I peer over at him. “What happened in high school?”
He laughs, but it’s not entirely happy. “I wasn’t the best student. Not a dummy or anything, I just got lazy. All I wanted to do was party, play football, and impress college scouts—maybe a few girls here and there—so I’d brush off my school work until it got to be Mission Critical.” He throws the ball again, this time for Crooze, who takes off like a rocket after it. “When Coach Jacobs called me into his office, I left feeling like a bucket of ice water was dumped on my head.” Another humorless laugh, his head shaking. “I didn’t know how bad my grades got; I’d paid so little attention. And it made me feel like a loser. Coach didn’t even yell at me, just sat me down and told me calmly, man-to-man. I actually think that was worse than shouting.” This time, his laughter contains humor. “So, I straightened up, and fast. Stopped partying, started studying. And honestly, it improved my game, too. I started looking at football differently. I used to always follow my gut on the field, but once I took classes seriously, I started to do research before games. Watched local TV channels to catch opponent gameplay and study it.”
My brows hike with surprise. “Even in high school?”
“Yep. I swear, doing that is what earned me my scholarship. Changed my entire world.” He grins at me and tosses two balls this time, one in each hand, sending Danko and Remy flying across the yard after them.
“Then I got drafted at twenty-one, and retired at twenty-eight.” He rubs his knee with a sigh, head shaking. “Never saw that coming.”
My smile is sympathetic. I can’t help but ask, “How did you get hurt? I never saw the game, and it kind of felt like snooping to look it up after we met.”
He laughs, a hearty sound straight from the gut. “Aw, you can look me up any time. I don’t mind. But to answer your question…” he sighs and repositions himself on the lounger to turn his body to face me, raising his arm to rest the side of his face on it and look at me. “Picture this. Championship game, about four years ago. Me, looking sexy as fuck in Number 16 on the field. Game is tied, thirty-two seconds on the clock in the fourth quarter. Sanchez just ran forty-one yards to score, and Preston and Coach Lang decide we’re going for the two.”
Jasper is beyond excited as he tells his story, his free hand gesturing animatedly despite the foreshadowed ending.
“The ball is hiked, I get clear in the back corner, Preston passes the ball to me, I catch that motherfucker, hug it like my favorite teddy bear, and everything goes dark.” He frowns and his head shakes. “I was so rocked, I had no idea what happened until my brain started working again in the hospital. Before anyone let me see the replay, they told me straight up I’d never play again. My knee was totally fucked.” He winces. “When I saw the uncut video, I couldn’t believe it was me on that screen. I caught the ball, held it tight, and three guys tackled me in a dog pile, knocking me from standing to crunching me beneath over six hundred pounds of muscle and pads.”
I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the lounger to lean closer, my heart constricting and the sadness radiating off of Jasper now.
“When they cleared off, I wasn’t moving. My knee…” his sigh is sharp and forceful. “Let’s just say that legs aren’t supposed to bend that way. Everything was torn. It’s a miracle that I’m in as good of shape as I am right now.” His hand comes down to rub his knee absently, then suddenly he’s perked up. “But I kept myhold on the ball. I caught the game-winning pass. We went on to win the Super Bowl that season, but it sucked to have to be there on the sidelines in a wheelchair.”
I reach out to him and take his hand. I know he doesn’t want any kind of pity. No professional would, but especially not Jasper. “You’re a winner, then and now. You were strong enough to make it there for your team to support them. I know that had to mean a lot to them.”
His smile is a little shy, then he gets a faraway look in his eyes. “Yeah. My team was my brothers. We’d spend most of our time together, even off the field. Some of us during the off-season.” He laughs again, another real one. “Preston and I still text every month. I like to bust his balls after his games.”
I join in his laughter then. “Oh, I’m sure he loves that.”
“Absolutely,” he says with a great deal of sarcasm. “But he’s going to be a Hall of Famer, there’s no doubt. He knows it, too. That’s why he needs a little ego-check now and then.”
Jasper swings his legs over the side of his lounger to mirror my position, and I notice that Dini is curled up at the foot, like Nikki at the foot of mine. Most of the others have gone inside to their soft beds, or even my bed upstairs, I’m sure.
“Adley?” His voice is tentative.
“Yeah?”
“I want to take you out. On a date.”
His words rush through me, joyously. I grin like crazy. “I’d like that a lot.”
He rises to his feet, holds his hand out to me, which I take, standing in front of him.
“That’s great. I know just where to take you right here in town.” His hand caresses the side of my face. “I don’t normally like big crowds anymore, but let’s go this weekend. I want to show you off.” He steps closer, his face dipping down, inchesfrom my lips. “Wear something sexy for me? Something… easy to take off.”
And his lips capture mine, easy and light, no tongue, just heightened passion in our connection that makes my toes curl.
If Jasper wants “sexy,” I know just what to wear.
Chapter Sixteen
“It feels like I haven’t seen you in years.”
My older brother, Ben, sits across from me inside Cuppa, each of us with a cappuccino and a croissant at a corner table by the windows, far from the door.
It’s our favorite table.
Just over seven years ago, he and his pack brothers completed their pack with the addition of their Omega, an amazing woman named Violet. Since then, their pack has welcomed one daughter and one son, and now has two more babies on the way. I can say without hesitation that they are great kids. And not just because they're my niece and nephew, and future whatever the twins are.
Their firstborn, Ivy, is five, and Ben’s daughter. There’s no questioning the family resemblance with her pale skin and black hair, though her eyes are green like her mom’s. Ben and I look somuch alike, one glance is all the proof anyone needs that we’re related. We have the same jet-black hair, light blue eyes, the same jaw, although his tattoos peer out of the necks of his shirts and crawl down his right arm to his hand, and he has piercings where I don’t.
