The Secret Hook-Up (The Copper Valley Thrusters, #6)

by Pippa Grant

“I fucked up getting drunk last night,”

“You’re allowed to be human.”

“I’m reall...

“Ad...

“People already call me the token ...

“Very few people, and those people suck and they’re just trying to get under your skin because it makes them uncomfortable that you’re bette...

“But am I? Am I? Or do people just want A League of Their Own and Field of Dreams mashed up and come to life? Am I really as good as all of the other women coaches in prof...

“Never mind. I need to rinse my hair and get dressed and get to work.”

“You. Kick. Ass. You’re not a gimmick. And if you get promoted to head coach, it’ll be because you earned it, not because the Fireballs are trying to be the first team in the league to have a female head coach.”

“Will...

“Who cares? Once you’re there, you’ll keep taking the team all the way, every seaso...

“What if I ...

Fuck it. Just ...

I wrap my arms around her from behind, careful with her bad shoulder, and press a kiss to her good shoulder. “Can’t control injuries, Addie. Can’t control how a rookie or a trade will fit into the team. Can’t control the weather. Can’t control bad calls. Can’t control bad days. But you can control doing the best damn job you know how to do. You’re incapable of doing anything else.”

JAW DROP OMGMGMGMCM

Her breath shudders out of her. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t tense.

Doesn’t rub her ass against my hard-on that’s poking her, but she doesn’t shriek and yell at me for it either. Nor does she yell at me for the fact that my forearms are pressing ...

This is the Addie I miss. The Addie she doesn’t let anyone else see. The one with fears and dreams and a soft side. The one who needs to be hugged and who needs a sa...

What has made her so terrified of being vulnerable?

“I need to get to work,”

“Ri...

“I’ll get a towel...

Ur weird. Cant even have a cute moment without ur ass being weird

I want to towel her off and carry her to bed and stroke her soft skin and lick her from head to toe and make love to her while being so very, very careful with her bad arm. I want to lie in bed with her all afternoon and listen to her tell stories about the Fireballs and tell her my own favorite stories about the Thrusters from the past few years. And none of that is happening today.

But maybe—maybe—it could happen another day.

“No.”

“So…what did you do?”

“I don’t want to talk ...

“You called me to talk about it and now you don’t want ...

“I want to talk about how much I don’t want to...

My hair is sti...

So is my left...

I wouldn’t let Duncan help me dry off as thoroughly as I needed to get dried off beca...

I needed ...

Now I need to not think about how he hugged m...

About how much I liked the feel of his erection...

How much more I liked the soft kiss he pressed to my good shoulder, then the way he pretended none of it happened at all after I’d soaped and rinsed the rest of my body and stepped...

But dammit, I miss him.

“Oh my god,” Francie yelps. “There’s a boy, and you like him.”

“I am completely uninterested in boys.”

“A man. There’s...

“Ah. I see. So who’s your crush?”

“No one.”

“Addie.”

“Never drinking ever again,”

“Oh, don’t say that. I love when we have spiked hot chocolate at the holidays. You’re hilarious when you put your guard down.”

I’m hila...

I’m so hilarious, I texted Duncan that we could’ve been forever if he’d never to...

Stupid stupid...

And then he showed up and cleaned half my apartment and helped me shower and hugged me and kissed my shoulder and didn’t make a single joke about what we could do while I was naked and he was pretending his boxer briefs weren’t...

Stop.