All Lined Up

Chapter 16 Carson

I take the coldest, fastest shower that I can manage, and I run plays in my head to keep from thinking about the girl just on the other side of the wall. I’m pissed at myself for not taking my phone on my run. I damn near missed her completely because I’m too insecure to take a night off.

I’m getting better. That much is for sure. I’ve had three sessions now with Torres and Brookes, and I’m finally starting to see the payoff of the hours I’m putting in. The receivers are jokers too, which makes the time fly by. Unlike a lot of the crap I hear on the field and in the locker room, their jokes are genuinely funny. Most of the time.

But while I’m getting better, so is Abrams. Maybe it’s being back under the demanding eyes of Coach Cole or maybe he’s just got his head on a little straighter after having played for a year. Either way, I’m losing ground as fast as I gain it, which means there’s no time to take it easy.

The cold shower means there’s no steam to fog up the mirror, and I have to look myself in the eye during that last thought, knowing that spending time with Dallas sure as hell falls into the category of taking it easy.

But she’s too damn hard to resist.

I pull on a pair of clean jeans and a gray T-shirt instead of the sweats I would normally don for the night. She’s dressed for a party in dark, slim jeans, a tiny leather jacket, and a long green shirt that matches her eyes.

I take a second to collect my thoughts before I leave my room, but all my thoughts about her are stubbornly polarized. I want to be the friend she’s asked me to be. I want to convince her we can be more. I want to run in the other direction. So I push all those things aside and just decide to do whatever feels right.

As I walk into the living room, she’s sitting sideways on my couch, my playbook resting on her knees, chewing on her thumbnail as she surveys the page.

“I thought this was a football-free zone,” I said.

She jumps and practically throws the thing off her lap. Then, with a little more composure, she says, “I was bored.”

“And that was the best snooping you could do?”

“I wasn’t snooping. I was just mildly curious to see how Dad has changed things up.”

I pick up the playbook and sit beside her, resting one of my elbows on top of her knees.

“You know you could ask him if you really wanted to know.”

She dons a look of horror. “I said mildly. If I mentioned it to Dad, he would talk my ears off for hours.”

I pick up the book, full of combinations and variations that I’m busting my ass to memorize should I ever actually get a shot to play. “So you can actually make sense of this?”

She scowls. “I’ll have you know, I knew that thing backward and forward when I used to help . . .”

She trails off, wiping the scowl and every other hint of expression off her face.

If I were a nicer guy, I’d let her get away with it.

“When you used to help Abrams? You guys used to be together, right?”

She crosses her arms over her chest, and in that leather jacket she looks as intimidating and sexy as I’ve ever seen her.

“Fantastic. What is he telling people now?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, I’m sure Levi just casually dropped into conversation that we dated over two years ago with no ulterior motive. Sounds just like him.”

I let my arm slip off her knee, wrap it around her legs, and give her a squeeze. “I heard you’d dated. I didn’t bother listening beyond that because, frankly, I didn’t want to. He’s a dick, and I don’t like him. I sure as hell don’t like thinking about you and him even in the same sentence.”

“Welcome to the club,” she mutters.

“Okay. Enough of that. Someone promised me I could ask personal questions.”

“What? My love life wasn’t personal enough for you?”

My jaw tenses when she says love life. Of all the words she could choose to describe her past with Abrams, that one is way, way down the list of what I prefer to hear.

And since I don’t have any right to feel territorial, over Abrams or that hipster outside that party or anyone, I choose a very different subject.

“Why dance?”

“Why football?”

“Because it’s the only thing in my life I haven’t dreaded or hated or failed miserably at. It’s what I’m good at, in comparison to everything else anyway.”

Her head tilts to the side, and she sits up, leaning toward me. Her stomach grazes the arm I have wrapped around her legs, and that brief touch is all I can think about.

“Do you love it?” she asks.

“Cole, you’re the one griping at me for working out too much. What do you think?”

She doesn’t miss that I haven’t answered the question, but she sits back against the armrest anyway, taking away any chance that she’ll brush up against me again.

“Your turn,” I say. “You love to dance?”

“Yes,” she answers firmly. She arches her brow like a challenge and continues. “I have fun when I’m dancing, but I also, I don’t know, feel more intensely there, too. When I dance, it’s like I finally have everything figured out, like I’ve crossed over from the ordinary and am on the verge of discovering something wonderful. Inspiration, I guess. But it’s bigger than that. I am bigger when I dance, like my heart fills my whole chest, and it’s leaking out of me with every step and every breath.”

Her green eyes are lit with such passion, and the smile playing about her lips is the most gorgeous one I’ve seen yet. I think I feel more exuberance and life just radiating off of her than I’ve ever felt about something myself.

The way she talks about dance is a little like how I feel when I look at her. Overwhelmed and fulfilled and falling apart all at the same time.

I climb off the couch and pull her to her feet, suddenly desperate to see it.

“Show me.”

She’s still in a bit of a trance, caught up in her thoughts and emotions, and it takes her a few seconds to say, “What?”

“Show me. I want to see you dance.”

Her eyes widen, and she chokes on a laugh.

“I can’t just show you in your living room, Carson. I’m in jeans and boots and there’s no room and no music and—”

I grip her arm and tug her away from the couch and out into the open space where I occasionally work out at home.

“To quote your dad: don’t give me excuses, Cole. Give me results.”

Irritation blooms across her face. “Ugh. Why did you say that? I hate when he says that.”

I laugh, and move my hand in gesture that tells her to get to it.

“I’m waiting, Daredevil.” I stick out my arm, closing my hand in a fist. I throw her a playful smile and add, “You can use me as your bar thing, if you want.”

“You are not seriously making me do this, are you?”

“Come on. What are you afraid of?”

“Making a fool of myself, twisting an ankle, splitting these ridiculously tight pants, giving you material to mock me for the next century . . . should I keep going?”

I shake my head, unable to contain my wide smile.

She sucks in a deep breath and starts in again. “Falling on my face, disgracing dancers everywhere, failing to impress you—”

I cut her off, getting right in her face.

“Hey.” I take hold of her chin for extra emphasis. “You don’t ever have to worry about impressing me.”

“Just because you tell me not to worry about something doesn’t mean I can stop. It’s not a switch I can turn on and off.”

“Then teach me something. I’ll do it with you, and I promise I’ll be the only one disgracing dancers everywhere.”

She hesitates, and I can see her weighing her own dislike for the situation against the desire to watch me make a fool of myself.

Finally, she huffs, “Okay. I’ll show you the basics. But I’m not dancing for real for you in your apartment. That’s just weird.”

She squares her shoulders and shakes her hair out of her face and begins. “So, there are basic positions for your feet and arms and then basic orientations, and everything else in ballet sort of works off of those.”

“And that’s what you do? Ballet?”

She sighs. “Yes and no. I do ballet. I love it. But I don’t really have the training to be as good as I would need to be to do it professionally, and I’m not going to get it here. So mostly I do lyrical or contemporary, which is a little less rigid and more about the movement as a whole rather than body positioning and technique. But most people learn the basics of ballet first. And that’s what I teach, too.”

“You teach? You didn’t tell me that.”

“It’s just something I do to help out my old dance teacher. I teach a couple classes of little kids with five-minute attention spans. It’s . . . interesting.”

“Okay then, teach. Show me what to do.”

“This is first position.”

She stands with her heels touching and her feet spread so wide they’re practically in a straight line.

I try to copy her, but lose my balance when I try to push my toes that wide and my body protests. She catches one of my flailing arms and smirks at me as I get my feet into the widest V I can manage.

“Close, but now you need to straighten your legs.”

I do as she says, and the muscles of my calves and my ass pull uncomfortably tight. She’s still holding on to my arm, and she releases it to place both hands on my midsection, one on my stomach and one on my back. I’m hunched over slightly, and she pushes against me. “Stand up straight.”

I do, but I have to hold on to her to manage it, which leaves her tucked under my arm, still touching my waist.

“Maybe we should have done this by a wall,” she says.

“I’m a slow learner. The hands-on approach works best.”

“Could you be any more obvious?”

“Sure.”

I let go of the crazy foot position and use the arm around her shoulders to wrench her toward me. Then, just to make sure she doesn’t wiggle away, I drop my arm down until it circles her waist and draw her closer. Both her hands have migrated to my lower back, so I don’t feel too guilty.

“Do you ever dance with a partner?”

She doesn’t meet my eyes, staring straight ahead at my neck instead. Then slowly, she bends her head until her forehead rests on my chest just below my collarbone. Beneath my hands, I feel her body curve on an inhale. She turns her head, shifts a little closer, and lays her cheek against my shoulder as she answers.

“No.”