I think maybe I’d like to do some more of that gold star kissing.
Me
Yeah?
Liv
Fuck yeah. So, are you going to my brother’s for game night?
Me
You bet. I’m just finishing up at the stadium now and then I’m heading over.
When can I see you again?
Liv
Probably sooner than you think.
“Iwin!” Gabe crows, dropping his PlayStation remote on his gaming room couch and pumping a fist in victory.
“Of fucking course you do,” mutters Asher Hansley, tossing his remote down just a little harder and with a little more attitude than necessary. Asher is one of our other friends and a former NFL quarterback who hates to lose. Unfortunately forhim, he really sucks at video games. It’s usually just Gabe and me for game night, but everyone else picked tonight to crash.
“I just can’t believe I came in second,” says Ben, reaching for his beer on the coffee table and then turning to me. “You and Gabe always go one-two.”
“Yeah, what’s with you tonight?” Jeremy asks, eyeing me from his perch on one of the gaming chairs set up on either side of the couch, his newborn baby girl, Grace, tucked into the crook of his arm. “You came in third. That’s not like you at all.”
Standing, I pluck the baby from Jeremy’s arms as a distraction so I don’t accidentally say something like,I kissed Gabe’s little sister the other night and I can’t think of anything except for her soft lips and the way she moaned when I licked that one spot on her neck and now that I know what she tastes like, I am wholly, entirely fucked. All the blood in my body rushes directly to my dick at the thought of our night in the kitchen, and I force my brain to think about something else. Literally anything else. “Got a lot on my mind. Playoff shit.”
It's a plausible lie. As director of football operations for an NFL team that’s probably about to go to the playoffs, I do have a million things I need to deal with. It’s just that, in this current moment, I’m thinking about exactly none of them.
“Fuck yeah!” Asher says with a grin. “You can get us Renegades playoff tickets, right? I’m counting on you, Simpson. Don’t let me down.”
I chuckle, never not amused by this puppy dog of a guy. By all of them, really. Ben and Jeremy have been best friends since college. About five years ago, Ben married his childhood best friend, Hallie, who owns a law firm with Ben’s twin sister, Julie, Jeremy’s wife, Emma, and Gabe’s wife, Molly. Julie married Asher, and the eight of them formed this big, sprawling found family of sorts. I love being a part of it, even if it sometimes feelsweird being the only single guy in a sea of wildly happy couples and families.
My mind drifts to Olivia again. What it would feel like to be a couple with her. To wrap my arm around her and kiss her whenever I wanted and share a home and a family and to have the kind of happiness and contentment I see in all of my friends and—Too soon, Brian. Too fucking soon. I turn to Asher to change the subject in my brain. “Asher, you’re a two-time Superbowl MVP and one of the most successful quarterbacks the Renegades have ever had. Just call marketing and tell them you need tickets.”
I adjust a stirring Grace in my arms as Asher rolls his eyes. “If I call marketing, they’ll give me tickets in one of the boxes so the camera can find me during the game or some shit. That’s not how you experience a playoff game. I need seats on the fifty-yard line. I want to drink beer and eat nachos and feel the winter air on my face and watch the game the way it’s supposed to be watched. As in, not from a fucking climate-controlled box.”
Ben snorts out a laugh. “Tell us how you really feel, Ash.”
Asher just shrugs. “I feel like watching some playoff football with my girl and my kids, and it’s a good thing the Renegades’ director of football operations is my best fucking friend.”
“Are we talking about football tickets? Because I absolutely need to go to a game before I leave for Italy.” Olivia’s voice has my brain shorting out, butterflies exploding in my stomach as I turn to the game room doorway.
Fuck. Me.
She’s standing there, wide smile on her face, wearing the red University of Pennsylvania sweatshirt I gave her the other night when she slept over at the loft. The sweatshirt I slid my hands under while we kissed, feeling the smooth skin of her back before we went to sleep in separate rooms even though I wanted so, so much more. The sweatshirt I’ve thought about every daysince, fucking my fist to the thought of what it would have been like to strip it off her so I could see what her tits tasted like. The sweatshirt I told her to wear home the next morning, after I kissed the breath out of her against the front door of my loft, my hard dick grinding into her stomach while she gasped.
The sweatshirt that’s making me feel some kind of way right now, and from the smirk on her face when she looks at me, she fucking knows it.
Little hellion.
“Liv!” Gabe grins, popping up from his spot on the couch to wrap his sister in a hug. “Why aren’t you with the girls tonight? They’re all at Ben and Hallie’s house.”
She shrugs. “I know. I skipped girls’ night because I had a bunch of planning to do for the gala, but then I finished all of that and got antsy. I know I’m interrupting guys’ night, but I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I would stop by and say hi.” She gives me a surreptitious side-eye, and suddenly I know, without her saying a word, that she’s here because of me.
My heart thuds as my brain races, calculating how I can get her out of here and alone, my lips on hers, as soon as humanly possible.
