Hail Mary (Red Zone Rivals, #4)

by Kandi Steiner

“Well, actually,” I said, stepping forward. “We were thinking you should stay.” Mary frowned. “Stay? But you just said—” “In my room.” Once again there was a long beat of silence, and then Riley barked out a laugh. “Yeah, okay. Nice try, Leo.” Giana leaned into her side like she wanted to whisper, but we still all heard her when she said, “Oh, my God. This is one of my favorite tropes. Two people who hate each other, one bed…” “I’m not staying in your room,” Mary said loud enough to snuff out Riley’s laugh. “Why not?” She scoffed like I was an idiot. “You can have the bed, I’ll take the couch.” “You can’t sleep on the couch,” she said. “I’ve done it plenty of times.”

Come on, Mary. You can’t leave. We love having you here too much.”

“We don’t want you to leave,” Kyle said sincerely. “We’re like your big brothers now. We want to look out for you and make sure you’re okay until your place is ready.”

I had to bite back a snort at that because the last thing I thought of Mary as was a sister.

I tried to smile, tried to assure her with one look that everything was going to be fine. But inside, all I could think was that I was completely fucked. Because within the week, that girl would be in my bed.

Mary officially moved into my bedroom just a few nights after we presented the option, and while sleeping on the couch had been a pain in the ass — and back — it wasn’t nearly as difficult as pulling on a t-shirt and smelling her all over it. She’d invaded every inch of my room and bathroom.

Now, she looked like she really felt at home, like we were family.

Zeke nodded, but didn’t have anything more to say. I could see it in his eyes that he felt one thing above all else. He didn’t want to leave her behind.

“Speaking of which…” Clay arched a brow at me. “What the hell is going on with you and your new roommate?” I surprised even myself with the casual coolness with which I took a sip of my beer. “Well, she hasn’t tried to kill me this week, so that’s nice.” “You two look like you’re sixty seconds or less from fucking in the nearest closet,” Zeke said. “Yeah, right. She’d sooner be a nun,” I combatted. Clay leaned toward Zeke. “Notice how he didn’t say he’d sooner do anything else.” “You’re blind if you don’t see that she wants you, too,” Zeke added. “The tension is tight enough to snap, man.” “That’s just because she despises me,” I said with a heavy gut.

A little Mary Bomb had gone off, and I couldn’t even pretend like I didn’t enjoy sitting in the rubble.

“Can you help me? I gotta get outta this,” she said, and then she spun around with the skirts flaring and backed up until she hit me. I caught her and my balance before we both tumbled back onto the bed, my hands finding her now-bare waist. I swallowed, running my knuckles down the smooth skin of her back on a groan I hoped she didn’t hear. “Uh, maybe I should go get Giana.” The words burned my throat as I said them. “Noooo,” she whined, letting her head fall back against my chest. “She’ll make me stay down there and I just wanna go to sleep. You do it,” she insisted, and then she reached around in an effort to show me the zipper of her skirt, but ended up just dragging her hand over my cock, instead. Jesus fucking hell.

“C’mere,” she said, reaching a hand out long enough to pat the bed. I swallowed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Mary pulled the covers up to her face, inhaling a deep, dramatic breath before she flopped around and sighed just as deeply. “Ugh,” she groaned. “Why do you have to smell so good?” I arched a brow.

“Your sheets,” she said when I didn’t answer, tugging them up farther and wrapping herself up like a burrito. “God, they smell so good. And your sweaters, too.” “You’ve been wearing my sweaters?” She shot a hand out from under the covers with her index finger pointed up. “Technically, you gave me one to wear first, so it’s in the rules that it’s okay to wear them whenever I want to now.”

“And why do you have to look at me like that?” “I’m just listening.” “No, you’re standing there all stoic, but I see it.” I swallowed. “What do you see?” Mary watched me for a long moment before she sat up, weight on the palms of her hands, the covers just barely catching on the swells of her breasts and keeping her nipples hidden from view. Her long hair spilled over those swells, over the sheets, her eyes heavy and dazed. “I see that you’d devour me,” she whispered. “If I said the word.”

I let myself watch her only a second longer before I turned out the lights. “I wish you remembered.” I froze at the words, frowning in confusion as something sharp and hot zapped through my spine. I turned slowly. “What?” But Mary was already asleep.

“Bitch, we don’t care about the eyeliner. What the hell was that?” She pointed to the door Leo had just exited out of. “What?” I asked with a shrug. “He needed shoes.” “Oh, I think what he needs is a healthy dose of you in that dress,” Giana argued.

I felt like an unexploded bomb ready to detonate at the slightest movement. Something lethal stirred in my veins as I drank at the bar with my teammates, a little too attuned to the door as I waited for Mary to walk through it.

But seeing her in that dress tonight, watching the way she took me in, how her skin tinged pink… it had wired me up tight enough to combust. I had to have her.

I was usually up for playing the cat and mouse game. I found it fun, enticing, and loved to lick my chops before finally devouring my prize in the end. But with Mary, I didn’t have the control to play the game any longer, to act unaffected by her. I was completely fucking feral.

Braden chuckled, hand reaching up to squeeze my shoulder. “For our sakes as well as yours, tell the girl how you feel.” “If you don’t, I’ll move in first thing in the morning,” Kyle added with a smirk before he threw the dart and hit a perfect bullseye. “If you want to keep that hand you just threw with, you’ll reconsider.”

Wait, was that her boss? I snuck a look over my shoulder, trying to remember if she’d said anything about what he looked like — but she hadn’t. And it didn’t matter who he was. He had his hands on her, and that alone was enough to make me consider jail time.

God, she was breathtaking. The green fabric of her dress hugged her in all the right places, showing me every spot I could grab her and hold onto. It set the emerald of her eyes ablaze, too — and those irises flashed with curiosity the longer I stood there. “Hey,” I said. Stupidly.

I thought I saw Mary’s smile slip into something a little more uncomfortable, thought she looked a little stiff where he held her against him. That bomb inside me started ticking again.

“What?” I asked Mary, but my eyes were still boring into Nero’s. “Don’t want them to know that your boss crosses the line and puts you in uncomfortable situations when no one else is around?” I barely got the words out before Nero was rushing me like he was ready to fight. We met in the middle, chest to chest, both of us seething as his friends crowded behind him and my teammates began to flank my sides. Clay and Zeke were the closest, and knowing they had my back only kicked my confidence up another notch.

“Look, what happens to me is none of your business.” “What if I want it to be?” Silence. Silence that was so deafening I felt it in the very core of who I was.

“Say something,” he pleaded. My heart thundered in my ears as I shook my head, and I had to look down, away from him. For a moment, Leo stood still, waiting. Then, he growled in frustration, whipping around until he was storming away from me again. “Leo,” I said, his name cracking my voice.

I gasped in surprise when he turned on me again, pulling at his hair before his hands thrust toward me, his eyes wild. “I can’t fucking do this, Mary!” His breaths shook through the words. “I want you. I know you know it, too.” My heart shuddered to a stop. It was one thing to assume it, but to hear him say it… “I didn’t—” “Don’t lie,” he said, his voice calmer now, softer. He took another step toward me. “You know it. You can feel it. You want me, too, but for some reason you keep playing this fucking game.”

“Damn it, woman,” he said, shaking his head. My chest was on fire. My breaths were hot steam. “I’m mad about you!” Leo gripped his hair again before his hands stretched out toward me. “Can’t you see that?” “You were once before and you don’t even remember!” There it was. The eruption.

Leo just tilted his head to the side, frowning, confusion washing over him. “What?”

“Two weeks ago, in my room…” Leo breathed the words slowly. “You… you said you wish I remembered…”

It felt like an eternity passed, but when I chanced looking at Leo again, he was ashen. Every line in his face had softened, his eyes wide, jaw slack. He stared at me, but it was like he wasn’t seeing me at all. It was as if he was in another place, another time altogether. “You…” he croaked, and then shook his head, deftly blinking before his eyes found mine. “Stig?”

The nickname was just above a whisper when it left him, but it felt like a knife to my chest. I swallowed. I nodded. And then I let out a gasp of a sob as he charged me and swept me into his arms.

An entire city crumbled inside of me, burying my aching chest and stammering heart in the rubble as I reached for Mary and pulled her into me. My next breath burned even more than the last as I crushed her to my chest, but I held her only a moment before I was pulling back to look at her. I swept one hand through her silky hair, cupping the back of her head as my eyes searched every curve and line of her face. I took in her freckles, her glossy wintergreen eyes, her trembling lips.

I choked on the first clean breath I’d taken since I lost her. Wrapping her tightly in my arms again, my hands went from her hair to her back, over her arms, up to frame her neck and hold her even closer so I could feel that she was real, that she was here. It was a dream and a nightmare all at once.

“How?” I never wanted to let her go. I never would let her go. I’d already decided, my arms tightening around her, chest swelling with that possession that had built before I even knew who she was. How did I not know who she was?

“You rejected me,” she spat, and I didn’t miss how tears welled in her eyes again, but she didn’t let them fall. “I told you who I was. I gave you the drawings you asked me to make for you. I… I put everything on the line, and you took one look at me and decided I wasn’t enough.” I was so desperate to hold her I couldn’t fight it anymore. “Mary, I would never—” But she yanked away from me before I could touch her. “You did,” she seethed, but her anger was snuffed out by pain. “You did, Leo. Do you seriously not remember?”

“Oh, God,” I managed, shaking my head. I lifted my gaze to Mary’s. “That was… you?” “Fuck you, Leo,” she said, spinning on her heel. She stormed away from me, but I chased after her, rounding her and blocking her from going anywhere else. “Mary, I swear on my mother’s life, I didn’t know.”

“Mary, I didn’t notice anything that entire fucking year. Okay? I was sick over losing you. I was… I don’t even know, paralyzed by the loss of you. I barely passed my classes that semester. I had the worst season of football of my entire life. I spent every waking minute that I wasn’t at school or at practice trying to find you.”

“I never would have hurt you on purpose,” I swore, and I prayed she felt it, that she believed me. “But I’m sorry I did. I’m sorry, Mary. I’m so, so fucking sorry.”

While I was missing her, wishing for her, she was trying to recover from the ugliest side of me. It killed me to even consider, to know those guys I’d called friends had made her suffer. That I had made her suffer. I’d hurt the one girl I’d ever cared for, all without even knowing it.

“You really didn’t know?” she asked, her voice muffled by my shirt. “I swear, Mary. I had no idea. If I had, I would have pulled you into my arms and claimed you for everyone to see.” She sniffed, burying her head in my chest. “No, you wouldn’t have.” I pulled back on a frown, sliding the pad of my thumb along where a tear had streaked her cheek. “Are you crazy? You meant everything to me.”

saw it on your face when we met, though. I wasn’t good enough for you.” I tilted her chin again, finding her gaze with my own. “You were too good for me. I was an idiot for not seeing that it was you.” The truth of that hit me like a tidal wave, the fact that I’d put us both through years of misery all because I didn’t realize…

I shook my head, determined not to dwell on the past, on mistakes I couldn’t take back. She was here now, and I had the chance to fight for her. I’d die before I’d let her slip through my fingers again. “Come home with me,” I said, searching her glossy eyes. “I know I have a lot to prove to you, a lot of pain to heal, a lot to explain.” I swallowed. “Let me start tonight.” Mary rolled her lips together, eyes flicking between mine. Mercifully, ...

We’d talked a little, but were both so drained from the emotions we expelled outside the bar that, mostly, we just existed together, like neither of us could believe we’d found our way back to each other. I knew I couldn’t.

My stomach settled just by having him near, by seeing that he wasn’t going anywhere, that he knew who I was now and he didn’t run.

“Thank you,” I whispered, voice still raw. “Figured you had to be as tired as I am,” he said, hesitantly sitting on the edge of the bed. He watched me take a sip, my eyes closing on a hum. The coffee had hazelnut creamer in it. “I hope you like that flavor,” he said. “I remembered you mentioned that you missed the creamer your dad always had at home, but I couldn’t remember what it was.” “Toffee,” I said. “But this is wonderful. Thank you.”

“I wish I could crawl inside your mind right now,” he said softly. I let out a breath of a laugh. “It’s not a pretty place.”

“I’ve thought of a million things I want to say to you,” he said. “But I feel like none of it is enough.”

His eyes skated back and forth between mine. “I wish I could tell you what you meant to me back then without sounding like a complete psychopath.” I chuckled. “Hey, I held a grudge against you for seven years. I think it’s me who’s the crazy one.” “I haven’t felt for any girl the way I felt for you.” His words simmered like warm honey in my veins, but I laughed them off, looking down at where his hands intertwined with mine. “Oh yeah, none of the hundred or so?” “I’m serious,” he said earnestly, and he dipped his head until I met his gaze again. “I… I can’t believe I hurt you.” I had to look away again at that. “All this time I thought…” He didn’t finish the sentence, and when I looked up at him again, he was watching where his thumb drew a line on my wrist, his brow furrowed, a deep line etched into his forehead. “How do I prove to you that I’ve changed?” Leo lifted his eyes back to mine. “That I’m more than what you think I am, what I used to be.”