Before my fight-or-flight instincts even had a chance to kick in, Jared came barreling out of the bedroom in his boxer briefs. The maroon ones decked out in teacups that hugged his buns perfectly.
“Are you okay?” he cried.
At the same time, Dani flung her door open. “What happened?”
I covered my eyes when the blinding hallway light kicked on. “Coach?” Jared croaked.
My fingers parted. At some point in the last thirty seconds, I had stumbled out of Jared’s guest bathroom, straight into a 90s sitcom.
“The One with the Naked Roommates in the Hall.”
Dani, clad only in an oversized T-shirt that fell to her knees, stepped in front of Coach Ward, who was desperately trying to cover his exposed . . . everything.Damn.Daddy Ward still had it.There wasn’t an inch of his upper body that wasn’t covered in tattoos.
“What—” Jared sputtered, his eyes darting between his roommate and coach. “What the hell is going on?”
“Go back to bed, Pink,” Dani said. “We’re not having this conversation now.”
“Like hell we aren’t.Thisis who you’ve been sneaking around with? He’s my boss, Dani.”
She jabbed a finger toward him. “You hush up.”
“Don’t raise your voice at her,” Coach Ward growled.
Dani turned on him next. “You hush up, too.”
This time, Jared was the one covering his eyes. “Fuck, coach. I can see your junk.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” This was getting out of hand. There was only so much dick-swinging I could handle in one night—literally and figuratively. I stepped in front of Jared, nudging him back toward his room. “Let’s go.”
“But she’s—”
“A consenting adult who can do whatever and whoever she wants.” He opened his mouth to protest, but I continued, nonetheless. “Now get back in that bedroom before you say something stupid that you’re going to regret tomorrow.”
“But—”
“Go.”
I pushed him into his room and darted a look back down the hall. Dani smiled weakly and mouthed a silent, “Thank you,” before escaping back into her room, too.
“I can’t believe her,” Jared whined before the door clicked shut. He flicked the bedside lamp on before manically pacing up and down the room. “I assumed she was hooking up with one of my teammates, but not my coach. He’s practically old enough to be her dad. That’s creepy.”
“Babe,” I said, pushing off the door. “I hate to break it to you, but there’s a pretty massive age gap between the two of us. Isthatcreepy?”
“Of course not.”
“So then, what’s the difference?”
“You’re . . .” He wrung his hands through the air. “And he’s . . .”
“Well, that explains it.”
The conflicted look on his face said it all. He was waging a war with himself.
This was a different side of Jared, one that only came out when he talked about protecting his sister from men like their father or when he stepped in to be my fake boyfriend at my brother’s bar—the first time. Jared embodied all sense of being a golden retriever boyfriend, and that included a fierce loyalty to the people he loved. His family, his teammates.Me.
I wasn’t going to dwell too much on that last one.
He settled onto the corner of the bed and rested his head in his hands. “I don’t want him to take advantage of her.”
