Unravel Me (Playing For Keeps Book 3)

Perfection exists, and it’s right here in my arms.

It’s soft green eyes that light so easily, giving way to every emotion that passes through her. It’s a heart-shaped mouth, rosy lips that give way to a smile that knocks the air from my lungs. That sun-kissed nose and the way it crinkles every time she laughs.

The way she feels in my arms in this very moment, warm skin that melts into mine, the dip in her waist where I grip her, the roundness of her intoxicating hips, begging me to drag my hands lower, to explore every inch of her.

I could float through the rest of my life content in knowing I’ve held perfection in these arms.

Rosie lays her cheek on my shoulder with a soft sigh, tucking her face into my neck, like I’m her safe space. I think she might be mine.

“You feel really nice,” perfect lips murmur against my skin. “Solid. Steady.” Another sigh. “Safe.”

“I’ll be anything you want me to be.”

“Just you, Adam. You’re enough exactly as you are.”

Her words tug at an invisible string, pulling everything in my chest tighter. I want to be enough for her, but I’ve spent the last year and a half not feeling enough for anyone. But with her, right here, right now? There’s no hockey, no superstar goalie, no millionaire athlete.

There’s just me, and she says I’m enough for her.

My mind races with thoughts of a life I’ve always dreamed of. My family in the stands, and me making them proud. Quiet Saturday nights, take-out containers, wrapped up in each other. Slow Sunday mornings, pancake breakfasts, and cartoons on TV.

Suddenly, it feels like I’m finally being gifted it.

But I know this life can’t truly be mine until I give Rosie all of me, and right now, I’m struggling to find the words that give her those pieces.

So I swallow them down, bury them a bit deeper, and hope when she says I’m enough for her, she means it.

“How you doing?” I murmur against her hair, honey and rose gold tresses weaved into a braid.

“Good. I think.” Her gaze lifts to mine, uncertain. “Am I doing okay?”

I chuckle. “You’re doing great. Let me know if it’s too much.”

“It’s…not. I thought it might be, but it feels okay. Though it might have something to do with the giant man I’ve attached myself to like a koala.”

“I’m honored to be your tree branch.” Questions about her past crawl up my throat, searching for answers she doesn’t owe me. Instead, I tell her I’m proud of her.

“What for?”

“It’s hard enough to conquer our fears, and there’s a certain pressure when you’re not just doing it for yourself. It’s admirable that you’re facing your deepest fear for both yourself and for your son.”

Her lower lip slides between her teeth as she thinks. “I think my deepest fear is just…losing it all. Connor. He’s my whole life. So, swimming after nearly drowning? Hard as it is, it feels like nothing more than waking up on a rainy morning in comparison to even the briefest thought of life without each other.”

“Do you think about that often? Life without each other?”

“Mostly I think about having to say good-bye, how impossible that would be, but having to do it anyway. How hard it would be knowing it was the last time I’d see his face, praying that the world would be kind to him without me to protect him.”

A tightness squeezes in my chest before it rolls up my throat. “That’s…”

“Sad,” she finishes with an anxious chuckle, shifting like she wants to pull away, hesitating because she can’t. “I know. It’s embarrassing. Most people don’t have such morbid thoughts.”

I catch one of her hands in mine, pressing a kiss to the inside of her palm before wading to the stairs with her in my arms.

“Your thoughts are painful, yes, but not morbid. I can’t put myself in your shoes, but I’d stand in them if it meant one less minute where you felt that pain alone.”

“Sometimes I think that’s what I do,” she murmurs as I set her down on a lounger in the shade, watching as she covers herself in the towel I hand her. “Put myself in my parents’ shoes.”

I sit beside her, rubbing my hair with my towel. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes I wonder what it felt like for my parents.” She takes a deep breath, licks her lips as her eyes roam my face, searching for the courage to go on. “When they knew it was good-bye.”

Thick silence settles between us as her words settle. My mind races, remembering the look on her face the first time I called her trouble, the longing as she explained her dad’s nickname for her. The way she fell apart in my arms when I gave her that bouquet of peonies, when she told me about all the wonderful memories that came with the sight of them, explained that she couldn’t make more.

Because her parents aren’t here anymore.

“You had to say good-bye.”

“That’s the thing. I didn’t get to, because I didn’t know. But my dad…he knew, I think.” A storm brews in her eyes, angry clouds with nowhere to go. “Some days I remember everything, every single moment. Some days it’s all…blurry. Distorted. But there’s one image…it’s like it’s burned in my brain.” The storm in her gaze dissipates, leaving behind an exhaustion I can feel in my bones, a sort of…resignation. “The way my dad tucked my hair behind my ear when he said he’d be back. The devastation in his eyes when he looked at me one last time, over his shoulder, and told me he loved me.”

I wish I had the words to make this better, something to take away the grief and replace it with an everlasting happiness. But I don’t, and though I haven’t really lost anyone—not the way she has, at least—I know that’s not how grief works.

So instead, I wind an arm around her waist, bringing her body into the groove of mine, where I can keep her safe, and I press a kiss to her temple.

She swipes at a single tear the moment it escapes. “I don’t really talk about it often. It’s not that I can’t, but that I’m constantly trying to move forward, you know? I lost my family, but I’m building a new one with Connor. We’re making the memories I can’t make with my parents anymore.”

“Tell me about them. The memories. You’ve told me about the nickname, that your dad called you trouble too. What about the peonies?”

She looks up at me, her dimpled chin on my chest, bright eyes and an even brighter smile. “Mom always wanted this huge, colorful garden, like the one she had at her house growing up. We went to this beautiful garden store at the end of September when I was eight.” Her grin widens, blooming as the memory coasts through her mind. “I was enthralled. We were there forever, just walking around, taking it all in. Mom wanted something that would come back each spring. She said there was something about something as delicate as a flower that would bloom all over again after the harshest winter. I found this luscious peony bush. They were so pretty, the pink flowers. Not overwhelmingly bright, but this soft, beautiful rose hue that just captivated me.”

She touches the warm pink ends of her hair. “That’s why the pink. It reminds me of my mom, but my mom always said the color reminded her of me. That I was like the freshest bloom each spring, captivating.” The color dotting her cheeks runs rampant, right up to the tips of her ears as she drops her gaze. “I guess I wanted to feel that way again, like I was…captivating. For someone, at least.”

Captivating? But she’s so much more than that. She’s…fascinating. Dazzling. Fucking hypnotizing. Doesn’t she know that?

She doesn’t knock the air from my lungs when she walks into a room; she breathes the life back into me. If she’s the flower blooming after the harshest winter, I’m the spring. I’m everything new and fresh, full of life and color and sunshine and hope, after it was all stolen from me the way the first bitter frost of winter steals the beauty of autumn.

Rosie gives that all to me, and she has the nerve to sit here beside me and think she’s anything less than enchanting?

That just won’t work.

“So you got the pink ones?” I ask, trailing my finger along the curve of her thigh, watching as she mirrors the movement on my own, tracing the black lines of my tattoo peeking out of my swim trunks.

“And the purple ones. The blue ones too.” She giggles. “Then the next fall, we got the orange ones, and yellow the next. We planted a new bush each fall, and I waited by the window each spring to watch them bloom. Our front yard was a rainbow. Everybody stopped to look at it when they walked by.”

“Like you, then.”

She looks up at me, a noticeable swallow in her throat as she catches the intensity behind my gaze. “Like me?”

“The burst of color and life everyone stops to look at.”

Her nose scrunches, a ruby flush painting her freckled cheekbones at my words. She keeps her eyes trained on her hand as it moves over my thigh, toying with the hem of my shorts. Her lips purse to the side, and she peeks up at me from beneath thick, sandy blonde lashes. “Can I?”

“Mhmm.”

Something tight and thick settles in my throat at the gentle sweep of her fingers, something hot low in my belly as she drags my shorts up, exposing inch after inch of inked skin covering my thigh. The tip of her fingernail brushes over the mane of the lion painted there in black, the weathered lines of his face, the wisdom in his eyes, like he’s seen it all.

“Pretty,” Rosie murmurs, a slow, heated swipe of her hand that has muscles jumping that shouldn’t be. “Why a lion?”

“A symbol, I guess.”

“Of?”

Of everything Courtney tried to take from me, or maybe succeeded in taking from me. Of every piece of me I nearly lose with each hopeful date before it inevitably turns meaningless.

“Of strength,” is what comes out of my mouth. “Wisdom from lessons learned. A reminder to do better. That I’m in charge of my destiny, not anyone else.”

“I want to be in charge of my destiny,” Rosie murmurs. “It feels like, no matter how much control I try to exercise, I can’t control my future.”

“Your future and your destiny aren’t the same thing. Your future is anything that’s going to happen, the things we can’t pick. But your destiny…it’s everything that’s meant for you. The things we work hard for every day, because we want them. Maybe part of your destiny is a future where you aren’t afraid to wade through the deeper parts of the creek in the mountain, to swim with your son without fear, to be able to say good-bye to him every morning without that fear that it might be permanent. But those things don’t come easily, do they?”

The way she looks up at me, a tiny crease between her brows as she hangs on every word, mulls it over in her head, it’s a heady, addictive feeling, like she’s not anywhere else but right here with me.

“It’s something you want, and you’re putting the work in to get there, because you know it’s your destiny, a life you’re bound to live for however long you’re going to live it, and you won’t accept anything less. Your future is a life with your son. Your destiny is a life with him where your strength and courage make it the best life possible.”

A beat of silence stretches between us as she watches her hand move over my thigh, her touch firmer, slower, more purposeful as it travels in a dangerous direction. A shudder of breath escapes her, and she gazes up at me with wonder. “I want that.”

“Then take it,” I tell her, capturing her wrist. If her hand keeps moving the way it is, something inside me is bound to snap, and I’m supposed to be in control.

There’s a heat that comes over her, like it lights her from the inside out, but it doesn’t touch the furthest corners of her. Not the edges of her gaze, tainted with frost, a faint uncertainty that lingers, like she’s desperate to shake it. I’m not sure what it is, until I shift closer, tugging at the towel still covering her haphazardly.

She lets the plush material fall, slender fingers fluttering over the adorable daisies on her high-waisted bikini bottoms, hands coming to rest over her belly. Her gaze bounces to my thigh, the way the muscles flex as I shift closer still, then to my arms, my chest, and down farther, settling on my stomach. She swallows, fingers spreading wider, covering more of herself, and something inside me dies.

“Does it bother you that I don’t look like you?”

What bothers me is the hidden meaning behind her words, so I start with humor to try to ease her tension. “That you’re short? It’s a little inconvenient, sure. My neck’s gonna hurt once we get to all that kissing.” Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ (F)indNƟvᴇl.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

She rolls her eyes and swats my shoulder. “I’m not short! You’re just massive!”

“Right, sorry. Average .” I catch her flailing hand, linking our fingers, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “What’s on your mind, Rosie? Let’s talk it out.”

Heat creeps up her neck like a vine, but she holds my gaze. “I think you’re really handsome, and sometimes—especially when I’m in a bikini—I struggle being comfortable in my body. I don’t have a single ab, and you’ve somehow got eight of them. Plus, this…” She dips her fingertip into the dip of muscles in my stomach, tracing the line of my left hip, the muscle that disappears beneath my shorts, and she sighs. “This ridiculous V . Who invented this? Do you know what this does to a woman?” She smiles. Soft. Honest. Vulnerable. “I guess, next to you, I’m feeling a bit average.”

“If I hear that word come out of your mouth one more time, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

Mossy eyes blink up at me, wide and full of surprise. She opens her mouth like she might argue it, say that fucking word one more time. Before she can, I grip her hips, jerk her forward, until she’s flat on her back, and I’m living out a vision I’ve been dreaming of since I met her—her, beneath me, lips parted, chest heaving, heat staining every exposed inch of skin.

“The only thing average about you, Rosie, is your height.” The words are thick with gravel, a too-generous heaping of pent-up lust for a woman who’s been occupying my brain for the last few weeks. My knees bracket her in, one hand doing a slow glide up her luscious side, over immaculately flushed skin, sunshine and daisies, more skin, and so, so much warmth. “And all the things you see as imperfections are where somebody else, like me, finds beauty.” My thumb runs over the indent in her chin, the teensiest piece of perfection I’ve ever seen. “Like this dimple. It’s so perfect, I’ve found myself wanting to kiss it at least five times today. And these hips…” My hands shake as my fingers rain down on her sides, grazing her waist, skimming the edge of her bathing suit bottoms where they wrap around the wide flair of her full hips. Every touch is a hunger barely restrained, a starvation I haven’t felt before. “Jesus, I wanna grab them. Burn my fingertips right into them. So much, it’s painful to stop myself from doing so.”

The second her hands come up, a frantic touch that scrapes through the hair lining my jaw, that restraint snaps, a thread that was barely hanging on. I drop my hips to hers, and pressure explodes low in my stomach as she presses into me, a guttural, inhuman sound rumbling in my chest when she moans, like she’s as starved as I am. Smooth legs come around my waist, and my hands grab onto their only lifeline, fingertips dipping below her bottoms, sinking into her plush ass as I hold her tight to me, like I’m afraid she might get away.

I won’t let her.

“And these fucking legs,” I breathe out, running my hands over them, a rough slide that has me pressing closer as Rosie throws her head back, exposing her long neck. My lips fall to the flushed skin there, tasting her, and fuck , it’s not fucking enough. My mouth slides up the columns of her throat, nipping at her chin, until I finally get to kiss that dimple right there. “Not sure where you get off thinking they don’t go straight to heaven. I sure as hell don’t see anything but heaven when I look at you.”

“Adam,” she whimpers, writhing below me, fingers plowing through my hair.

“Not fucking average at all.” I drag my nose along her cheekbone, settling my mouth above hers. “I never wanna hear that word again. Got it?”

She nods, a frantic jerk of her head, wide eyes ready to give up any semblance of control. “Got it.”

“Good girl.”

I run my hand up her throat, fingers itching to lock it in place, keep her right there. Instead, I grip her jaw, giving her a slightly less demanding version of me, gentle. As gentle as I can be right now with her below me, running that tongue across her pink lips, getting ready.

“Gotta tell ya, trouble, this isn’t exactly what I had planned to earn that first kiss.” I trap her lower lip beneath my thumb, my gaze tracking its drag across a mouth I can’t wait to claim. “I’m gonna steal it anyway.”

Our gazes collide, and through all the manic hunger, something inside me softens at the hope swimming in her eyes, the trust.

Her lips part, I dip my head, and a tiny voice calls out through the video monitor sitting five feet to my right.

“Mamaaa !”