Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Oh, hell. She’s so damn cute now when she’s…caught in the act of, well, looking me up. And since I looked her up too—well, her dog, but then her—I like that she did the same. But I like it more than I should.
Which means I should call it a night soon. I fold the napkin and set it on the bench with the fork on top of it. “I have to see my personal conditioning coach tomorrow.”
“Cool. I should go.” She moves to stand, but her wineglass isn’t empty.
Without thinking, I set a hand on her thigh. “Stay. Till the picnic is over.”
She swallows and nods in the dark. “Okay. I will.”
With some reluctance, I remove my hand from her thigh, then sip more of the wine. For a beat, there’s just the sound of cars cruising by a few blocks over and laughter carrying from down the street. I imagine the ocean crashing somewhere in the far distance.
“So, you have your own conditioning coach?” she asks.
“I want to play great this year—it’s my last year—so I hired someone to make sure I’m operating at peak performance. Leah’s one of the best. My agent, Shanita, found her for me.”
Skylar tilts her head, her lips curving up. “Your agent is a woman, and so is your conditioning coach?” It’s asked with a certain amount of delight.
“Yeah,” I say, answering matter-of-factly. “So is my publicist. She gave me this tie—a lucky tie for the season.”
“You have an all-female management team,” she says, sitting up straighter, a pleased smile twisting her lips.
“I do,” I say with an easy shrug, since hiring them was an easy choice.
“Was it intentional?”
“It happened organically. I wanted the best, and that’s how I found them. Men dominate this business. It’s eye-opening and, honestly, refreshing to have the support of people who see things differently.”
Skylar brings her glass to her lips but doesn’t take a drink. Instead, she just kind of smiles around it.
“What?” I ask, curious what’s on her mind.
“I just…I kind of love that,” she says, lowering the glass.
I’m glad, but I don’t want the spotlight on me too long. “What about you? Do you work alone? Have partners? Have you always wanted to design?”
“I studied interactive design in college,” she says. “I thought maybe I’d want to work with user interfaces and tech, but when I realized how much stuff they use—tech and the creation of it—I was overwhelmed with…guilt.”
I stop mid-drink to process that. “I can see that. It does use a lot of resources.”
“Exactly. And my whole family, one way or another, works in fields related to, well, the planet. My mom works in antiques, my dad runs a gardening store, and my brother’s a scientist studying carbon emissions. I grew up loving, just loving,” she says, for emphasis, “the grass and the earth and the trees and the sky. And, honestly, shifting my focus as a designer made sense. I’d felt so overwhelmed by this almost suffocating desire to save the planet, and one day a friend asked, ‘Why don’t you work in eco-friendly design?’ and I thought, that’s it. That’s what I can do.” She speaks with such passion, it’s a little intoxicating.
“I love that. It’s a gift to do what you love, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she says, then lets out a long, contemplative breath before turning back to me. “It’s your last season. Is that going to be hard?”
After I set down the glass, I scrub a hand across the back of my neck and sigh. That’s a good question. A great one, really. I take a beat to mull it over. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it being hard. It’s that I’ve concentrated most of my energy on being the best.
I turn to meet her gaze, wanting to give her the most honest answer I can. It feels important.
“I want to go out on my terms. So yes, I think it will be hard to say goodbye. To walk away. But I think it would be harder if I stayed too long. You know? If I—” I pause. These words taste bitter, but they have to be said. Telling her is good practice. “If I wore out my welcome.”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “I understand that. And hey, I’m no hockey expert, but it sure looked like you played hard today.”
I smile, appreciating that it was apparent. “That’s the goal,” I say, then reach for the glass again.
We finish off our wine.
But when she lowers hers, there’s a tiny drop of Cabernet on the corner of her lips.
Ah, hell.
Before I think better of it, I reach for it, my thumb swiping it gently.
“Oh,” she says, and a soft gust of breath seems to coast across her lips. The sound of it, faint, gentle against the night air, dances around me, drifting into my mind, burrowing into my soul.