Unspoken Memories (Unspoken Series) (16 page)

I begin to see the crowds increasing on the side, with
people cheering, and I see the finish line in the far distance up ahead. I grow
excited, and suck in a big breath, telling myself, let’s do this. I dig deep
down inside, trying to pull energy from my body, and pick up my pace. I can see
the finish banner slowly start to come visibly close, so I start sprinting for
it, finally crossing it a couple of seconds later.

I stop running, bringing my body to a walk, as they place a
medal over my neck. The feeling of knowing that I’ve finally finished, mixed
with the pride of receiving my first medal, makes it worth running this race.

That’s when I realize that I had totally forgotten about
Matt a while back and I feel horrible about it. I turn around looking for him
and see him running towards the finish line. Once he’s crossed over he brings
his body to a walk as well, with his hands on the side of his hips, and shakes
his head as he drops it in defeat.

After they place his medal around his neck, he comes
straight to me and hugs me, making the guilt disappear. After a couple of
seconds he lets me go, but keeps his arm around my waist, and he walks me
through the crowd of spectators.

My body feels spent, but there is nothing like the feeling
of knowing that you just finished running thirteen miles and you also beat
someone else in the process.

After gathering our stuff from the check-in where we left
our bags, we begin to silently walk over to the lot where we left his car. The
whole time we don’t speak, and I’m already beginning to think that Matt is
going to back out on his end of the deal.

I had totally forgotten about it until we started walking
back. You would have thought this was the reason why I kept running faster, but
in reality it wasn’t. I was lost in my own little world of wanting to finish.

Once we get to the entrance of the lot with the car, I see
him grimly start to dig through his bag. Looking worried he takes out his keys,
tightly squeezing them in his fist, as if he’s about to change his mind. He
closes his eyes, tilting his head up to the sky before taking a deep breath.
You can see his throat tightening up as he swallows and the strain in his jaw
indicates that he’s keeping himself from grinding his teeth. I see his head
come back down as he solemnly opens his eyes, looks directly at me, and then
throws the keys to me.

I catch them with a grin from ear to ear, jump up excited,
pumping the fist holding the keys and start to jog to the driver’s side of the
car.

I get in, stick the key in the ignition, and turn it. The
car turns on with a loud purr that I love hearing. I sit there, closing my
eyes, gripping the steering wheel as I rest my forehead against it.

I can hear Matt groaning from the other side of the car, but
I only ignore him wanting to take in my sweet victory.

Yup, this feeling right now
might
just be better than
eating Matt’s pancakes after a long run.

A WEEK LATER I’m lying outside in
the backyard sunbathing in a bikini, taking advantage of the sun that has
decided to show itself in Portland. These days are rare, but when they do
happen, I take full advantage. I feel a silhouette taking over the sun shining
down on me, and I open my eyes to see a sexy looking guy looking down at me while
he’s licking his lips. Thank God for the sunglasses I’m wearing at this moment,
because I’m staring intensely right back at him, imaging what I could easily do
with those lips.

I shake my head, forcing myself to return to reality. “Is
there a reason why you’re out here, Matt? Besides blocking the only sun that
decided to grace us with its presence on this day.”

He stares at me, and I begin to feel my body heat up from
his sexy eyes bearing down on me. Even the sun that is shining down on me
doesn’t heat my body as well as those eyes. My heart starts to race like it
always does when he’s near me, and I might have to take a
really
cold
shower to bring my body temperature back down.

“I wanted to tell you that I went into the Portland
Marathon’s website to confirm my entry, and I discovered that there were still
open entries. So I signed you up to run it with me,” he casually says.

My body shoots up and I immediately stand up to stare at him
in astonishment. “Why the heck did you do that Matt, and without asking me
first? What makes you think I would even want to run it?” I practically shout
at him. “My legs hurt for days after the last race. I was sore in places that I
didn’t like, and it’s unfair because I didn’t get any enjoyment out of it.”

Matt looks at me dropping his eyelids with his signature
beam on his face and I’m instantly regretting was I’ve said. “If you wanted
some enjoyment out of it beautiful, all you had to do was ask.”

I want to smack that smile off his face right now. “Don’t
you start with me Matthew, I’m not in the mood,” I snap at him.

“Let me know when you are and I’ll make it up to you.”

“Look, I didn’t want to run it alone,” he says, trying to
change the subject. “Since you already have the stolen memory, I figured I
would make it a reality for you,” he says as he walks away from me and into the
house. The sadness when he said it makes me feel guilty, then I quickly
remember what he said.

Stolen memory, my ass. It’s not like I wanted these damn
memories to happen. I don’t even understand why they’re happening. Especially
when they’re all about him.

I follow him into the house, still pissed. If I thought I
was overheated earlier from his sexy stare, he is going to feel the wrath from
the heat of my glare in a minute.
He’s
going to be the one that needs
the cold shower when I’m done with him.

“Matthew Garcia, you had no right to register me for another
race without my permission. You have to stop doing that,” I shout at him,
because he’s still walking away from me. “I haven’t been training as hard as
you. So there’s no way I could even hang for, for… how many miles is a marathon
anyways?” I ask, totally lost, not knowing the answer.

He stops in the hallway before his doorway and faces me with
a serious look on his face. “It’s 26.2 miles and I’m pretty sure if you can
handle fifteen miles you can handle a couple of more.”

My jaw drops open. “Did you flunk math? Because I’m pretty
sure twenty-six minus fifteen is not a couple of measly miles,” I say, dropping
my hand on my hip, glaring him straight in the eyes.

“We’ll run twenty miles this weekend at an easy pace for
your body to adjust and then the week after that you’ll take it easy during the
race. You have seven hours to finish it anyways. I’m pretty sure you can finish
it before that,” he says, smiling down at me.

“Give me one good reason why I should run this race?” I
throw at him.

“It’s the last race that I can run before the season starts
and being that it’s the last race that I ran with my sister, I have a feeling
it’s going to be hard on me to run it alone. It would really mean a lot to me
beautiful, if you’d run it with me.” His eyes are pleading with me.

He’s managed to make me push the anger completely away with
his plea and the only thing I can say is, “Alright, but it’s the last one,”
Pointing my finger at him in irritation, I declare, “So quit signing me up for
the damn things, or the next time you'll be running alone, whether you like it
or not.”

I turn around, heading to the kitchen, not giving him a
chance to give me an answer.

As I stand against the counter drinking some water I think
about everything that just happened. What is up with this man? He knows how to
push my buttons in all the wrong ways.

Since I’m still fuming a little, I decide to head to my room
to take a shower. I’m hoping the cool water will temper down my mood.

Once I’m finally done and dressed in normal clothing, I head
back into the living room and notice Matt sitting on the couch. He’s leaning
forward over a thick folder, concentrating intensely on it. I go over and sit
next to him and see that he’s staring at a page with a bunch of Xs and Os all
over it. He turns a page and does the same with the next one.

I’m staring at the markings on the page and I’m confused out
of my mind what it means, so I look up at Matt. He finally notices that while
he’s deeply concentrating on the page, I’m deeply concentrating on him.

Matt tilts his head to me with a half-smile. “Hey beautiful,
you done with your tantrum?”

I roll my eyes at him and take a deep breath. I really don’t
want to start fighting with him again.

“What are you looking at?”

He lifts up the folder he’s holding with the pages and
states, “It’s this year’s play moves. As the quarterback, it’s my job to know
all the offensive plays.”

I look back down at the folder and notice that there must be
at least fifty pages. “That’s a lot of pages you have to memorize, how do you
do it?”

He smiles at me, saying, “Practice. If you want to help me
practice the moves, I’m all up for it.”

I roll my eyes again, grab the folder from his hands, and
start flipping through the pages as well. We sit there with him trying to
explain what the different plays are, but to me it’s a whole bunch of
mumbo-jumbo. Instead, I sit there listening to him, just so I can hear his
voice.

I learn that when he’s in deep concentration his voice
becomes husky without him trying, and it has a way of taking me to another
world. I love the way his eyebrows move up and down when he changes his facial
expressions with the different explanations. I wonder what his voice would
sound like against my skin as he’s kissing me.

As soon as the thought comes to my head I easily shake it
off. I have to stop doing this to myself. I don’t know why I’m even doing it. I
know he’s totally off limits, but then that’s when I realize the old saying.
You want what you can’t have.

Willpower Abigail Adams, willpower.

“Matt, do you still talk to your ex-girlfriend, the one from
Berkley?” I suddenly want to know.

He looks puzzled why I would ask. “I talk to her every now
and then. Mostly when I’m drunk, and same with her. You know, the whole drunk
dial call,” he says.

I shake my head because I don’t know what he’s talking
about. I can’t imagine myself trying to call someone when I’m drunk. If I have
in the past, it makes me feel better that I don’t know.

Matt quickly chuckles and says, “Well, one of these days
I’ll show you how to do it.”

“I really doubt I’ll want to call your ex-girlfriend when
I’m drunk,” I tell him. This makes him throw his head back while he laughs. He
laughs so hard he has to wipe his eyes. His laugh is contagious and I’m soon
doing the same.

When he laughs like this, it makes me feel so good. It
brings back the small memory of his sister, when she told me that he needed me
in his life to make him laugh again. At this moment I understand exactly what
she meant, I haven’t seen him laugh much since I’ve met him.

He’s finally able to calm himself. “I really doubt she would
want you calling her on my behalf anyways. That would be a very awkward call.”

Yes, it would, I think to myself.

Matt reaches over and grabs my hand, then brings it to his
lips, giving me a kiss on the back of my hand. Then he stands up and heads to
the kitchen. I close the playbook, place it on the coffee table in front of me
and follow him.

As I reach him, he’s taking things out of the cabinets and
fridge, while placing them on the island in front of me. “I’m planning on
making lasagna for dinner. Want to help me?”

I shrug my shoulder. “Why not, I have to learn to start
cooking anyways. There is no way I’m going to be able to beat you in the
marathon.”

He looks up from the counter and gives me a wide smile. “I
hope not, because I don’t know if I could trust you driving my car again.”

“Hey, we made it home in one piece. As for your car, it’s
not my fault that it has so much horsepower that I’m not used to,” I retort.

The problem I had with his car was that the gas pedal was
very sensitive, and every time I would press on it, I ended up almost peeling
out. I thought Matt was going to have a heart attack on the twenty-five minute
drive home. I had him gripping the seat and dashboard more times than he wanted
to, but he was a good sport about it. He never once yelled at me. He did give
me some ugly looks, but never raised his voice. If looks could kill, I would
have been dead upon arrival.

He had the biggest scowl on his face when he got home and
all I wanted to do was kiss him to make him smile. Ever since that day I was
obsessed with thoughts of kissing him. There wasn’t a day that went by I didn’t
think about it. I just wanted to take those plump, juicy pink lips in between
my teeth.

My lusty thoughts are instantly broken when I hear Matt say,
“That’s not the only thing that has a lot of power in it,” waggling his
eyebrows.

I’m already used to his perverted comebacks, so I merely
throw my head back and laugh at his response. “Does everything always have to
come back to sex with you? Don’t you get enough from all the girls swimming
around you all the time?” I ask.

He stops, stares at me, and then says, “Since you’ve moved
in, I’ve calmed down quite a bit.”

If you call often, leaving for a couple of hours during the
day calming down a bit. I don’t want to know how crazy his sex life was before.

“I haven’t seen a girl come over since Lizzy, not that I
could keep you from bringing girls to your house,” I say, raising my hands in
surrender. “But you must make it really quick since you only leave for a couple
of hours. So you must be going to them?”

Matt shakes his head as he puts ground beef into the pan in
front of him to cook. Keeping his eyes on the pan he responds, “I haven’t been
going to any girls, Abigail. I go to the gym at school. I have to keep in
shape, especially with the season about to start soon.”

His statement surprises me. Knowing that he isn’t out screwing
any girls makes me feel so much better. I know it shouldn’t, but it does.

The rest of the night goes pretty smoothly, with me doing
the easy parts of the lasagna. I learn that this is another dish that requires
layering, but with Matt’s help it gets done quickly. I help make the salad,
and, as if on cue, once it’s done Trey walks into the door.

Matt starts placing all the food on the dining table and
Trey stares at him. “So we’re serious about this eating at the table shit?”

“Yeah, so get over it,” he says without even looking back at
him.

I head over to the table to place the salad on it. “Families
eat dinner at the table. Since we are now a happy family, according to you two,
we eat our meals at the table.”

Trey shrugs his shoulders and says, “Whatever makes you
happy, supermodel.

We’re almost done with dinner when we start discussing the
recent nightmare that Matt has signed me up for, making Trey laugh from
imagining how pissed I must have been when he told me.

I state that I was beyond pissed, but finish with, “If I
need to, I’ll walk most of it. According to Matt I have seven hours to finish.
I’m pretty sure I have this one in the bag.”

Matt quickly looks at me shocked, and then turns to Trey. “She’s
running most of it, even if I have to slap her ass most of the way to keep her
going.” Then he looks back at me, smiling. “Trust me, I would do it too.”

I gawk at him. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Matt lowers his lips to my ear to say, “Trust me, beautiful.
I
promise
I will.” My eyes draw wide open at him as he stands, and
begins to clean up the table.

Trey might not have heard what Matt said, but by the shock
on my face I think he gets an idea. He’s sitting there laughing at me, while
shaking his head before he also stands up, leaving me alone at the table. I better
make sure to pace myself, because as much as it turns me on when he slaps my
ass, I don’t want the whole public seeing him doing it.