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“What’s your game, Rivera?”
“No game.” He doesn’t retreat. If anything, he leans in, chin tipped, until I feel his warm breath on my mouth. His palm turns under mine. Fingers slip between my fingers. “What’s yours?”
Inches. Half of one now. I smell that cologne again, spice and cedar, and under it the clean salt of his skin.
“I don’t play games,” I tell him.
“Liar.”
The word is soft. It should be a taunt, but it comes out like something else. A dare. An invitation. A name for the thing I’ve refused to look at for three days.
My free hand moves before my brain signs off on it. My fist finds the front of his henley, cotton bunching in my grip, and I drag him forward until his chest presses against mine. He’s solid. Hot. His heart hammers against my ribs, fast as a bird trapped in a chimney.
Micah’s breath catches.
His eyes drop to my mouth.
One inch. That’s all it would take. One inch, and I’d know if he tastes as good as he smells. One inch, and this whole stupid, impossible fever would either burn out or take the whole building with it.
His lips part. His free hand lifts. The tips of his fingers graze my jaw, barely a touch, and every nerve in my face fires at once.
“Zane,” he whispers.
It’s the first time he’s used my name.
A door bangs open somewhere down the hall. Voices spill out, Jill’s laugh, a man’s baritone, the rattle of a rolling case. Footsteps come our way, quick and bright.
I let go like the shirt is on fire.
Micah stumbles back half a step, and losing him hits me like a cold slap. His hand hangs in the air where my jaw was. His mouth is open. He looks wrecked, and I did that, and God help me, a small vicious part of me is proud.
“Butler—”
“Don’t.” I turn. My legs carry me down the corridor, past Jill and her producer, who stare as I blow by. Past Dan, who calls my name and gets no answer. Through the lobby, through the revolving glass doors, into the gray afternoon where the wind slaps my face and traffic snarls along the curb.
I don’t look back.
I make it to the car before my knees give out. I brace both hands on the roof, forehead against the warm metal, and drag in a breath that shakes on the way down.
My heart pounds so hard I can barely breathe. I can still feel the shape of his ribs against mine, the ghost of his fingertips along my jaw, the way my name sounded coming out of his mouth.
What the fuck am I doing?
5
MICAH
Fight week chews me up and spits me out in pieces.
Monday, the open workout, where three hundred fans watch me hit mitts while Zane Butler sits in the front row with his arms crossed. Tuesday, a sponsor dinner with rubbery chicken and a photographer who keeps asking us to stand closer. Wednesday, a radio hit in a booth the size of a closet. Every room, every hallway, every stage, he’s there. Watching. Never speaking. He hasn’t said one word to me since the stairwell. He nods at moderators, at cameras, at the air over my left shoulder.
Never at me.
“You are giving the whole building a rash,” Theo says Friday morning, pinching a sauna towel off my shoulder. “Seriously. Jonah asked if you’d been served papers.”
“Theo.”
“I’m just saying, Victor asked me why you keep touching your face.”
