Page 35 of Catch and Cradle

“Hope, don’t say that. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that...I’ve thought about you a lot, okay? I wonder about you. I worry about you. I...admire you. I feel this need to know more about you, and then last night, when everything felt so free and easy at the party, I just...I had to be close to you.” I close my eyes for a second, just to remember what it felt like, just to hold on for a little longer. “That wasn’t fair to you, and that’s what I’m sorry for.”

When I open my eyes again, we’re almost chest to chest. I can hear her breathing. Her knuckles brush mine. I should pull my hand away, but I don’t. I stand there shaking as she trails her touch up my arm and then strokes my skin just above the collar of my t-shirt.

She’s so close now. I could dip my head an inch and kiss her again. I can taste it already, but at the last second, I twist my face to the side. Her lips land on my neck instead, and that’s almost worse. Need flares in my body, hot and demanding, and it’s too much. It’s all too much.

“Becca?”

She stops just as the first tears seep out of the corners of my eyes. I try to hold my sob back, but the sound rips its way out of me.

“Becca, it’s okay. Hey, it’s okay. I’ll stop.”

She goes to back away, but I reach out on instinct and grab her hand. I’m really crying now, letting out huge, embarrassing sobs that echo in the locker room, but I still don’t want her to leave.

I can’t lie about it or explain it away: I don’t want Hope to leave.

8

Hope

I don’t know what I expected when I followed Becca into the locker room, but it did not include ending up on one of the benches with my arm around her shoulders while she cries.

Yet here we are.

I’ve never seen her fall apart like this. I’ve never seen her lose control whatsoever, except maybe last night. Even during the few totally hopeless lacrosse matches the team has faced, she’s always been the person we look to to keep us from breaking down.

I pull her in closer as she takes a few struggling breaths. We’ve only been sitting here about a minute, and she already seems to be calming down. As I stare around the empty locker room, I can’t help thinking this is an exact role reversal of the night Ethan dumped me.

Except Becca doesn’t have a recent ex-boyfriend, and I have no idea why she’s crying.

“Aw, come on.” I try for a joke, since everything else I’ve said just seems to have made her cry harder. “I can’t be this bad at kissing. Did I have beer breath or something? Oh my god, did I burp in your mouth?”

She lets out a watery laugh, and I feel a little thrill of success. She swipes at her eyes and sighs before sitting up straight. I slide my arm off her, but we’re still sitting so close our thighs and shoulders are pressed together.

The crying has kind of dampened the sexual tension, but being close to her still makes me feel all warm in a way that isn’t even sexual at all. It’s just nice. Whatever the hell else is going on, this part is nice.

“I’m sor—”

“Stop it, Becca!” I bump her shoulder with mine. “No more apologizing about last night, okay? It happened. We both liked it. We’ve established that.”

I sound much calmer than I am. In my head, I’m still trying to process the fact that I just had my mouth on her neck.

So much for dampening the sexual tension.

“What do you want to happen now?” I ask.

Personally, what I want is to get back to the neck kissing, but that doesn’t seem to be the world’s greatest idea.

“It’s not really about what I want.” She still sounds a little shaky. “We’re both on the team. I’m the captain. There are rules to follow, and we both owe it to everyone to follow them.”

“I mean, technically, it’s not, like, an official rule...”

She shakes her head. “It means just as much as one.”

The conviction in her words is so strong it startles me.

“I get that. I really do,” I say after a moment. “This team means so much to me, and it makes total sense that everybody wants to avoid drama. We need to if we want to be the best players we can be, but I mean, we aren’t just lacrosse players. We’re people too.”

Again, she shakes her head. “It’s not just lacrosse to me. It’s not just a team. I...”