Page 4 of Only Between Us

I sag against the cool metal squat bar. “And how do you expect me to do that?”

“Any chance you’ve got a wife or long-term girlfriend you’ve been hiding from me?” Josh shrugs when I shake my head, in a move I’d almost call helpless. “Then I’m sorry, Brooks. It’s time to consider other teams. And do yourself a favor and keep it in your pants.”

He collects his laptop and spares Summer and Parker a glance before turning on his heel and making for the gym doors.

“And if I don’t want to consider other teams?” I call after him.

He doesn’t answer. Josh shoots me a genuinely sad smile over his shoulder.

And that’s how I know how serious he is. How absolutely shit out of luck I am.

Chapter2Siena

“Slow down. For the love of God, act natural.”

I hiss the words at Shyla’s back, hurrying to catch up as she hustles down the UOB football field at a clip that announces that we’re somewhere we’re very much not supposed to be.

I’m certainly no stranger to being in places I shouldn’t—trespassing, breaking and entering, outrunning beach security when they catch me skinny-dipping in the bay in the middle of the night.

But this particular scenario—interloping on a busy college football stadium in broad daylight among dozens of people—requires a different kind of finesse.

The kind of cool and calm Shyla clearly doesn’t possess. Her bright blond hair flutters behind her as she hurries across the busy football field toward the black, white, and maroon husky painted at the fifty-yard line.

“Act natural?” Shy throws over her shoulder with a laugh. “What’s natural about two women and a toddler loitering around a football field? I can’t believe I let you drag me into this.”

“You can’t? You’d think after eighteen years of friendship, you’d be used to all the dragging. And there’s no one I’d rather share thismoment with than my two besties.” We come to a stop in the very middle of the field, and I nuzzle the blond, curly-haired two-year-old hiked over Shy’s hip, whispering, “Don’t tell your mom, but I can’t wait to corrupt you the second you turn sixteen.”

Shy laughs as Rosalie clumsily grabs for my face. “Can’t you at least wait until she’s twenty-one?”

“Says the woman who got us our first fake IDs at sixteen.”

“Yougot us those fake IDs.”

“Oh, right. That was definitely me.” I tweak one of Rosie’s tiny pigtails. “My dad was so pissed when he found those. Stomped around the house for days.”

I take in the field around us. We’re surrounded by several tall, deliciously built men tossing footballs. Some of them hopping around sets of orange cones laid out. A couple running laps at the far end of the field. And, strangely, a towering, dark-haired man with the tightest bubble butt I’ve ever seen, chatting up some girl with a massive German shepherd on a leash.

The sight makes me breathe easier. If Shy, Rosie, and I aren’t supposed to be here, that dog certainly isn’t. It’ll be the perfect scapegoat in case of emergency.

Your Honor, I call the happy, oversized dog to the witness stand.

The man tosses us a glance over his shoulder. I can’t make him out too well from here. But by the way he lingers on us, I think he knows we shouldn’t be here.

For some reason, that only makes me laugh.

“So, now that we made it, what do you want to do?” Shy asks, drawing back my attention.

“Honestly, Shy? I didn’t think that far ahead.” I hook my thumbs around the straps of my white overalls and turn on the spot, eyeing the stands towering behind both sidelines. “I kind of wanted to make it down here just to say I did.”

I find what I’m looking for in the top left corner of the far stands.Two seats that look like all the others around. But those seats were home to some of the best nights of my life. The very best memories with Dad during the college football season.

Mom would join us sometimes, as would Shy and her parents, but football was our thing. Mine and Dad’s. It started mere months after Dad caught me breaking into their home and raiding the kitchen in the middle of the night. After Mom and Dad took me in at thirteen, like I’d been theirs all along.

“Oh, Cee.” Shy loops an arm around my waist and tugs me into her side when my breath hitches. I shut my eyes and employ every ounce of self-control not to tear up. “He really would have gotten a kick out of seeing you down here.”

I manage a pinched smile. “Yeah. He would have.”

Which is why Shy, Rosie, and I spent the last twenty minutes playing covert ninjas inside the stadium, trying to make it here without ending up in the slammer.