“Then what the hell happened?” I whisper, patting her back in soothing circles like I did when we were kids.
Charlotte rolls out of my hug and onto her back. She looks up at the stars as if she can’t stand to look me in the eye as she bares her soul. Her deepest secret. “I met someone when I was there.”
“Ooh.” I did not see that coming. I thought Jonathan, her fiancé, is the only man she’s ever been with. “Was he your first, you know?”
She turns to me and glares, looking way too much like our mother. “Seriously? You think I went to college a virgin?”
“You were sixteen when you went to college.” I honestly never thought of Charlotte having sex until she brought her fiancé home for the holidays while they were in medical school.
“So? I still had sex. I was sixteen, not a nun.” She scowls, affronted at my assumption.
“Sorry, and who the hell did you hook up with before college?”
“Matt Horner,” she chokes on a laugh. “At Kenzie’s graduation party.”
“I did not expect that.” Matthew Horner was your quintessential high school nerd. He was tall, skinny, wore glasses, and had braces. His most redeeming quality was his long, shaggy hair.
“Neither did he,” she quips.
We burst into a fit of laughter.
“Anyway.” She wipes the tears of laughter from her eyes. “I met someone down there. It didn’t work out.”
“What happened?”
She sits up against the back of the chair and crosses her legs. I do the same, waiting for her to answer.
“I caught him with some girl’s tongue down his throat at a party.”
“Asshole.” Rage bubbles in my stomach. I wish I could beat the jerk with a bag of dicks for breaking my baby sister’s heart.
“What did I expect? He was on the baseball team. Amazing and hot. All the girls wanted him.”
I shake my head in disbelief. I’m having a hard time rectifying my sweet, brainy sister dating a jock. “Wait. A baseball player, really?”
“Yup.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me.
“How did you meet…” I wait for her to fill in her mystery man’s name.
“Nico. We met in psychology and worked on a project together. At first, we were just friends, and then it was more.” Her forlorn sigh makes my chest tight and erases all the humor in our conversation.
“I’m sorry this Nico guy hurt you. He sounds like a tool. I bet he peaked in college and is some fat loser with a gambling problem and a dad bod now.” My joke lands, and Charlotte barks a laugh.
She shakes her head, pulls out her phone, types something into the internet browser, then hands it to me. “Far from it. Look.”
On the screen is a picture of a hot-as-sin man with steely gray eyes, wearing a Los Angeles Saints jersey. His chin is covered in a short beard that borders on five-o’clock-shadow—thick, even, and scruffy. Black and gray tattoos cover his neck, arms, andhands, making me wonder how far down they go. There’s an edge to him, but something about his eyes suggests that just maybe, he’s not as hard as he looks.
Nico Romero.
Even his name is hot. I read his bio.
Nico Romero, 6 feet 3 inches tall, 195 lbs, born and raised in Glendale, California. Single. Attended Southern California University. First MLB appearance with the Los Angeles Saints.
Then I scroll.
There are hundreds of pictures of him in his red uniform, suits, tuxedos, and underwear. It’s the photographs of him at events that catch my eye and, for some unknown reason, turn my stomach sour. Each shot of him is with a different woman on his arm. He takes being single to a whole new level.
“He certainly gets around,” I mumble.
