The Crush (The Wolves: A Football Dynasty, #3)

by Karla Sorensen

I was successful. I was admired. I’d proven the thing I’d set out to prove. But I was also alone. And I didn’t want to be anymore.

“Whatever my lady asks for,” I said. Her hands dropped from her face. Even through her wine-haze, she recognized the words I’d said unthinkingly as we sat around the bonfire months earlier. Her mouth fell open in a gentle O. There it was again—the complete dichotomy of how I felt when I was around her. I wanted to trace the line of her lips with my fingertip. And I wanted to press her back into the seat and tear at her clothes. I wanted to gather her in my arms and do nothing more than hold her. And I wanted to rut her into the car’s upholstery like a wild fucking beast.

Did everyone feel like this when they found who they wanted to spend the rest of their life with? Or maybe it’s because I’d known her for so many years. Because even before I was drafted, I liked her. But like … that wasn’t the fireworks and lightning and bigness that I always thought would accompany falling in love with someone. Adaline wasn’t fireworks and lightning. She was something softer, sneaking up on me until I couldn’t look away. A sunrise, maybe. A beginning point that changed so gradually you hardly noticed until the brightest, most vivid colors you’ve ever seen dominated the entire horizon.

“I love you. And I don’t care what we have to do, I don’t want to love you from far away anymore.”