“Cal’s letting me stay here while he’s on assignment,” Liam says. “He didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“Yeah, well,” I wrap my arms around my body a little tighter, “I didn’t tell him I was coming.” My voice tips up a little at the end, and I swallow before my eyes can fill with tears.
“Are you okay?” Liam asks, and there is so much care in his three little words.
“Yeah,” I steel myself, “My living situation just got a little…crowded. Cal told me if I ever needed a place to stay, I could come here.”
“Of course,” Liam nods, “I’ll get my stuff packed up.”
“And leave?” I ask, suddenly not wanting that to be the case.
“Um, well, it's four am,” Liam says, biting his bottom lip and looking around. “Maybe I could chill on the couch until the sun comes up, and then I’ll get out of your hair?”
“Were you going to stay here the whole time Cal’s away?”
“Yeah, I’m kinda…between things right now.” Liam stuffs his hands into his jeans pockets, a lock of hair falling over his downcast eyes. I think about the house in Santa Cruz—and Marshall’s delusional, pretentious, faux-spiritual justification for why I should be okay with him sleeping around—and I know I’m never going back there. So I guess I’m kind of between things right now, too.
I go into Cal’s walk-in closet and come out with a stack of blankets and an extra pillow. I hold them out to Liam.
“Okay, well, we’ll figure it out in the morning.”
Liam nods and takes the stack from me. Our fingers brush, and I remember the way his hands wandered all over my body just moments before. The way he squeezed my boobs just this side of painful, and how he whispered that he wanted to make me come. My whole body shudders, and I hope it’s still too dark for Liam to see. “See you in the morning.”
Liam nods again and turns to the bedroom door. Just before he leaves the room, he turns back around and smiles a lazy half-smile that instantly makes heat pool in my core.
“Nice sweatshirt, Soph,” he says and walks out, closing the door behind him.
I look down at the oversized Iron Cats hoodie—the minor league team he plays for. I’ve been following his career for years. He’d made the All-Star team in his first year in the minors and led the league in on-base percentage for two consecutive seasons. I wonder why he’s crashing at Cal’s in the middle of the season?
I tuck my nose into the neck of his sweatshirt. It smells a bit like beer, but mostly like the musky, spicy scent I’d woken up wrapped in. I should probably change now that I know it’s not my brother’s sweatshirt.
I glance at the bedroom door before crawling into bed and turning off the light.
Chapter 5
Liam
I didn’t actually touch her.
Not on purpose anyway.I’m lying on the couch in the dark, staring at the ceiling and having an imaginary conversation with my best friend, trying to explain why I’d fondled his baby sister.
Except I did touch her—roughly. And she liked it. I’d been with enough women to know she liked it. And I was about to put my hands in her underwear,but I swear, Cal,I didn’t realize it was Sophie.
And I didn’t know she’d grown up and filled out that lanky preteen body. I didn’t know she had exceptional breasts and skin that felt like velvet under my fingers. I didn’t know she smelled like vanilla and blueberries and a lot like me, all wrapped up in the sweatshirt I’d been wearing for days on end. I didn’t know how much I would enjoy seeing her in that sweatshirt and underwear so thin I could see the outline of her blonde curls beneath them.
Fuck. Now I had another boner on my best friend’s couch, thinking about how hot his sister is. The little girl who used to follow us around with a sketchpad and ask stupid questions about baseball stats.
That little girl who is now a gorgeous woman right behind that bedroom door. I wonder if she’s still wearing my hoodie.And if she isn’t, what is she wearing? Her duffle bag is on the floor out here, so she’s either wearing my clothes…or she’s naked.
My dick bounces at that thought.
Or she’s wearing her brother’s clothes,my inner voice tries to remind me.Your best friend, the one who you would be homeless without his generosity right now. Get your dick and head in the game, Blake.
Besides, Sophie doesn’t want me. As soon as she realized it was me touching her, she pushed away like I had the fucking plague. She threw a pillow at my head and told me to put my pants on. She clearly was not happy to wake up and find me fondling her breasts.
Her perfect, way-more-than-a-handful breasts. I wanted to see how much of those breasts I could fit in my mouth.
I had to do something more productive than talk to myself and lust after my accidental roommate, who was barely…how old would she be now? I was thirty-one, and she was in middle school during my senior year, so she was, what, five years younger than me? So, twenty-six? Twenty-six wasn’t bad. I’d been with girls her age.
