Page 28 of Playboy Pitcher

Finished with his steak, Kyle turns to his left. “Hey, Hoyt, who do you suppose Roger’s daughter sold us to?”

My head snaps up. Good God, what the hell is wrong with me? I’m like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Just a mention of her, and I come to heel, waiting for a goddamn treat.

When the hell did I lose my balls?

I should forget about her. I should tune them out and find some willing baseball slut to sink my cock into so I can get this girl out of my head.

There are a lot of things Ishoulddo.

Leaning closer so I can hear Hoyt’s answer is not one of them.

Everything else fades into mumbles of chatter as he shrugs one shoulder, glancing around the room as he sips his beer. “Don’t know. Suppose Ned will tell us soon enough.”

He’s lying. He knows more about Willow and what’s happening than he’s letting on. If my dad taught me one thing as a kid, it was how to read people.

“Watch people, son,” he’d always tell me. “There’s no such thing as a perfect liar. Everyone has a tell. You just have to find it. Once you do, their power is gone, and you own them.”

Dad was a barrel of laughs. Other fourteen-year-olds got advice on dating girls. I got lessons on how to recognize weakness and go in for the kill.

Hoyt sucks at lying. No, he more than sucks. He’s spectacularly shitty at it. I don’t have to look for his tell. He puts it on full display like it’s a float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

He looks away.

The man can’t look anyone in the eye and lie. He’s too honest for his own good. In the locker room when I asked him if he knew Roger had a daughter, he stared at the wall. And now, as Kyle asks who Willow sold us to, he’s staring at the wall, the ceiling, the door, the waitresses…

Everyone but Kyle.

He knows something. Then again, so do I, and I’m not exactly an erupting volcano of information.

What does that say about me?

“It’s too bad she’s selling,” Kyle says, drawing my attention in time to catch the salacious grin breaking across his face. “I wouldn’t mind having that sweet thing as a boss.”

My knuckles turn white around the handle of my mug. I swear, if we weren’t like brothers, I’d break his nose.

The table rattles as Hoyt slams his hand down, shaking his head while pushing himself out of his chair. “I’m too old for this shit. I’m going to take a piss.”

He avoids my stare, and I stifle a smile as he disappears around the corner.Too old for this shit, my ass.I saw the way he looked at Willow in that locker room. There was familiarity plastered across his face, and not the kind Kyle jerks off to at night.

It was fatherly.

“Willie… It’s been a long time.”

Not Willow.Willie.There was genuine hurt on his face when she brushed him off.

“Yeah, I don’t go for the tattooed-goth look,” Tuck muses, draping his arm across the back of Hoyt’s empty chair. “They’re usually crazy as fuck. But I think I’d make an exception for her.”

“Because she’s rich?” Cruz pipes up.

“Nah, man.” He grins. “You know what they say; crazy in the head, a freak in the bed.”

Kyle rolls his eyes and knocks Tuck’s arm off the chair. “No one says that, dickhead.”

“Like you’d know, bathroom boy.” Flipping him off, Tuck nods across the table. “Am I right, LaCroix?”

Any other time, I’d have no problem going into graphic detail about the psycho Annies and their mattress gymnastics. But this is my West Palm Willow. I can’t drag her name into shit like that.

I glance up to find the table silent and almost every eye on me.