Page 94 of The Overtime Kiss
She sighs. “It could.”
I flash back to last summer when I swallowed down my wishes. Not the night of her wedding, but at the ice-skating lesson, when she brought me the sweatshirt and the mug as a thank you.
I held back then. I didn’t ask her out on the date I wanted to. And I’m not sure I reallycanask her out on a date now. I can at least tell her the truth of that day though.
I push up a little higher in bed. She follows suit. I clear my throat. “You remember that day, a week after your wedding? When you came to the ice-skating rink and asked to talk to me after a lesson?”
She nods immediately. “Yes, of course.”
“I was going to ask you out on a date.” I lay it all out there.
“You were?” she asks, fighting off a smile.
“I was so damn ready,” I admit. “I was going to ask you to go to a baseball game and debate the umpires. I was going to see if you wanted to play mini golf—and then ask if I could make you scream in pleasure. I had a whole plan. Anything to spend a little more time with you.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asks.
“The sweatshirt,” I say like that makes everything crystal clear.
“The sweatshirt I returned?”
“Yup. It felt like a sign. You were returning it. You were apologizing. You were blaming the spicy margaritas. Didn’t take a genius to know it wasn’t the right time.”
And wow—my shoulders feel lighter. Was this a burden I was carrying? Not exactly. But it was definitely a secret. It’s one I’ve held onto for a while.
“News flash, Tyler.” She gives me a teasing look. “I would have said yes.”
I mutter a thousand curses under my breath. Fuck. I should have asked her then. “Let me put that on a list of things I regret.”
“But,” she adds wistfully, “I also wasn’t in a good place.”
And that raises the question: What exactly kind of place are we in tonight? “What about now?” I ask.
Slowly, she pulls her gaze back, giving me a very quizzical look. “Are you asking me if we can date?” It’s like she wants to be absolutely certain of the score.
I’m going to sound like a giant ass if I say we can’t. But I don’t have to because she beats me to it.
“I think that would be…really complicated, wouldn’t it? The kids and all.”
Relief floods me. I’m so glad she’s the one who said those words. “Yeah. I think it would be…but,” I say, my mind leaping ahead, trying to find a loophole, an answer, when I flash back on tonight’s hockey game.
It was messy because I didn’t follow the game plan Coach laid out. I took stupid chances. I acted on my emotions, letting them get the better of me. If I’d stuck to the plan, maybe we’d have won.
“When things get messy in a game, I always find it’s best to go back to the plan,” I say, tentatively, but strategically too.
Her eyes sparkle with curiosity. “Same for me. When I’ve made mistakes on the ice, I need to return to the program. The choreography. Go on.”
“What ifwehad a game plan,” I say, gesturing from her to me.
“A way to keep things from spiraling into something we’re not prepared for?”
“Yes, like a quid pro quo.”
She laughs. “I mean, I like your quid. I think you like my quo.”
I grin, running my fingers along the soft skin of her stomach under her shirt. “I definitely like your quid and your quo.” Then I frown. “Actually, I have no idea what either one of those means.”
But I know this much—I fucking loved fucking her. And I think she’s fantastic. If she still wants all those things she asked for this summer, I really, really want to be the man to give them to her.
