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I pout to fight a smile – a distraction would be good. “Fine. Give me five minutes to change into the training gear and runners.”

“That’s my girl,” he says, and I’m about to retort I’m nobody’s girl when I remember Bianca. Instead, I shake my head and listen to Jax’s humor as I make for the locker rooms.

I should take a lesson from him in letting things go. I envy his ability to be furious one second and happy again the next. Me? I hold on to every emotion, analyze – overanalyze – everything I’ve done and said, always wondering how I could have behaved better in the circumstances.

Jax, though, he’s easy breezy, and I think I’m starting to find it as endearing as it can be annoying.

22

SEPTEMBER

Jax

Certain as the Sun

I’ve always thought that hours spent working solo in the gym can achieve general strength and fitness but don’t count for much when it comes to playing team sports. Sienna – Pilates and HIIT-loving Sienna – is proving me wrong. This woman kicks ass at softball and, though this is supposed to be a friendly game, she’s kicking my ass, too, because Tray selected her for his team, meaning we’re on opposite sides.

I’m starting to think there’s truly nothing in this world I could ask Sienna to do and the result be less than perfect. Except maybe ice hockey – surely I’ve got to have a thing to call mine in this relationship?

Ahem, fake relationship.

Tray is smirking at me again as I toss the ball up and catch it at the makeshift pitching plate, waiting for Sienna to come into bat for his team. He’s messing with me psychologically; my own captain has played me. It’s certain as the sun rising that every player on this purpose-placed turf – and the crowd of fans who’ve gathered with their snacks of donuts and cotton candy to watch us – know that Sienna wearing my team’s training kit is outrageously sexy.

I’m trying my best to ignore it but I’m just a dumb man. A man who shares a home and one-bed hotel rooms with this woman. I can’t get my head out of the gutter!

“Think about how she pecks at you about your takeout cartons,” I tell myself. “She thinks you’re gross for cleaning your teeth in the shower – not that it’s any of her business.”

She folds forward a little, bat braced to strike as she wiggles her hips.

“Argh, God, not the ass and hips,” I tell myself.

Then my shirt is suddenly pulled at the neck and I’m dragged toward my brother, face to face. Suzuki appears behind TJ, then Cowan and Mathews, too.

“Get your head in the game, Jax,” Cowan all but growls. “She’s just a girl. We’re tied and if you let her get points here, we lose.”

“Do you want to lose to Tray, man?” Mathews is fisting my shirt in his hand, trying to rag some sense into me.

I nod repeatedly. “I know, I know, but she’s— Come on, you can see her, right?”

Lauren, who I picked for my team, now joins the huddle. She wears that feisty expression she gets after a few glasses of blush rosé and her cap is pulled low over her eyes to shield from the sun. “Stop thinking with your man-stick, honey. They’re playing you and I am not losing this game!”

“There’s no I in team, Lauren,” I tell her.

“Say that to me again when you’re down in the third period this season.”

“Fair,” I tell her, knocking my teammates’ hands off my shirt. “I’ve got it. I can do this. She’s a hot chick. Not worth the game. Even if the way she’s tied that T-shirt at the back and it’s pulling so damn sweetly over her⁠—”

Lauren clips my ear so hard it knocks my cap off my head. “That’s for calling a woman a chick.” She retrieves my cap from the ground then immediately uses it to whack me in the stomach. “That’s because you’re pathetic. They’re just boobs, Jax. Only boobs. Even if they’re really nice perky boobs that most women would kill for.”

“Who’s drooling now, Lauren?” I look back to Sienna, whose smug expression tells me she knows I’m taking heat over here.

As the others resume their positions in the field, I readjust my cap, tug my shorts up my thighs an inch – a habit when I’m playing ball sports but I like that Sienna’s focus dips to my legs for a second. Then I pitch the softball at her.

She whacks it as hard as she has been all game and runs for first base. All the bases are loaded and she needs to get everyone, including herself, home to win this game.

In the field, our ice manager, Shannon, jumps to catch the ball. She drops it but she’s knocked it down. She fumbles then tosses it to Zach, who throws it my way as I race Sienna to first base. I have a split second to decide my next move and I choose to reach out one hand to catch the ball, while wrapping the other around Sienna’s waist, scooping her up. As her legs free-wheel in the air and she shouts a ton of wicked names at me, I spin us away from base. I don’t catch the ball and as I scramble for it, Sienna scrambles for the win.

“Not on my watch, honey,” I tell her as I bring the ball to her, crawling over her to pin her to the ground and put an end to her underhanded game strategy.