Page 26 of Well Aware

In his culture, family took care of family, no matter what the situation. Elderly always knew that they’d have someone to take care of them as they aged.

We’d fought for an hour and a half before Iris had woken up with a scream, hungry and wet.

He’d curled his lip and gathered his things, and that was the last time I’d ever seen him as my boyfriend.

The next time I saw him was at a game.

A game where I was extremely uncomfortable the entire time.

That discomfort was a thing of constant companionship for nearly three years.

Until a grumpy biker who treated team ownership like war.

His rigidity was somewhat suffocating. He was not accepting of weakness. And he certainly wouldn’t allow failure.

But under all of that Marine my way or the highway attitude was a kind and caring man that’d pieced a team back together from the breaking point.

The moment that I’d had him at my back my first game seeing Eloy this season? I’d felt like I had the entirety of the United States Marines at my back.

Eloy, always one to treat me like I was the one who’d wronged him in this relationship, had tried playing his games with me like usual.

Tried to take it out on me on the field.

Then Beau’d come in like an avenging angel blazing with pissed-off fury and wiped the floor so thoroughly with Eloy that he hadn’t reffed a single game of ours since.

It was magnificent and freeing.

“Magnolia?”

SIX

I feel like all of my problems would be solved if I had a dragon.

—Magnolia to Beau

BEAU

“Magnolia?” I repeated for the second time.

She focused those beautiful brown eyes on me, and as always, I was hit with a wave of need.

For eight months, I’d been fighting this pull.

For eight months, I’d been wondering just how long I was expected to go until I just snapped.

I knew she felt it, too.

The way our eyes would lock over the space that separated us. The way she would relax when I walked into a room. The way she would smile at me when she saw me with Iris. The way she would stay close, without appearing to do so.

There were a thousand different instances that I could name off the top of my head from these last eight months that said she felt the same way, but none of them mattered.

At least not yet.

Maybe after we were both settled. Maybe after she was retired. Maybe after I was officially done with the Cowgirls. Maybe when life wasn’t so complicated.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Sorry,” she winced. “Wool gathering.”