I’m about to protest that it’s not nothing. That whatever this is sounds like the opposite of nothing. But my thoughts are interrupted by a very familiar laugh ringing out across the bar. My favorite laugh.
My attention is immediately pulled back to Sophie, smile tugging up my lips. But the second I lay eyes on her, my smile freezes, and I suddenly feel like there’s hot lava rushing through my veins. “What is happening right now?” I mutter.
“Everything okay?” Oliver asks.
“Who’s that guy?” I ask, my eyes still on Sophie, who is currently leaning back against the bar, elbows propped up behind her, as some blond douche-bro in a suit that looks like it cost more than my car crowds her space.
“What guy?” Jack peers around me, trying to see whatever I see.
“The jackass with the four-hundred-dollar haircut pinning Sophie to the bar,” I grumble, not taking my eyes off her. “Does she know him? She doesn’t, right? I know everyone she knows, and I’ve never seen that asshole before.”
My mind goes immediately to the dating app, and my brain positively melts down because why hasn’t it ever occurred to me that Sophie might be dating? Like, actually dating someone she met on the app instead of just talking the way she’s been talkingto me. Well, alter-ego me, but me nonetheless. I mean, I got on VibeCheck to try and find my forever person. It stands to reason she got on the app to do the same. I frantically tear through my memory banks for the last few weeks, trying to remember if there were nights she didn’t come home right after work. Thinking of every time she laughed at her phone and I assumed she was texting her family or one of the girls. Fuck, was she texting a guy? That guy? Other guys? I mean, ChaosQueen totally blew off the test balloon question RenegadeRush sent last week asking if she wanted to meet, and our messages have been light and kind of surface level since then. Is it possible she doesn’t want to meet me because she’s already met someone else?
A displeased rumble escapes my chest before I can stop it.
“Did you just…growl?” Cam asks.
“No, I didn’t fucking growl,” I shoot over my shoulder, wishing for a second I could make my voice as menacing as Caitlin can because I have a sudden need to impress upon my friends the urgency of this situation, but I’m too damn cheerful for menacing. I should have cornered the market on broody when I had the chance. “I’m simply expressing my surprise at seeing a strange man standing six inches from my best friend. We’re in the goddamn NFL, Cameron. We know men are trash, and there is currently a trash man getting all up in Sophie’s space.”
I suck in a breath as the trash man runs a finger over Sophie’s hand.
The hand I once ran my finger over.
My goddamn hand.
And she smiles at him.
The gorgeous, perfect, beaming smile she gives to me.
My fucking smile.
My hands clench into fists and my body is primed to pounce before my absolute and utter descent into chaos is interrupted by my friends lapsing into hysterics.
Spinning around, I pin them with a glare. “What’s so fucking funny?”
“Just friends, huh?” Drew manages, before collapsing back into giggles. The best wide receiver in the entire National Football League is giggling, for fuck’s sake. At me.
“Not so much,” I mumble, grabbing a can of ginger ale out of the ice bucket. I pop it open and take a long sip, trying to cool the inferno in my blood. “At least, I wish we weren’t. Just friends, I mean. I wish we weren’t just friends. I wish we were way, way more than just friends. Turns out Sophie is…” I cut myself off, slamming my mouth shut before I spill to my friends that Sophie is ChaosQueen. It’s felt wrong enough talking to her on the app when she doesn’t know it’s me. Telling my friends before I tell her feels like a whole ass betrayal. I shake my head. “Everything. It turns out Sophie is everything.”
Cam reaches over and ruffles my hair like I’m one of his kids. “Welcome to earth, Ty. We were wondering how long it would take you to finally figure it out.”
“You guys too?” Jack says with a grin. “Ollie and I have been talking about it for years. In college we even placed bets on when Tyler and Soph would finally get their shit together.”
“You what?” This time I actually do growl.
Oliver shrugs. “Neither of us had you waiting nearly this long. That’s some impressive restraint considering you’re pretty much an overgrown toddler with impulse control issues. So, what finally sealed the deal? Was it living together? All that roommate tension finally snap? Did you accidentally walk in on her naked?”
“Don’t talk about Sophie naked,” I shoot back, my brain immediately filling with an image of Sophie naked because I’m allowed to think about it, and goddamn. I shift when my dick goes half hard behind my zipper before I turn my attention back to Oliver. “Don’t think about Sophie naked. As a matter of fact, as far as you’re concerned, Sophie is one of those never-nude people who never takes her clothes off, ever.”
Drew laughs so hard tears stream down his face. “Better tell that guy,” he manages, gesturing over to the bar. “Because the way he’s looking at her makes me think he’s imagining an always-naked Sophie. And hoping he gets to see it in real life. Tonight, preferably.”
“What the fuck?” I mutter, whipping around just in time to see the trash man step farther into Sophie’s space. When he puts a hand on her hip, fingers curling possessively, my stomach clenches, my heart slamming against my ribs and beating out a rhythm that sounds a whole lot likemine.
And when he leans in, bringing his free hand to her other hip and dipping his head to whisper something in her ear, the flash of discomfort on her face has a red haze floating across my vision. “No fucking way,” I spit out, standing so fast my chair topples to the ground behind me. The sound of my friends cheering is background noise as I stride across the bar, three thoughts and three thoughts only racing through my brain.
Get to Sophie.
Keep her safe.
