Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(8)

As if she just realized how close she was to me, her gaze dropped to my bare chest.

I flexed my pec, and she scoffed, taking a giant step backward.

“You really think you’re something, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Quarterback syndrome. Seems like you might have some of that in you, too.”

“Trust me — you and I are nothing alike.”

“Oh, I have a feeling you might be wrong about that, Julep Lee.”

Her full name shot out of me in an attempt to be cute, or maybe in an attempt to rile her up even more now that I knew how fun it was to ruffle her feathers. But instead, it was like a bucket of ice water on a fire, dousing her flame and sobering her expression.

“You’re free to go,” she said without emotion, and then she turned on her heels and left me standing there wondering who the hell I’d just stepped out of the ring with.

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Julep



The muscles along my rib cage ached as I stretched around the pole, hanging by one leg as I fought to reach back for the opposite foot. I spun slow and seductively to the melodic voice of H.E.R., inhaling deep and exhaling the same as I tried to match my movements to the beat.

Holding the inverted shape for a count of eight, I carefully released my foot, reaching up between my thighs for the chrome apparatus only to pull my chest up and recenter. I arched, letting my hair flow behind me, reveling in the full-body and mind escape only this could afford me.

It was shortly after Abby’s death that I attended my first pole class. I’d signed up mostly because I thought it matched my rebellious attitude at the time. It was one more way I could disappoint my family, one more way I could act out and be the screw up they all assumed I was.

But what I found inside that pole studio ended up being my saving grace.

It was a community of women empowering themselves, taking back what had been taken from them and re-inventing their souls from the inside out. These women were young, and they were old. They were all shapes, sizes, and colors. They were every corner of the feminine energy.

They were survivors.

It was the most supportive environment I’d ever been in, and more than that — it was the most physically and mentally challenging endeavor I’d ever taken on in my life.

When I was flowing, I couldn’t think about anything other than my breath, my points of contact with the pole, or my next move. There was no space in my brain for thinking about my sister, about the men who took her life and remained free, about my family’s demise once she was gone.

About how it was all my fault.

I knew nothing would change — not for the rest of my life. I would always be haunted by that one party, by that one seemingly innocent bit of peer pressure to con my sister into doing drugs with me. It was supposed to be a fun night, one we would laugh about as we grew older, one we’d tell our kids about when they teased us about not being any fun.

Back in our day…

Instead, it was the night she took her last breath.

And so, pole became more than just a way to exercise for me.

It became the only way to survive.

My breath sawed in and out of my chest once my bare feet touched the wood floor again, and I held onto the pole, heaving and standing still as my dizziness slowly began to fade. Once I felt okay, I strode over to the coffee table that I’d shoved out of the way and under our front bay window, snagging my water bottle off the top of it.

I chugged the cool liquid, mopping my forehead with a towel as I considered what trick sequence I wanted to try next. I was so deep in thought I almost didn’t notice the pair of green eyes watching me.

I felt them before I saw them.

It was a chemical buzz, humming right under the surface of my skin as I stood there in what was left of the fading sunlight coming through the window. I snapped out of the daze I so easily slipped into with pole, still breathing heavily as my gaze found Holden Moore.

He stood rooted in place on the sidewalk in front of the stairs that led up to his house, one large, stuffed paper bag in each arm. His lips were slightly parted, and even from across the street, I noted how his Adam’s apple bobbed hard in his throat as his eyes trailed the length of me.

In order to stick to the pole the way I needed to, I couldn’t wear much clothing. And so, I stood there in a black sports bra and black thong to match, and I didn’t bother to cover myself as those green irises carefully made their way back up to connect to mine.

Fire licked along my navel the longer he stared, the longer I held that gaze — just like it had in the training room the other day. There was something so unwaveringly cocky about how he stood, how he carried himself, how he pushed my buttons like he knew where every single one of them hid.

Something about him changed when he talked to me, it seemed. With everyone else on the team, he was calm, constant, severe — a leader, through and through. But with me, it was as if he saw a fleck of something covered by dirt, and he couldn’t help but scratch and scratch in the mission to uncover it.

It annoyed the ever-loving shit out of me that I was intrigued by that fact.

It annoyed me even more that I loved having his eyes on me.

“Ugh, what a creep.”

I jumped a little in surprise as Mary sidled up next to me, crossing her arms with distaste written in every feature as she shook her head and frowned at Holden.