Page 18

“Yeah? You still kicked my ass.” The smirk on his plump lips is enough to make my cock twitch, but it’s the tenor of Tommy’s voice that has the power to drive me completely mad. Deep. Like he’s a grown ass man and not just a green, baby-faced twenty-year-old. There’s power in a voice so tantalizingly deceptive.

What else about Tommy is deceptive?

His compliments are too close to teasing for my comfort. I never know if he’s seriously cool with me or if he’s just wanting what I’m offering. The self-deprecation has to be a show. No way a guy like Tommy Mathison is insecure about anything. Even when he’s on hands and knees, puking up Mommy’s supper, he’s stunning.

Not since he marched onto this very field last month, out for blood as it turned out, have I been able to stop thinking about him. This isn’t the first time I’ve been infatuated with a guy. Happens way more often than I’ll ever admit, but when I spend hours of every day around fit dudes in shorts, there’s no way it won’t seep into my fantasies.

That’s all it ever is, though. Fantasies. Quick glances at body parts that I commit to memory and replay at night when I can take care of myself secretly and not do something reckless. Something like put my dick where I shouldn’t.

I want Tommy on the team because he deserves to be on the team, and it’s bullshit he ever quit. I also want him on the team because I want him onmyteam. Finally.

But not yet. He’s got to earn it first.

“We gonna be seeing more of you?” Connor asks Tommy, patting his shoulder like they’re pals now.

Tommy only shrugs—that fake bashful shit—so I interject. “We’re going to get him on the team. Retire your ass.”

Connor laughs and scrubs his palm across my scalp the way a brother might. It makes me feel weird. A bad weird, but I shrug it off and tell everyone to take it easy before I dip.

Half way to my car, I hear Tommy’s deep voice behind me asking me to hold up. I don’t turn around, but I slow down and send him a glance over my shoulder so he knows daddy’slistening.

“You think it’s a good idea telling the guys I’m trying to get onto the team?” he asks, more bashful now than I’ve ever heard him.

Maybe it’s not all bullshit. Maybe my boy really is insecure about something. Might be better that way. Insecurities make people defensive, and if Tommy is going to be on my team, I need him defensive.

“They’re gonna find out soon anyway,” I tell him, “when you start coming around to team practices.”

“You think I’m ready for that?”

“No. You will be, though. Once you—”

“Lose weight. I know,” he chuckles. It’s hollow though, like all my talk about his body gave him something else to be insecure about. That one’s no good. Last thing I want is Tommy feeling down about how he looks.

We get to my car, just an old Subaru Legacy I found on Facebook Marketplace once I saved up the cash, and I turn around to face my new project. “I was gonna say, once you want it bad enough.”

He frowns, a little wrinkle forming between his brows. “I do want it.”

“You need to want it bad enough you’ll bulldoze over anyone to get it, because if you’re on that field, it means someone else isn’t.”

Thankfully, Tommy shrugs a shoulder. “That’s the game, right?”

“Right.”

That should be the end of things, but Tommy lingers, shifting on his feet like a nervous teenager. “Can I ask you something? It’s not a trap.”

I can’t help but chuckle, since Tommy is very much a trap, even if he doesn’t know it. Especially if he doesn’t know it. “What’s on your mind?”

“What, uh—What exactly did you do with Lese?”

“Lese?”

“Annalese. My girl—Myex-girlfriend.”

My lungs deflate, and my mind curses this boy for reminding me about that night yet again. “You want to punch me again?”

“Told you. It’s not a trap.”

Oh, but it is, because I can’t exactly tell him the truth. That I couldn’t keep it up inside a woman’s mouth because all I want is a man’s. But I also can’t tell him what everyone thinks I did with his ex, in case he changes his mind and punches me again.