He was the first to shower and head back to the hotel; he’d promised Marissa he wouldn’t be gone for long when he’d left her early that morning. She’d wanted to talk since the night before, but he’d been concerned that she’d find some new reason why they shouldn’t be together, so he’d made a game of distracting her in every way imaginable at his hotel suite. In the shower. Against the bedroom door. Then, endlessly on the king-size bed. By the time he’d decided they needed sustenance before they touched each other again, Marissa had fallen asleep. Now, he took the back stairs to his room two at a time, not wanting to deal with any fallout from the pictures taken of him and Marissa in the nightclub. Most of the guys on the team hadn’t seen the articles yet, but the coach had gotten wind of it and cornered him about making his love life too high-profile. Nico Cesare had been none too pleased, insisting he hadn’t brought Kyle and Axel over from the Boston Bears to make social headlines.
