All those beautiful lines stretch across the column of her neck when she raises the bottle to her lips.

  Her eyes find mine, and she might smile against the cold glass. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you.” I swallow, taking a longer sip than necessary. “For coming today. Were the earmuffs okay?”

  She really does smile this time—the corners of her lips furling upwards from behind the bottle. “They were. That was very thoughtful of you. My sister was quite taken with them, actually.”

  “Noted. I’ll be sure to ask for another pair next time.”

  Her smile quirks up when she talks about her sister. It’s another little thing I’ve noticed, collected and coveted and placed in my back pocket along with all those other pieces of her.

  But it never lasts long. There’s always this initial flash of love, then a tiny twitch in her cheek and she looks like something about all that love hurts her.

  I jerk my head towards the couch because I don’t quite trust myself with words. She nods and pads across the living room.

  She folds herself down at one end, and her eyes cut to the TV mounted to the wall, where the countdown to the night game plays. She studies the screen for a second before rolling her shoulders and leaning back against the arm of the couch.

  Greer swings her legs up, stretching across the cushions like she’s at ease, and I like the idea of that.

  I’m tempted to sit right beside her, but I doubt that’s something she would consider friendly, so I sit at the opposite end and wince when I stretch my legs along the sectional. “Can I ask you a question? Just one friend trying to get to know another friend better.”

  Tucking a strand of hair behind her ears, she takes another sip of her beer and nods softly.

  “The noises—at the hospital. Is that why—”

  “Why they think I’m mean?” Greer angles her head. She chews on the inside of her cheek for a second before raising one shoulder in a shrug. “Sometimes. I don’t let anyone change my playlist in the OR because I know all of the songs and I know what to expect. I don’t like when people are chaotic or they drop things. But mostly, it’s because it’s not just one life we’re playing with.”

  “And I just kick a ball. What an unlikely pair of friends we make.”

  Her eyes narrow, like the self-deprecation doesn’t land. She blinks at me, slowly, sits forward, and all it does is highlight the way the amber flecks in her eyes look alive under the low lighting of my living room. “So today was game day. What does tomorrow look like for you? The rest of the week?”

  It’s usually a six-days-a-week job, whether people think it’s real or not. I take a sip of beer before swinging my legs so I’m facing her. Our feet almost touch, but she doesn’t move. “Body work. I’ll do a lower body massage tomorrow, mostly on my kicking leg. Focusing on my hamstrings, adductors. Cryotherapy. I’ll do a light Pilates class, and then it’s game tape. It looks more or less the same for everyone else on the team. Different workouts and different therapies but we’re all there together every day.”

  “What kind of tape?” She drops back against the arm of the couch.

  She’s looking at me like she’s actually interested, and even though it’s this thing I hate half the time, I find myself smiling at her anyway. “We’ll review tape from today. Good plays, bad plays. And then it’s onto next week.”

  Greer nods, taking another small sip of beer before asking another question. “Where did you play before?”

  I’m not used to this. No one wants to get to know me. My family wants me to fix things and pay for things. My teammates want me to score them points and my agent wants me to smile because it makes her money, too. “Uh, after college, I was drafted to Cincinnati. I played there until the expansion a few years ago.”

  She blinks, and even though it’s a gesture that doesn’t say anything, I think I can hear it anyway. These questions, they’re real, just like you are, Beckett. “Is that normal?” she asks.

  I run a hand through my hair. “For a kicker? Not necessarily. It’s a pretty fickle business. I’ve seen guys get traded after one bad game and someone who hadn’t played all season get picked up. There isn’t necessarily a lot of longevity. Kickers are rarely drafted but I—”

  A dark eyebrow lifts and she looks amused. “It’s okay to say you’re good at it.”

  “Kind of a stupid thing to be good at.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not helping anyone. It’s not surgery.”

  “I’m not sure that’s always helpful, either.” She takes another sip of her beer before setting it down beside her and leaning forward, elbows coming to her thighs. Greer props her chin up on her hands. “You know—I’m not going to pretend I’m some secret sports fanatic and that being at one game unlocked something in me I didn’t even know existed. But you made people happy today, Beckett. And that counts for something.”

  I don’t mean to do it. I meant what I said when I told her I wouldn’t cross her boundaries or her lines. That I’d respect them. And I do respect her—probably more than anyone on the planet.

  But I’ve never counted for anything.

  I drain the rest of my beer, discard the bottle, grip her calves, and I’ve got her on my lap, my hands in the back of her hair and my mouth on hers before I can think better of it.

  She kisses me back, for the record.

  Immediately. Enthusiastically. In all the ways.

  Her back arches, her chest pushes into mine, the tiny noises I’ve already fallen in love with rising in her throat when our tongues meet. Her hands find my hair, nails running reverently over my scalp and tugging on the ends.

  My hands find the curve of her waist, sliding up under her sweater to meet her bare skin. One finger brushes the raised edge of the scar and I hope she knows I think it’s one of the most beautiful things about her.

  She presses her hips into mine when my hand slides higher, under her bra, and I roll my finger and thumb over her peaked nipple. Her lips leave mine, head tipping back with the most beautiful fucking moan I’ve ever heard echoing across my apartment.

  I could watch her like this—on top of me, feeling the way I think I’m making her feel, the way she makes me feel—forever.

  My cock strains in my pants, and she moves her hips faster, back arched, my hand moving across her chest.

  “Take my sweater off,” she rasps, before her voice gets smaller, a tiny plea. “Please, Beckett.”

  The way she says my name makes me want to die. Granted, it would be a better death than I ever would have imagined for myself. The most beautiful person in the entire world arching into me.

  Trusting me with more than just her body, but a body I want to take care of all the same.

  Her clothes come off and so do mine.

  She makes me get up to go get a condom, but she tells me she doesn’t want to leave the couch.

  I don’t know if she thinks that’s against the rules, but I’d bleed her if she asked me to.

  Her thigh muscles tense on either side of mine, and she peers down at me, dark hair framing her face, when I roll my shoulders against the cushions of the couch and rip open the stupid wrapper.

  “Can you—will you go on top?” I breathe, voice rough. “I want to watch you.”

  She hesitates, head tilting to the side.

  “If you’re not comfortable—”

  Greer glances down, the raised pink edge of the scar hardly visible in the light, and shakes her head. “It’s not the physical presence part of the scar that bothers me. Scar tissue is just healed skin.” Her nose wrinkles. “I’m just realizing that maybe it feels sort of . . . unfriendly, for me to ride you on a couch.”

  I groan. My cock twitches and I pause halfway through rolling the condom on. “Don’t say ride.”

  She smiles, and it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen. The corners of her lips curl up, eyes sparkling, and she rolls her hips forward. “Mount?”

  “Stop.”

  “For me to take a little drive on—”

  “Enough.”

  She must think so, too, because her hands find my shoulders, and she lowers herself down onto me inch by inch, pausing as she stretches around me, her head tipped back with these breathy moans.

  Our eyes meet, her lips part with a sharp inhale, and we stay there, joined, just for a minute. My hand moves up the centre of her, thumb pressing down where I know she likes. My other hand finds the small of her back, and she rolls her hips forward.

  It’s just a small movement, but my head drops back against the couch, and I move with her.

  Greer arches her back, nails digging into my skin, and when her chest brushes my face, I take my hand off her back, palming her and rolling her nipple between my fingers again before replacing it with my tongue.

  It goes like this: wandering hands, hips rising to meet one another, mouths crashing together, and really no echo of the word friends until she clenches around me and I swallow the moan she makes into my mouth, and I combust, too.

  Her forehead drops to mine, and we’re too close to really stare at each other but I think I see all of her anyway before she moves her head to the side and drops it to the crook of my neck.

  “We’re still just friends,” she whispers against my shoulder.

  I turn, pressing my lips to the side of her head. “You’re probably my best friend, actually.”

  That might be true. But she’s also this unyielding, unbreaking, beautiful person who sculpted me from crumbled clay.

  She loves her sister and I know she loves her father even though it hurts her. She’s funny when she means to be and endlessly serious the rest of the time, even though she reads books about faeries and doesn’t appreciate the intricacies of the French Revolution.

  My heart tells me this is a stupid fucking idea, because she’s only given me tiny pieces of herself. But I can’t really hear it because it’s whispering to me from where she is, one leg on either side of mine, hands still on my shoulders, but not really, because they’ve got that stupid organ of mine in their palms.

  Greer

  Habits form anywhere between eighteen and two hundred and fifty-four days of repeated behaviour.

  Beckett Davis becomes one in significantly less time than that.

  As far as habits go, it could be worse.

  It’s not a habit that would kill most people, but I do worry it might kill me.

  Not the sex.

  It’s the way he smiles. How his laugh strolls across my spine before wrapping around me and clasping itself in the centre of my chest. How the dimple in his left cheek scores, and I think each time it does, it carves another scar on the left side of my ribs to match the one on the right.

  Like it might take another organ from me—one that lives just above in my chest, right behind and slightly to the left of my sternum.

  I left his house that night and didn’t think I’d end up back there.

  But I did.

  And all it took was him sending me a few facts about the French Revolution he thought I’d find interesting.

  Somehow, that had my brain shutting up, lulling it into a false sense of security. Because what was that, if not friendly? It’s not like he’s been waxing poetic about his undying love for me. His body likes mine and my body likes his. A mutually beneficial arrangement that keeps my heart in its cage but feels more than good for everyone involved. Just sex.

  But he might need to work on his definition of interesting—I’ve heard about Napoleon’s alleged intense dislike of cats, that he was apparently afraid of open doors, and about his unrivalled sense of smell.

  Those things had me back at his house. On his couch. In his bed. Even sitting at his island in one of his sweaters while he made me what he swore was a nutritious, post-sex meal.

  He wasn’t wrong. It covered all the bases—lean protein, complex carbs, and vegetables.

  But it turns out he’s not as lackadaisical as he might have you believe. He’s serious about what he puts into his body during the season, and there wasn’t much in the way of seasoning.

  Earlier, he told me about the temperature Napoleon liked his bath.

  Beckett swears all this knowledge is going to be a hit with my patients.

  I test it out on Rav first.

  “Did you know that Napoleon loved a scalding-hot bath?”

  One eyebrow kicks up and amusement glints in his eyes. It echoes in his voice, too. “No, I can’t say I did. Where’d you learn that?”

  I wave a hand in the air. “I happen to know an expert on the French Revolution. Fascinating stuff.”

  Rav leans back, resting his feet on the coffee table between us. “How’s your anxiety been? Any recent panic attacks?”

  “Fine.” It’s not a lie.

  I haven’t worn the earmuffs since the game, but sometimes, I feel like maybe I never took them off. Nothing sounds as sharp or as jarring.

  I think a lot of things in my life have dulled to the same quiet, pleasant murmur.

  If my life were one of the books I read, it would be explained by the presence of Beckett, this person made just for me by whatever benevolent gods ruled the sky.

  But here, in this life, it’s just science. I’m having more orgasms. That equals more endorphins. Serotonin, dopamine. All the things that calm my brain.

  My heart beats a bit funny at the thought—and it whispers, Liar.

  “I’ve noticed something.” Rav props his head up on his hand, elbow digging into the arm of the leather couch. “The closer we’ve gotten to the end of your fellowship, the more closed off you’ve gotten. You were close to an open book when we started seeing one another.”

  “I’m not sure anyone in my life would have defined me as an open book, Rav,” I answer truthfully.

  I’m not an intentionally closed-off person. I don’t always mean to lie.

  I think there are things I would like to share. But there’s this weird code we learned when we were kids. I’m not sure where we picked it up because our mother wasn’t around to enforce it, but even as children, we kept our father’s secrets.

  You don’t tell your friends on the playground your father drinks too much. That he’s not violent, but he can be unpleasant and just not a real dad. That you tuck yourself in because he needs bourbon more than he needs you. You certainly don’t tell anyone that he drives you around like that and one time, he drove you off a bridge and you had to give him a part of your liver as a result because his wasn’t healing properly and it was going to kill him.

  I’m not even sure why it was a secret, but it was. I don’t remember being particularly scared someone was going to come take us away. Those were just the confines of the cage we lived in.

  The irony is that it is sort of a tenet of sobriety. Sobriety isn’t yours to share.

  Somewhere along the way, Stella shed the shackles clamping her mouth closed, and I think maybe during the car accident—the water rusted mine shut.

  It took me all of college and too many bottles of wine to finally tell Willa and Kate.

  Rav nods thoughtfully, before conceding, “An open book with me, then. I didn’t know you before, but I’d wager your feelings of resentment about your donation have grown as your fellowship has progressed. How do you think you ended up here?”

  “We were in the car and then we weren’t and then I was short part of my liver and then I was in college and then I was in med school. I blinked and it was residency, and I took one step and here I was. Taking from people.”

  “You don’t take from people,” Rav interjects. You’d think he’d be tired of it by now—Willa said my whole “live life for me” was a diatribe, but this is probably the only sermon I make.

  “Someone took from me.” My voice fractures when I say it; it cracks my scar open too, revealing all that empty space in me, and I think little me peeks around the corner from wherever it is she hides in there, and she wonders where all the pieces of her have gone.

  With an air of maddening patience, he shifts forward. “You gave your consent, Greer.”

  “I was eighteen.” A tear escapes, tracking a path down my cheek.

  “Have you ever told your father or your sister this?”

  “How would you suggest I do that?” I choke a laugh and raise my hands. “Hey, Stella, Dad, I know I gave you my liver so we could try to be a family, and I did it without knowing if you’d stay sober, so thanks for doing that. But I think I regret it?”

  “He stopped drinking, Greer. Do you think maybe that had anything to do with what you gave?”

  I inhale and narrow my eyes. “No. Addiction doesn’t work that way, and you know it. No one will get sober for anyone but themselves. And I don’t say that with judgement. It’s one person versus a disease we still don’t understand. He did it for himself, and I am thankful he did. It would have been rather unfortunate if he killed my liver, too.”

  Rav says nothing, but today, it all feels so heavy in my chest, my scar twinges, and he wins. The edges of my vision blur, and I don’t bother to wipe at my eyes. “I thought that maybe—I don’t know. That it would make me better at this. More understanding. Give me unique compassion in a system that’s meant to beat it out of us.”

  “If you could pick a different specialty, a different residency, would you? What would you pick?”

  Blinking, I open my mouth and I’m about to tell him I’m not sure. But I think, despite it all, I am sure. I think of Theo. I think of Jer. I think of the people who died and breathed life into someone else. I press down on my rib cage and remember that it is a beautiful thing. I just wish it looked different. “I’d invent a specialty where I grew livers and pancreases and kidneys on trees and plucked them off for my patients instead of cutting someone else open.”

  “There’s always regenerative medicine.” The corners of Rav’s eyes crinkle with a smile. “You could do research.”

  “Maybe,” I say softly, offering him a tentative smile, watered by the tears staining my cheeks.

  He sits up, swinging his feet off the coffee table. “Are you still seeing the football player?”

  I purse my lips, those lines and boundaries and the bars making up the cage of my heart darken. “It’s just sex. Surely, I don’t have to explain base physical needs to you?”

 

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