Page 7 of A Summer Thing

Chapter Five

Jude

Ocean eyes, and fuckable lips. Two thoughts I force myself to bury as I watch her, inhaling smoke and blowing it out past her lips.

It takes everything in me not to kiss her. To actually kiss her.

Coach will have my nuts in a vice if I so much as think about it. His words. But the problem is, I’m already thinking about it. Have been since her soft body crashed into mine in the Masons’ hallway last night.

I was an asshole for standing there, drinking her in while not acknowledging her words.

And I’m an even bigger one for the way I’ve looked at her tonight, as if she’s ruined all my fucking plans for making it through college in one piece, not shitting on Coach’s hospitality and waltzing my way right out of his good graces.

I need the play time. I need the advice and one-on-one not many are willing to give as well as he does.

Which would all go down the drain for any one of us if he were to find out we went against his wishes.

The other truth is that this girl beside me stunned me stupid last night.

Half asleep, blond hair messy, blue eyes roving up and down my body without restraint.

It knocked me off a pedestal I hadn’t realized I was standing on.

One where I was sure I couldn’t give two shits what Coach’s daughter or her friend looked like.

It took far too long for me to piece together that she was likely the friend of the daughter he was talking about, and it pissed me the fuck off because she’s drop-dead gorgeous.

But I’m not sixteen, and I know how to keep my dick in my pants.

Unlike Boss.

Coach will have all our asses for his antics alone, regardless of the rest of us upholding his rule. And regardless of the thoughts that have been running on a near-constant loop in my mind since last night—ones I don’t plan on acting on. Which is why he won’t find out.

What’s done is done with Boss, so we’re all keeping our mouths shut about it.

It helps that he’s a genuinely good guy and an even better friend and teammate, and that Addy isn’t half bad herself.

They’re not just fucking around, those two, and that helps, too.

But Addy didn’t notice her friend went missing tonight because of how wrapped up in Boss she is. Didn’t sense something was amiss.

And I might not have either, had I not been so intent on watching her every damn move.

I rake a hand through my hair and pull my hood over my head, drawing myself back into the present, observing Declan as she watches smoke billow from her mouth and dissolve into the air.

My lips involuntarily tilt at the image, something approximating a smile.

Blue eyes fix to mine, and she begins to smile, too.

Her lips, those fucking lips , curve higher and higher at both ends as she stares at me.

I can’t tell if she’s amused or happy or simply drunk, but the sight of it drops a dose of relief into my bloodstream, phantom hands releasing their grip on my chest.

I saw the panic in her eyes in the kitchen. Saw her hurrying through the party, desperate to find her way outside. I’ve seen enough in my twenty years to know what it looks like when someone is drowning, and she was caught beneath the surface, dragging deeper into the current.

The pull to follow her out here became impossible to ignore.

______

“Declan,” I say sometime later. The six letters of her name roll off my tongue like the stroke of a kiss, making me want to taste my name, on her tongue.

“Hmm?” she responds, eyes still glued to mine.

“You good?” I ask. I know she knows what I’m asking. That I saw the anxiety and panic attack consume her, even if no one else took notice.

She tilts her face away from me and up toward the sliver of moon hooked in the sky, nodding. “Yeah, I’m good. Thank you.”

I’m not sure what she’s thanking me for, though.

It was clear she was already in control by the time I walked out here and sat down beside her.

So, I choose not to acknowledge her thanks because it isn’t deserved.

Not as my gaze marks every dip and curve of the profile of her face.

Falling over her eyes, down her nose, and over her lips.

Lips I would like to defile in more ways than one.

I drag my knees up, arms hanging loosely over them, and force my thoughts to travel in a more wholesome direction. As wholesome as I can, anyhow. Which isn’t easy with her sitting beside me.

“I should probably go find Addy,” she says, but her tone betrays her words, telling me she’d rather stay here instead.

I respond with a nod, bringing the joint to my lips and taking a deep pull, releasing a cloud of smoke between us as she reluctantly comes to a stand.

“See you around, I guess,” she says. And, waiting a beat for a response I don’t give her, she finally walks away.

______

“Hey, you claiming her, man?” Parker rounds the building, eyes glued to her ass as she leaves. I want to deck him for openly checking her out, but I have no right. I was doing the same two seconds ago.

“No, I’m not fucking claiming her. We’re not cavemen.”

“You know what I mean,” he responds.

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 to the party, 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 and forefinger. 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.

I snag the small stack of my belongings from my bed and head for the bathroom. Thankfully, Coach and his wife have a room downstairs, so I’m not worried about waking them, considering it’s now three in the morning.

I sling my towel over the rod, turn the lever over, and step under the spray once it’s warm.