Always Only You by Chloe Liese (z-lib.org).epub

Playlist: “Undertow,” Lisa Hannigan
IF REN REMEMBERED OUR LITTLE NARCOTIC-INDUCED HEART-TO-HEART, HE
didn’t let on. Over breakfast at the hotel the next morning, he flashed me his
standard, friendly smile, and then he treated me like he always does. Like a
woman he works with. Not like a woman he called Francesca, whose hand he
insisted on holding until he fell into a restless sleep.
Which I’m fine with. Honestly, it’s easier that he doesn’t remember. If he
had remembered it, I could just picture his acute embarrassment, that furious
blush, the remorse that would paint his apology, even though I found what he did
amusing and oddly endearing.
Back on the plane home after losing game two, unfortunately—but
unsurprisingly, since we played without Ren—I stick my nose in work and avoid
talking to anyone. If I don’t glue my eyes on my phone or laptop, they keep
stupidly wandering across the plane to where Ren sits, leafing through a small
paperback that I’m ninety-nine percent sure is Shakespeare, the dork.
Dammit. This is why lines can’t be blurred, boundaries can’t be crossed. Just
a few nonstandard encounters with him and now every time I’m near Ren, weird
sensations simmer beneath the surface of my skin. When I saw him yesterday at
the game in his charcoal-gray suit and noticed it turned his eyes the color of rainslicked
slate—when I watched him talk with his teammates, giving them his
entire focus and that wide-mouthed laugh—my stomach knotted furiously.
Just after I got seated on the plane, my breath caught when he strolled past
me and left in his wake that familiar clean, spicy scent. It made my mouth water.
It wasn’t the first time it happened, but previously, I chalked it up to it being an
astonishingly nice scent. The guy has good taste in cologne. So what?
So what? So, this time, as I breathed him in, my body ached so fiercely in
neglected places, I nearly slapped myself. And then I buckled down on work.