad at resisting. But you know that.
With the shirt clasped to my chest, I walk to my bedroom in some kind of trance. I set the shirt down on the bed, pull off the hoodie and cami, then strip off my sleep shorts. Briefly, I glance at the wooden box on the lower shelf of the nightstand—the one with the Post-it notes.
All thosesay yeses.
“That’s the problem. I keep saying yes,” I whisper to my silent home.
But Max makes me feel pretty and powerful. And that’s catnip, so I say yes one more time.
Tomorrow I’ll do better. Tomorrow I’ll be done with this dangerous tryst. For one more night, I’ll say yes—this time to wearing his clothes that smell like him. I slide my arms into his shirt, turning my neck to the collar. The shirt hits me at the thighs, and I love how big it is. I’m wrapped up in him, in his scent, in the memory.
Briefly, I contemplate buttoning the shirt before I snap a pic.
But instead, I sit on the edge of the bed, arranging it so it covers up all the places I don’t want him to see—my upper arm, then the scar on my left shoulder. The one he possibly caught a small glimpse of. I’m not sure how I’d handle it if he saw more. The memory of Gunnar’s shock still stings.
But Max and I are one-and-done. So getting naked with him won’t happen.
Making sure my face isn’t in the shot, I snap a pic from the neck down. Send it to him. Inhale him one more time.
Then I vow to resist him for real.
As the sun streams through my bedroom window early the next morning, the light feels too bright on me. Like it’s highlighting all my flaws as I get ready for work.
I try to ignore the squirmy feeling in my gut as I pick out a red bustier with embroidered cherries on it, put it on, then slip on black slacks next.
Before I grab the black blouse that’s hanging on the door, I look in the mirror in the corner of my room. Each day since I began this routine—I started it after Gunnar ghosted me—I try to like the view more.
“I am pretty and powerful,” I tell my reflection.
But the words ring hollow. It’s not the pretty part of my mantra that’s the problem. It’s the powerful part, since that’s the lie the morning light is exposing. Lately, I’m powerless to these feelings for Max.
I’ve been giving in at night when I shouldn’t. Taking risks when I ought to be cautious. Listening to the lies I tell myself—that it’s no big deal to say yes to these wild feelings.
Itisa big deal though.
I’ve worked too hard in my field. But last night I was foolishly risky. Locked doors or not, that was world-class levels of dumb. I can’t be the kind of woman who blows superstar athletes in equipment rooms.
Max’s words to the press might have been a cliché, but they were a safe cliché. I’m the real cliché. I stare angrily back at my reflection, my jaw set hard, my nostrils flaring. “You’re not powerful when you do that stupid shit,” I hiss at the woman in the mirror.
I think of Erin, a woman I admire, and the question she asked last night.
How steady and strong she was in the media room. She wanted one thing—Max on camera. Sheknewshe wouldn’t get salacious answers from him with me there, so she didn’t ask an aggressive question.
And what did I do to show I’m good at my job? I gave a pro athlete a blow job. What the hell would the reporters I work with think of me if they’d seen me on my knees with his dick down my throat?
I jerk my blouse off the hanger, stuff my arms into it, and button it up. I leave in a cloud of loathing.
At the office, I am all business. I repost the clip onThe Real Max Lambert.
When that’s done, I do my morning rounds online, checking sports news sites and feeds. As promised, Erin ran with his comments in a wrap-up report on The Sports Network last night. I hit play on my laptop.
“And in a rare appearance off the ice, the Sea Dogs goalie had this to say about tonight’s game,” she says, then leads into the quote from Max. When the video returns to her, she looks to her co-host and says with a wry grin, “It’s not as if he cracked open the playbook. But maybe he didn’t need to.”
“His numbers this season have been speaking for themselves,” her co-host, Rowan, says.
Erin wags a finger at him. “Hey, don’t jinx me, Rowan. I want him to keep talking to The Sports Network,” she says, then cuts to a report on the Supernovas, and how Fletcher Bane has been playing recently.