“Why are you telling me this now all of a sudden?” I croaked.
His hands stroked down the line of my upper arms to stop at my elbows. “I won’t be the reason your career is blemished,” he explained.
The reason my career was blemished?
Oh. Oh. I’d been the one to say it from the very beginning: it didn’t matter what anyone else thought as long as we both knew we hadn’t done anything. I could go to my grave knowing I hadn’t done any fraternizing with my coach. Oh my God.
“I wanted to wait until the season was over. I didn’t want to rush you. A few months are nothing compared to the rest of my life, schnecke.” Kulti nodded, his eyebrows hitching up a quarter of an inch as recognition hit me. “You have no idea what the day of your concussion did to me.”
His face tipped down as his expression turned grave. “I thought your neck was broken. It was the most frightening thing I have ever experienced. Franz called and asked how my schnecke was doing.
“My schnecke. My little snail, do you know that’s what it means? It’s a term of affection in my country. My love. My snail. I don’t want to waste more time. I have nothing to hide and neither do you.”
I tilted my head back, my throat completely exposed as I sighed in desperation. “Please don’t say stuff like that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No, it’s not. We’re friends. You said I was your best friend, remember? You can love me but not be in—“ I couldn’t say it. I shut my mouth and gave him an exasperated look.
“I can and I am. When you love something you do whatever you need to do to protect it, isn’t that right?” He tilted his face down, making sure our eyes were meeting.
All I could manage to do was stare and hyperventilate.
He nodded, his big hands kneading my arms. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Oh yes.’”
I could feel my lower lip trembling as his thumbs rubbed the tender part in the crook of my elbow. “You’re delusional.”
“I’m not.” Kulti tipped his head down, eye to eye like he’d been with me when I’d woken up from my concussion. “Understand, I would wait for you however long you needed me to, but I hope you don’t ask me to wait any longer than the end of this season.”
Panic made my throat tighten. This was all too much. “I have a choice in this. I don’t know—”
“You know, Sal. It’s why we fight and make-up. Why we’ll always fight and make-up. You were the one that said to me that you fight with the people you love the most, remember? You and I fight all the time, see?”
Those big hands left my thighs and before I could wonder where they were going, they landed on my cheeks. In a split second, he tilted my face just slightly down and we were eye to eye, his breath on my face. Those amazing hazel eyes were closer than they’d ever been.
Then he kissed me. Unexpectedly, out of the blue, sudden as a heart attack.
The dream of a teenage Sal and the dream of twenty-seven-year-old Sal, became one.
Reiner Kulti, my German, my pumpernickel, pressed his lips to mine. The same lips I’d kissed a minimum of fifty times on the posters that had once been on my wall. His mouth was warm and chaste, pressing, pecking, one, two, three, four times. He kissed one corner of my mouth, then the other.
Holy mother of God, I was a sucker for those corner kisses.
I opened my mouth just a little and kissed him back. Our kisses were a little more open-mouth than closed. Five, six, seven, eight times he let me press my lips to his. He let me be the one to kiss him back. Nine, ten, eleven times, right under his lips, on a chin that hadn’t gotten the memo it had been shaved that morning.
His breath rattled in his chest as he pulled back, eyes closed, mouth firm and tight.
My heart ran and ran and ran. Without thinking about it, I put my hand on his chest and felt. I felt the furious pounding beneath all that muscle and bone, just like mine. Excited, racing, sprinting, trying to win like always.
I loved this man.
Sure, it made me an idiot and loving him didn’t necessarily mean anything, especially when I wasn’t positive that Kulti wasn’t on drugs but…
Well hell. Life was about taking chances. Going for what you wanted so that you didn’t get old and have pages of regrets. Sometimes you won and sometimes you lost, as much as I hated it.
His thumbs dug into the soft place between my jaw and ears, placing one more sweet simple kiss on my cheek that I felt under my skin. “Two more games.”
Two more games.
The words had me jerking back. What was I doing? What the hell was I doing in the freaking Pipers parking lot?
Luckily, he decided to take a step back right then. His lips were pink, his eyes glassy. His nostrils flared as he watched me closely. “Let’s go, yes? Every day this gets more difficult.”