Him.

Well, maybe any man. Just a man.

I was stuck between wishing I’d never met him and wondering what it would have been like to just…say…yes. Only once. I deserved that, didn’t I? To know what it was like. Every time my thoughts went that way, I began to panic because holy fuck, it wasn’t as if I could trust the guy. All he had to do was talk to one person, and I was screwed. That was always the point where I went back to wishing I’d never met him.

“Hawkins! Where the fuck are you right now?” Coach Jones yelled at me, and shit, I’d been spacing out. I was doing that a whole lot lately.

“Sorry. I’m good.” I returned my attention to what I was there to do.

After practice we hit the showers, then got dressed. “What the hell is up with you, Hawkins? Spacing out during practice is more my gig than yours,” Darren teased.

“I was savoring the quiet time away from your voice,” I ribbed him, getting a laugh from a few other guys.

“So you’re funny all of a sudden, huh?” He popped me with his towel.

“Ouch, damn it. You fucker.”

We playfully wrestled around a bit before pulling apart. “Wanna grab some food?” he asked. “I could eat a fucking house.”

“Sure.” I didn’t have anything else going on anyway.

Darren and I went out and grabbed dinner, and then I headed home. Elias wasn’t there. I found my laptop, turned on SportsCenter, and logged in to my email. When I didn’t see anything interesting, I set my computer aside and used my phone to scroll through Instagram. The picture I’d posted of Darren eating a lettuce-wrapped burger that was bigger than his head already had hundreds of thousands of likes and comments.

My DMs and requests were out of control. I rarely checked them, but every once in a while I scrolled through to see if anything jumped out at me. I was just about to close the app when I saw something that made my heart stop.

You have a message request from Senator Weston Calloway.

Weston…Weston. No, it wasn’t fucking possible, was it? His face was there, staring back at me, but maybe this was a sick joke. My hands began to shake, my skin going clammy. I flung my phone onto the couch as if it had electrocuted me, then immediately picked it up again. It couldn’t be him… Christ, how in the fuck could it be him? Still, there he was.

A goddamned senator?

I wanted to puke.

I wanted to open the message.

“Fuck.” I set the phone down again, this time more gently. With my elbows on my knees, I sat forward, hands in my hair. “Breathe, man, just fucking breathe.” I’d told him no. If he said anything, he had no proof. I could pretend he’d been barking up the wrong tree, that there was no way I had ever, would ever… I’d said no…

How the fuck had he figured out who I was?

I paced the living room, shaking my hands out. Blood rushed in my ears. My head throbbed, and the deep ache in my gut spread through my body like some kind of vicious virus.

“No.” No, no, no, no. It had to be a coincidence, but it wasn’t. I knew it fucking wasn’t. Why in the hell would a senator direct-message me, and oh, he just so happened to have the same name as the man I’d spent hours talking to in a bar?

It was ridiculous, so fucking ridiculous, but I felt dizzy, like I was going to pass out. I took a few deep breaths, then grabbed my laptop and my phone, eyes scanning the space like there were journalists behind my couch and the large plant in the corner, all ready to pounce, mics out, and ruin my career.

I stumbled over my own feet as I rushed to my room. Fuck Weston. Fuck this night. Fuck that night two weeks ago. All we’d done was talk. But he’d known, he’d seen it in me, or he wouldn’t have asked me to leave with him.

Once I was behind my locked bedroom door, I set my laptop on the mattress and sat beside it. I stared at the phone for who knew how long before my shaking fingers typed in the code to unlock the screen.

I clicked on Instagram.

My messages.

The one from Weston.

Hey. I don’t know if you remember me. I sat next to you at dinner in DC. I’m the guy who knows how to eat a steak…unlike you. I’m telling you, it’s much better my way. I just messaged to let you know I have your sunglasses. That’s it. No other reason. I just thought you might want to know they’re safe.

I stared at the message, reading it over and over. Was he mentioning the steak to make sure it was really me? That I didn’t have someone else controlling my social media accounts? And safe…was he telling me my sunglasses were safe but really meant to say I was? It might have been a stretch, but his wording led me to wonder. To hope.

Tags: Riley Hart Atlanta Lightning Romance
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