I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 116: Ellie

The most important lesson I learned in college had nothing to do with my academic classes and everything to do with love.

In most love stories or movies, the ones that made me fall in love with reading, love is beautiful. A couple falls for each other into pure, blissful happiness and gaze into each other's eyes, embrace in a hug, or smother each other in "fade to black" endings into assumed happily ever after endings.

In one of the most horribly low moments of my life, Logan taught me the true meaning of love. He sat with me in my darkness, stayed awake through my distressed sleep, held me through my uncontrolled, random bouts of grief, and pushed me through the basic necessities of caring for myself.

With Dr. Sterns' guidance and Logan's amazingly stubborn persistence, my days slowly turned brighter. Setbacks happened but Logan was right - when I fell, he fell with me. He never told me what to do or how to feel but he was there... right in the trenches, encased in the muddy, dark emotions that threatened to pull me under and...

He never left.

In the darkness, Logan became my entire world. More than anything, I appreciated how he allowed silence into our apartment, our life. If he felt any pressure to fill that silence with words of encouragement or reassurance past the occasional "I'm here," he kept that opinion to himself and I couldn't have appreciated him more for that restraint.

With each day, slight improvements accumulated. I cried less, ate a little more, and my mental focus returned, followed by my smile until my smiles turned into laughs. My moments of solitude weren't all filled with guilt and remorse, just silence.

Our relationship wasn't perfect but we worked hard for it. One week after Dad's funeral services, after the football game where Emmitt buzzed around me like an annoying gnat, Logan seethed with anger when I met him outside the locker room. His chest pitched with sharp breaths, the ocean-blue in his eyes stormed gray, his jaw was clenched tightly shut, a vein pulsed out of the side of his strained neck, and his fists were clenched so tight that the skin on his knuckles was stretched white.

"Logan?" I started when he dropped his bag onto the ground, grabbed my waist, and slammed his lips hard against mine. The tightness of our kiss, followed by the way he plunged his tongue in between my lips left me breathless and dotted my vision.

Once my hands grabbed the back of his neck, Logan pulled off with a slight pop and pulled back with a slightly guilty look in his eyes. One of his hands cupped my cheek and without a blink, he spoke in the angriest voice I'd heard from him, "You're mine, Ellie."

"I..." My lower lip rolled under at the mixed reactions, annoyance at his caveman-like statement that battled against an equal amount of arousal that also found his possessiveness a massive turn-on.

"No one kisses you but me," he continued without a blink. "No one."

At my raised eyebrows, his hand lifted off my cheek and rubbed the back of his neck. "Uhh... except family."

"I assure you I don't kiss Jake," I teased but my eyes averted down the line of his post-game suit's tie as the source of his anger hit me. "Emmitt... I'm sorry -"

"If I hadn't seen how disgusted you looked when you shoved him away." Logan threaded his fingers within his. "Probably would've punched his lights out instead..."

"Instead of what?" I gaped at Logan in awe. The longer I studied the back of his head, warmth and pride flowed through me at his mature reaction, how much he'd changed.

"Don't look so surprised," he grumbled over his shoulder. "He definitely got his ass chewed out and when I left, Darrius held him back."

Ouch.