Tiller snuck a glance at me, making my stomach drop. It hadn’t hit me until then how often he looked to me for an opinion. It made me feel smart and competent, not to mention special. I didn’t want to let him down.
Unspoken words flashed quickly between us. Tiller’s shoulder sure as hell wasn’t ready to be tested against the brutal challenge of a pro football game before it was fully healed.
But I wasn’t about to interfere with the man’s career. I gritted my teeth and tried smiling at him in a way that agreed with trusting the pros. He winced but continued looking at me for a beat. Suddenly, his face softened and he reached out a hand to my hip. His touch made me suck in a breath.
His thumb slid under the edge of my shirt and brushed the skin of my hip just over my waistband. “It’s okay,” he said low enough only I could hear it. “I’ll call Krystal and ask her what the team PTs are saying. Sound good?”
I could barely breathe, but I managed a tiny nod. He smiled. “Good.” His hand squeezed on my hip before he took his phone out of the room.
I busied myself helping reheat the food and asking Jill and Steph for help preparing the table for a big midday meal. After the board game, Luke had taken the kids outside to see the views of the barren slopes through the naked trees at the edge of the property. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Hard to believe it was cold outside when the sky was bright and blue like that. I decided to enjoy this day as much as I could since it was our last one here.
When everything was underway, I snuck out to shower and dress in my room. When I came out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist and water still dripping off my hair, Tiller was sitting on the edge of my bed. I could tell immediately from his body language that the news wasn’t good.
He held out his arms for me, and I walked right into them, squeezing him in a hug as tightly as I could. His big, warm hands moved up and down my back before settling on my butt possessively. I finally said to hell with it and knelt up to straddle him. My towel popped open and fell off, leaving me completely naked on his fully dressed self.
“You’re so fucking sexy,” Tiller said in a rough voice. “Please don’t tell me this is over. Please.”
His voice broke a little on the last please, and it crushed my heart and gut at the same time. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say.” I was mixed up and twisted. My history of hopping into bed with football players was embarrassing as hell, and the fact I’d slept with my previous boss was mortifying. I felt like a user. A fraud. Something horrible.
Tiller’s hands came around and cupped my face. His expression was fierce, and his lips were tight. “Let me say it another way. This. Is. Not. Over. Do you understand? I refuse to let… circumstances be the deciding factor in whatever is happening between the two of us.”
I could tell he’d wanted to say your father in place of circumstances. He was smart not to. The specter of my father in this situation was the main factor in my mixed feelings. And I hated that. I was a grown man, for fuck’s sake. Why did I still give him this much power?
Because of what he can do to Tiller’s career.
“What did they say when you called?” I asked, stepping around his question like it was a live ordnance.
His nostrils flared, and his hands moved down my shoulders and arms to wrap around my waist again. “I guess the team PTs have a different definition of range of motion than Winter does.”
“Maybe we should call Winter and ask him for advice?”
Tiller leaned in and kissed me firmly on the lips before pulling back and shaking his head. “I think that’s a good idea. But, if there’s any chance I’m going to get put in, I need to be studying film with the coaches. Honestly, I was always surprised he let me come here in the first place.”
I looked down and noticed his T-shirt was on inside out. I smoothed the back of the hidden graphic. “Well… he, um, kind of thought you were visiting your family.”
He chuckled and leaned in to kiss the side of my neck. My dick began to fill as if this wasn’t a ridiculous time to get turned on. We were talking about my father, and his own father was in the other room for god’s sake.
“I see that now,” he said. “I told him I’d be back in time for a meeting tomorrow afternoon. So let’s enjoy the day with my family and then head home in the morning, okay?”
“Should we ask if your parents are spending the night?” I asked as he leaned back in to nip at my neck. If I had to sleep apart because his family was here, I was going to feel very, very sorry for myself.
“Yes, but since we don’t have access to many rooms, you and I will have to share a bed. Shame.”
He looked so damned proud of himself, I couldn’t help but laugh. “We’ll muddle through.”
The holiday meal we sat down to an hour later was much more fun than I’d expected. I should have known, since I’d always had fun with Tiller’s family in the past. Stephanie was a public defender, who always had hilarious stories from work. She had us all rolling with laughter when she told us about an unnamed client who’d led the police on a low-speed chase through Cherry Creek State Park, obeying all of the traffic signs and even stopping to let a deer cross the path at one point before finally giving up with an exasperated “Fine, y’all win” as she got out of her minivan and threw herself face-first into the nearby snowbank.
Steph’s husband, Luke, watched her with affectionate pride. I’d always appreciated how well suited they were for each other, but now I couldn’t help but notice the little signs of love and attention. Luke made sure Steph’s drink was refilled. Steph reached over to dust a crumb off Luke’s shirt, her caress lingering on his chest for a few moments afterward. They finished each other’s sentences and laughed at each other’s jokes.
It reminded me not everyone was lucky enough to have that kind of connection. Two of my four brothers were in serious relationships. Eddie was married to Ashlynn, who none of us liked. She was sarcastic and mean to my mom and oddly flirty with my dad. Wally had been dating Oaklyn for at least five years. They’d met at a Clemson football game when he’d come back as an alum and she’d still been there as a cheerleader. She seemed to take great pride in dating one of the team’s biggest stars even though Wally hadn’t seen the inside of a uniform in years.
And then there was my mom and dad. Thirty years of her putting up with his controlling, opinionated, football-saturated bullshit. I didn’t know how she did it. He was often kind and tender toward her, but there were also times he was an absolute jackass.
I wouldn’t say I’d had great examples in my life of true love like the kind I saw between Luke and Steph and the kind that had seemed evident between Winter and Gent last night. It was the kind of love that made it seem like each of them felt honored to have been chosen by the other. Maybe it was something newer couples had, but I was fairly sure Tiller’s sister had been with Luke for going on ten years.
After the meal, we took a walk through the snow to the edge of the slopes where the old ski mountain was laid out in all of its snowy glory. The sun shone on the bare aspen trees, and the cables from the original ski lift sparkled in the afternoon light.