Page 42 of Only Between Us

“You think you can keep up?”

“I think if I can’t keep up today, there isn’t a chance in hell the Rebels will take me. If they hear the Tigers had me out there practicing and lost interest immediately after… Doesn’t get any more clear as to why.”

“So that’s ayeson flashing my tits if things go south, then.”

I huff a laugh, still scanning her wall of photos. Siena on a sailboat, with awesome views of the bay and the pine trees along the shore. Beaches and waterfalls, temples and pyramids I know don’t exist anywhere near Baycrest. She’s in all these pictures posing with Shyla, the blond friend I recognize from the day we met.

Except there’s something off about the way the other woman is standing with Siena.

“Okay, I’m decent,” Siena announces, entering the room. “You ready to kick off the performance of your lifetime?”

I pick a frame off the wall to get a better look at it. “Is this… You glued your friend’s face on all these pictures.”

Siena pops her head over my shoulder to have a look, assaulting me with that sunshine scent, but even that’s not enough to distract me. Close up, it’s obvious and crudely done: a clear cutout of Shyla’s face pasted onto the original photo, over a disproportionately large male body.

“Oh, that.” She grins wide, staring at the gallery wall with pride. “This is the product of a wine-drunk night after my breakup with Tom. Shy came over to help purge the place of him, but it felt like such a shame getting rid of all this. We ended up taking Polaroid shots of her, cutting out her face, and sticking them over his.”

“That is…” I snort, eyeing the wall of photos. My grin grows an inch with every new picture, because this is truly some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen.

“Slightly unhinged?”

“Slightly?” I laugh, jabbing a finger at her wall. “She’s piggybacking you down a mountain in this picture—that woman is barely half your size. How bad was this breakup?”

“It was fine. But these trips were once in a lifetime, you know? I wanted to keep the memories, minus him.”

She pries the frame from my hands and tosses it down on the couch.

“Woah, woah—this is how you treat a work of art?” I carefully place the photo on its hook, taking a step back to admire it. “This has to be one of the best things I’ve ever…” I trail off, catching a flash of tangerine in my peripheral vision. “… seen.”

What was that about a work of art?

Siena’s hair had been pinned back when I first came in, but it’s loose now, sprinkled around her shoulders in thick, bedhead waves. Sex hair if I’ve ever seen it, and I glance around the apartment for any signs of a walking dead man named Aidan.

But it’s just us. Siena standing there in a mind-numbing, curve-hugging dress underneath a denim jacket, and these strappy sandals with enough of a heel to bring her eyes, her mouth, tantalizingly close to mine. She does a little shimmy, curves bouncing as she does—drying out my throat, fuckingkillingme. Because I might be allowed to look, but I sure can’t touch.

Not unless we’re in public, putting on an act.

“What do you think? Is it givinglong-term girlfriend of an NFL star? The dress is Tigers orange, too.”

It’s givingI want to forget about this scrimmage and rip that off you with my teeth.

“Pretty sure you won’t need to resort to flashing. You look…”

“Hot as hell?”

I bark out a laugh. There’s a smile in her eyes that tells me she’s kidding. But also, she’s not. Her confidence has been palpable since the second we met.

And that’s as hot as she is.

“Yeah. God help me, you are.” I take a breath and nod at the front door. “You with me, Pip?”

At her door, I lift her keys off a hook. Siena raises an eyebrow, watching me lock up behind us. “You’re really good at this fake boyfriend thing, huh?”

Chapter14Brooks

For a scrimmage held a whole three months before the first kickoff of the season, these guys play without mercy.

I don’t know whether they’ve been specifically instructed to really test me, or if this is how they always attack practices. But it’s not hard to understand why this Tigers team has had back-to-back conference final showings. Why the end of this past season truly felt like an upset when they packed it in without a championship win.