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I narrow my gaze. “Do I?”
He chuckles. “Your words are saying one thing, but your attitude is saying another.” He sits down, gesturing for the joint in my hand. I hand it over to him. “You definitely want her. Not that I blame you.”
A grunt is all I offer him in reply.
“You down for the club tomorrow night?” he switches gears.
“Yeah, sounds good,” I lie.
Clubbing, partying—the whole drinking thing in general—isn’t my scene. I come anyway, though; I tag along and play designated driver because of my own fucked up past, and the twisted promise I made to Brenna’s grave to never allow another one of my friends to fall into the same fate.
One party. One stupid fucking decision. And your whole goddamn life can change.
In the blink of an eye, my world crumbled around me in ruin.
Brenna was my girlfriend. My new next-door neighbor when my family first moved to the States from Puerto Rico, who grew into my first childhood crush, who grew into a girl who became my everything—before things went royally fucking sideways. One decision took anything else we could’ve been, our whole future, and tore it to shreds and tossed it out with the trash.
“It’s gonna be lit,” Parker’s statement cuts through my thoughts of Brenna, but his excitement doesn’t reach me. It’s not that I can’t or don’t have a good time with the guys, because I do. It’s only that these parties tend to bring me back totheparty, the one that took her away from me.
I snatch the dwindling joint from Parker’s hands, dragging its smoke into my lungs for a few long beats, until there’s nothing but the burning cherry resting between my thumb andforefinger. I flick it to the ground, stomp it out, and release a lungful of smoke, coughing on my exhale.
Parker laughs and pats me on the back. “Damn, and here I was not even realizing you smoked. Hypocrite,” he says with a smile.
“Yeah, well. I don’t partake often.”
He shrugs. “I’m gonna quit.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, party’s winding down. Think we should head out?” He comes to a stand. His dirty-blond hair and light brown eyes are diminished by the lot’s lamplights, but I still find myself stupidly questioning if it’s the kind of look Declan would go for, since he’s made his interest in her known.
If the way she’s looked at me is any indication, though, I’m guessing I’m more her type than he is.
It would be cocky of me to say I’m good-looking, but you’re not going to catch me saying the opposite is true, either. I get my fair share of opportunity thanks to my position as running back on the team. My fair share of women eye-fucking me like they’ve got a serious bone to pick with their daddies.
None of them have looked at me the way Declan does, though. Like she wants to burrow through my layers and clear a space just for her. Like she could, if I were willing to let her.
I get to my feet, and nod for Parker to follow me back inside. But I stop him with a hand to his chest as he makes to step through the slider doors.
“The girl,” I say.
And he smirks, the cocky little sonofabitch.
“No one touches her,” I state. Like the full-on douchebag I know I’m being right now. But the thought of any one of my teammates laying a hand on her makes my blood simmer in my veins.
The fact should worry me, but it is what it is.
“Don’t worry,” he responds. “We’ve all noticed the way you were looking at her tonight. Like you want to hate her and fuck her all at the same time. Might as well have pissed a wide circle around her. No one’s touching her, man.”
Again, I’d like to deck him.
______
After making sure the guys secured a ride home, and double checking that Boss would be driving the girls home as well, I caught a ride back to the Masons’ myself. Coach didn’t have to let us crash here, in his own home, and it’s another reason why keeping my word to him is important. He goes above and beyond for his players, and it would be fucked up of us to shit on that.
When a fire broke out at my and my teammates’ house last week, he didn’t hesitate to offer up his spare rooms to all four of us. And that, paired with the reno work on the field and stadium this summer, led him to offering up his backyard to the whole team for summer training.
All that to say, I don’t plan on biting the hand that feeds me, despite the way Declan keeps slipping her way into my mind.