Shoving his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, he rocked back on his heels. “You could. But I’ve been known to hit other bars after a game—and parties. There are always parties, especially after we win. If I had your number, I could give you directions, make sure to greet you at the door.”
“You’re right.” I kind of hated how his face lit up when I said that, knowing what was coming next. “But like I told you the first time, I’m not looking for anything other than occasional sweaty fun in the back seat of your truck. After what happened with my ex, I’m not ready for anything more.” Reaching out, I laid my palm on his chest. “I have the distinct impression you’re too nice a guy to expose to the mess that is my life right now.”
“I face down offensive linemen for a living. I’m not afraid of a little mess.”
“Brave words, big guy. But you have no idea what a shit-show my mess is.” I opened the door to my car and said, “Thanks again for being here for me. Good luck next week.”
He nodded and forced a smile. “Thanks for another round of the best sex of my life.” After rapping his knuckles twice on the roof of my car, he spun on his heel and headed back into the bar.
As he walked away, something like regret landed heavy on my chest.
Chapter Nine
Wyatt
After another roundof blow-the-top-off-my-head sex with Piper, she shot me down again. Why her not giving me her number bugged me so much was a mystery. I’d been with other women whose numbers I’d lost seconds after typing them into my phone. Though I could have reached out to her on social media, that seemed like an invasion of privacy when she’d flat-out told me she didn’t want anything more than a hookup.
But from the moment I laid eyes on her badass purple hair and sensed her vulnerability when I caught her gorgeous violet gaze in the mirror behind the bar, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was sarcastic and smart, sexy and naughty, and she appreciated my sense of humor written large across my chest most days. Piper Maxwell was the whole hot package.
After she gave me what I could tell was a super abbreviated version of her breakup with that douche begging for her attention on the night we met, I’d wanted to pick him up and toss him into next year. Now that I’d been with her—twice—and she still didn’t trust me not to be like him, I wanted to catch him somewhere alone where I could teach him a lesson on how to treat a lady. Nothing too drastic. Maybe rearrange his perfect nose to a bit off-center, swell up an eye and perhaps a lip, leave a bruise or two where they wouldn’t necessarily show. In other words, make a point he’d remember the next time he decided to break some incredible girl’s heart.
At least she’d had the good sense to send him packing. But he’d already done the damage. That kind of assholery shouldn’t be out walking around leaving carnage in his wake.
I stared at the design I’d started as thoughts of Piper and her ex invaded my brain, startled at the savage intensity of my thoughts manifested in ink and pencil in front of me.
“Fuck, Bax. That’s wicked,” Finn said from over my shoulder where I sat at the kitchen table. “You draw some badass shit, but that’s—Wow.” He tilted his head and reached around me to turn my sketchbook sideways. “Day-um.” Grinning, he said, “It would be easy to write you off as shallow and kind of clueless when you’re wearing that.” He nodded in the direction of the front of my T-shirt. Today’s iteration read “I’d like to see things from your point of view, but I can’t stick my head that far up my ass.”
My brow shot up as I waited.
“But then you go and create this”—he pointed at my drawing—“and shoot that idea all to hell. You are fuckingtalented.” Cocking his head again, he added, “And apparently kind of pissed off.” He shrugged. “Or is this for an assignment?”
“Both.”
Glancing back at the drawing on the kitchen table in front of me, this time with it on its side, I saw what Finn saw. For a guy who spent all his academic time playing with molecules and shit, he had a good eye for art. There was something Picasso-esque in the right triangular tilt of the nose bordering the oval puffiness of the eye on one side. The way it hovered above the stretched rectangle of the mouth was sinister in a badass way when I turned the drawing on its side. The way I’d shadowed the corners inside here and along the edges there had added depth and intensity to the idea taking shape on the page.
Within a few minutes, the art had transfixed me as it always did. From some distant place, I thought I heard Finn laughing, but I paid no attention. Only when my stomach growled did I look up from my work. The twinge between my shoulder blades and gathering darkness outside the kitchen window told me I’d been at it for hours—as usual.
Stretching my arms above my head, I rolled from side to side, letting the kinks release in my back. Then I closed my sketchbook and headed up to my room. Experience had taught me never to leave it anywhere my nosy roommates could find it. In the past they’d had too much fun with some sketches I’d done of certain celebrities. Even after I explained the sketches were for class, the guys wouldn’t let up with their weird-ass jokes. I could only imagine how any of them would react if they saw my sketches of Piper.
Behind the closed door of my room, I sat on the bed and flipped through the drawings tucked in the middle pages: Piper naked from the waist up and smiling down at me as she bounced on my lap; Piper’s head thrown back, her long neck waiting for my lips and teeth to nip and tease and taste; Piper’s sated gaze after she dragged herself off my thighs to sit beside me. Every sketch showed her honest response to me—to what we did together. Down and dirty sex in the back of my truck looked gorgeous on her. Looking at the sketches left me as hard as steel, but I refused to jerk off to them.
Instead, I slid my sketchbook into the drawer in the nightstand and dropped to the floor. Fifty pushups later, I’d relaxed to a semi. By the time I headed downstairs, I figured I’d be back to a presentable state.
Not that it mattered. No one was in the kitchen, which was odd. A usual Sunday night at our place meant ’Han and me cooking up breakfast burritos for our weekday mornings’ grab-’n’-go. Coach Larkin hated tardiness, and on time to weights was fifteen minutes before the hour. The premade egg, cheese, and sausage burritos meant even if we overslept by a few minutes, we didn’t miss breakfast or face Larkin’s wrath in the form of tardiness burpees between sets.
The unnatural stillness of the house told me I had it all to myself. The clock on the wall read 8 p.m., which explained my growling stomach. Pulling a roll of sausage from the fridge, I went to work on this week’s breakfasts. While the sausage sizzled, I grabbed another pan and transferred some sausage into it. I chopped up onions, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini—pretty much some of each of the veggies in the crisper drawer—and added them to the second pan to sauté together with the sausage. Then I grabbed the biggest pan we had and cracked three dozen eggs into it, scrambling them together and covering them to let them do their thing.
I unrolled twenty squares of foil and laid them out on the table, topping each with a tortilla. After breaking up the eggs cooking in the pan, I dumped a bag of pre-shredded cheddar on them and covered them again. Seeing my sausage-and-veggie dinner was done, I covered that pan and set it on a cutting board on the counter. Then I went to work divvying up the rest of the sausage among the burritos. Next, I spooned scrambled eggs and cheese over the sausage, dolloped hot sauce down the middle of each burrito, and started rolling. I’d just finished the last one when Finn strolled into the kitchen.
“Smells good enough to eat in here,” he announced.
“It will be—every morning this week. You wanna help me wrap foil around them?”
“You wanna tell me about that hot girl you left Stromboli’s with?” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Honestly, man. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
My eyes took a tour of the back of my brain. “Says the man who spends all his time with jersey chasers.”
A what-can-I-say shrug accompanied his cheesy grin. “I like female attention. Sue me.”
