He dressed up for me.
At his own house.
My heart lodges in my throat, and my veins suddenly feel like they’re full of Dr Pepper. Chills race down my arms, and my clit tingles.
We’re doing this.
We’re getting naked together and working off all our history in order to be friends again.
That’s not how this goes, my brain whispers.
I tell it to shush and trust me, even though I don’t actually trust myself.
I do trust that there’ll be some stress relief involved in naked time with Cooper though, and the pop gods know I could use some of that.
“We’ll be circling outside,” Kiva says as Scott One opens my door for me.
“Thank you.”
“I put extra condoms in your purse.”
“You have always been my favorite. Don’t tell Hiramys.”
Kiva doesn’t respond.
Cooper rises, descends the stairs, and greets me with a kiss on the cheek that sends a thrill over my skin. “Hey.”
Hey. It’s the simplest greeting ever, but it makes the butterflies in my stomach take flight, and I’m suddenly nervous all over again.
NotI’m going to embarrass myselfnervous though.
Excited nervous.
“Oh my gosh, how’s your butt?”
I cringe before the last syllable is out of my mouth.
Not how I meant to start the evening. I can hold my poise through the most awkward live television interviews, but I can’t greet a guy I’d like to shag tonight without asking about his ass.
He takes it in stride, though, flashing a Cooper grin. “You mean how’s the ball?”
“You took a ninety-six-mile-an-hour fastball to the ass at home plate. And then you limped to the dugout after you finished circling the bases when Brooks followed you with his grand slam, and you didn’t go back in the game after that.”
There’s a dip in his grin, but it comes back as quickly as it wobbled. “Dramatics for the fans. I’m fine.” He slips an arm around my waist and steers me up the steps. The subtle scent of his cologne or aftershave or whatever it is wraps around me like a hug.
It reminds me of warm towels on a sandy beach, and it makes me feelhome.
No, Waverly. Not home. This is temporary, for fun and closure, with a guy who’s perfect for temporary because he’s not the settling down type.
See also: He’s been the talk of social media for the past twenty-four hours after taking that aforementioned fastball to the ass while he was up to bat. Someone zoomed the video in all the way so that his ass and the ball that hit it were the only things in the camera view, and that firm muscle flexing to send the ball flying in another direction without a hint of butt wobble has been watched millions of times on each of the social media platforms.
Not that I looked at them all. That’d be preposterous.
Aspen checked out the one or two that I hadn’t and filled me in too.
But the bigger point here—there arewaytoo many women weighing in and wishing his ass well, and I’m nearly certain a reasonable percentage of them have had up-close-and-personal experience with Cooper’s ass.
At least, that’s what the comments indicate.
