Victoria was one of the few girls not dancing. Instead she was drinking shots with Callum and the rest of the rugby team.
“You not joining in?” I said.
Maxwell laughed. “Big game tomorrow against Everetts. And someone’s going to have to carry Vic back to the hotel.”
We all watched as she stumbled. “Time to intervene,” Max said and headed off towards his fiancée.
“Your lady’s getting hit on.” Seph nodded towards the dancefloor. “Some dick’s grinding against her.”
I looked over and smirked. It was the same guy who asked her out at Vanessa and Jackson’s wedding, Brett or Brad or something. I watched, managing to rein in my annoyance and irritation and waited to catch Ava’s eye.
It took less than half a minute before she found me watching her and gave me her coy grin. That was the cue to walk across the small dance floor to where her space was being invaded.
Ava shimmied away from shit for brain’s ridiculous thrusting and opened her arms to me, wrapping them round my neck and pushing up close.
“Remember when?” she said, surprisingly unslurred.
“When I rescued you the first time?” I muttered into her ear as the song changed.
“And we sat outside together and drank shots and champagne and talked,” she said. “And then we went back to my room and had a one-night stand that ended up being a lot longer than one night.”
Brett or Brad walked up behind Ava and tapped her on her shoulder. “Can I get you a drink?” he said.
Ava laughed. “I’m still with him. But thank you. And please don’t ask me again at Maxwell’s wedding, because the answer will be the same.”
“Oh,” Brett or Brad said. “Right. Let me know if you ever want to hook up when he’s not around.”
I laughed, loudly. Then glared at him. “If you like your jaw in one place you’ll fuck the hell off right now.”
Brett or Brad eyed me like he wanted to start something then walked backwards, making a gesture that only a lot of alcohol would’ve fuelled.
“You want to go back to this nice suite I’m staying in? Maybe order a bottle of champagne and we can talk about our lives and this girl you’re seeing?” she said. “I might even have a bottle of expensive whisky my dad bought for this guy…”
“That bottle might no longer be unopened,” I said. “Owen and I might’ve sampled some earlier.”
Her lips pressed against my chest. “Seriously, can we go? My feet are killing me and we’re getting to the hour when my dad and the uncles will start giving impromptu speeches and singing. I’d rather not be here for that.”
I chuckled. “Let’s go back to the hotel then, baby, and make the most of that room.”
“And the bath. Did you see the size of the bath?”
“You want to see if we both can fit?”
“Absolutely!”
Chapter Sixteen
Ava
October
If it was a beauty contest,then not one of us watching the thirty men locking metaphorical horns on a rugby pitch would have any chance of winning. We were all slightly hungover, tired and wondering how the hell Killian had managed to get Claire to agree to keep the fixture where it was.
“Ward, here!” I heard Max shout to Eli as the two of them ran down the rugby pitch. The ball flew backwards from Eli to Max and then someone ran into Max and I heard Victoria groan.
“It isn’t that I begrudge him playing. I don’t mind the post-match analysis I get when he comes in or the breakdown of statistics I listen to most Saturday nights – usually after we’ve, you know. But I hate watching someone run into him,” she said.
I shook my head. Being the youngest, I’d been dragged sometimes to several matches a week. The under-sixteens’s when Max was playing; under-fifteen’s for Jackson; under twelve’s for Callum and then Seph used to pretend to play somewhere and I was made to watch that too. I had seen my brothers flattened, squashed and black and blue the following day. But, unlike football players – or soccer players as I’d learned to call them while I was studying in America – they didn’t complain. They never said it hurt.
