Her gaze shot to mine with a quirk of her lips, but the worry still swam in her eyes. “I’m not exactly inconspicuous.”
“You never were.” I pushed open the door. An overcast evening greeted us. Humidity prickled my skin.
She never had been. From the first moment I’d heard her sing, she’d been the most conspicuous person in my life, always a part of me, like our souls had been stitched together one fiber at a time through each note from her guitar and her lips.
Gwen’s go-to driver we had on retainer stood beside the black SUV with the back-passenger door already open.
Bay hurried across the sidewalk and climbed into the car. At least most of her body made it. It took a bit of shoving to the voluminous amount of fabric inside.
“How have you not gotten lost in this thing?”
“A flashlight and treasure map for any time I sit down.” She beat down the gray material, spitting some out of her mouth.
I got in beside her with a department store’s worth of cloth between us and slammed my door shut. “A compass too.”
She nodded, wedged inside the car door.
The door we’d come through flew open and people poured out onto the sidewalk, heads whipping back in shock. I braced for the fallout, when Bay’s sense of responsibility overcame the thrill of the escape and she trudged back inside.
Bay lunged forward. “Let’s go.”
I grabbed her around the waist to steady her from toppling into the space between the seats and being lost to the abyss of fabric.
The driver looked back at me and I nodded.
She rubbed her neck, squeezing her shoulders and rolling her head. “Is this what that couple felt like at the end of The Graduate?” She stared out her window with her back resting against the door.
The scene where Dustin Hoffman interrupts his ex’s wedding after some behind-the-scenes machinations from her mother and she rushes off, catching a city bus still in the dress certainly came to mind with her outfit. “Not feeling like it was a successful escape?”
“For a few hours.” She peered over at me, sagging against the seat. “I’m sure Holden will have a mountain of messages flooding his phone as we speak. Once he reappears…”
“I’m sure he can handle it.”
“Too true. They’ll probably reschedule what they didn’t get for another minuscule gap in my schedule.”
Why did she always seem like the last person on her list of people to do things for? “You can take time for yourself.”
The fabric ruffled and shifted. Bracing her hands on the back of the driver’s headrest and hers, she faced me. “Every job I turn down is money Holden or Emily or Maddy don’t get to put into their pockets. Every show I turn down is money the road crew doesn’t get to send home to their families.”
“So you’re only doing this out of the goodness of your heart?” Frustration mounted at how she couldn’t separate herself from the work and weight and responsibility of everyone around her.
She shot me a glare. “Of course it also has to do with me, but there comes a point where the money is more than I could spend in a lifetime and it becomes about something else. You’d never walk away from your team in the middle of the season. Blowing off responsibilities for a few hours is fine, but they’ll still be there in the morning.” She slumped against me.
Her ‘never walk away’ comment was more of a direct hit than she knew. Leaving the team in a lurch was exactly what I’d been planning on doing, but it didn’t feel the same. I literally had nothing to do with their wins.
But it wouldn’t be the case. A hollowness formed in my chest. My issues with responsibility had to do with feeling like I had no control over any of the outcomes of the games my team played.
Bay had total responsibility. There was no show without her. There was no album. There was no tour employing hundreds of people and performing for more stadiums of people in a month than we did all season. Shouldering that kind of weight had to feel so stifling.
I could walk away from football right now. Pack my bags, find a nice place to live, and do whatever the hell I wanted with the rest of my life. But I still held onto the pipe dream of getting to play. Even after a handful of championship rings encrusted with diamonds, I kept going.
“But you don’t sound happy about it.” Searching for her legs under all the fluffy fabric, I grabbed her leg and spun her around. My fingers ran down the fine line of her leg to her ankle.
She rested her head against the window, a confused but curious dip to her eyebrows.
Taking one foot into my hand, I worked my thumbs into the soles of her feet.
She hissed and moaned.
My fingers stilled for a moment, unsure if I was hurting her.
Her eyes shot open, lips parting.
I’d seen that face before. My blood pounded harder, warming the veins headed straight for my groin. I pressed harder on her foot.
Another moan.
The driver’s head jerked and the car swerved a little. Right about now, I wished I had ordered a car with a divider—for more reasons than one.
“Quiet or he’s going to think I’m doing something indecent to you.” I ran my fingers over her feet, massaging along the instep and pinches.
The tops of her toes were red. The sides, too.
Annoyance rippled through me. How long had she been wearing those shoes? Why had she been wearing them when no one could even see them?
Careful of the tender spots, I worked to release the tension in them.
Her hand shot out to her headrest, gripping it tight. “You are.” She dropped her head back, pushing her breasts up in the dress. “One hundred percent indecent. How did you learn to do that?”
It shot out like an accusation.
My laughter couldn’t be contained. “A long time playing ball will teach you a few tricks about human anatomy.” Stretching to warm up for a game. Being ready for every block or pass in practice. Pushing myself harder than everyone else, hoping for my shot. I refocused on Bay, on giving her the relief she needed right now. What I needed was to be the one to give it to her.
Her squirms, moans, and sighs urged me to continue my ministrations on her feet even though my erection was about to take this from muscle relief to foreplay.
I rolled her toes between my fingers and she punched the roof of the SUV not even holding back her curse. It sounded a lot like other times I’d heard her scream, which brought with it a whole other slew of mental flashes, but the dress situation made any attempt at backseat sex—driver notwithstanding—impossible.
A rumbling, rolling laugh burst from my chest. I took my fingers off her feet before she smashed out a window.
“If you stop, I swear, I’ll tweet out your home address to my fans and tell them there’s a limited-edition Team Bay prize pack hidden in there.”
“Pulling out the big guns, I see.”
“This is the best foot massage I’ve ever had in my life.” She groaned and collapsed into the seat.
“I’ve never seen you so relaxed.”
Her eyes fluttered open and the corner of her mouth lifted. She checked out the driver. “You and I both know that’s not true.”
Sliding her feet out of my lap, she swung around so we were sitting side by side. “You’ve used your skills in more ways than one to turn me into a boneless mess before.”