Page 56 of Playing for Keeps

I still remembered vividly when my mother had dropped casually into conversation that Char and Ethan weren’t living together anymore.

I’d managed to make it to the end of the phone call before I’d buckled over, gasping.

Now I realized it had been a year of torturing myself for nothing.

Why the hell had I never asked the question? Manned up, instead of retreating and letting myself believe the worst.

“You both do a good job with Theo,” I said.

“Thanks. We try.”

There was a moment of silence between us before Ethan slapped me on the back. “Come on, we better go start the fun and games.”

Chapter15

Ethan

Iwas on my way to Aiden Jones and Tyler Bannings’ wedding, driving along the Canterbury plains. This section of the country was so flat it was as if an obsessed giant had taken a rolling pin to the land and flattened it beyond the definition of horizontal. Above the plains was a vast expanse of sky.

There was something about the wide-open landscape that gave you space to think.

Which was the opposite of what I needed right now. The reverse. The antithesis.

I cranked up the radio, trying to fill my head with R ’n’ B swagger, but even the headache-inducing bassline couldn’t stop my brain latching onto the one person dominating my thoughts at the moment.

Luke.

He was my favorite person in the world besides Theo.

I found him hot.

I struggled with those facts. They were like two jigsaw pieces that didn’t fit.

I’d dreamed about Luke last night. It was a dream that stitched together memories of what we’d done in a half-dark tent as teenagers, along with some fun extra bits my imagination had decided to insert like bonus scenes in an extended version of a movie.

And I’d woken up with a cock so hard that “wood” wasn’t a good enough description for it. That thing had been like diamond.

The satnav voice instructed me to turn left in three hundred meters, snapping me out of my thoughts. Which was probably a good thing, because equating my cock to precious minerals could be considered egotistical by some.

I followed the directions and after twenty minutes of driving down narrow country roads, I pulled up at a cottage with high hedges. In the driveway, I was diverted by handwritten signposts into the neighboring paddock to park.

I climbed out of my car and almost immediately lost a shoe in the mud.

“Hey, Lewis, glad you could make it.” Zach was standing at the edge of the paddock dressed in a suit and gumboots. He’d obviously been roped into being an usher.

“This Jonesy’s place?” I asked, taking in the paddocks and huge vegetable garden. A large marquee had been set up and there were about two dozen people mulling around the entrance.

Not surprisingly, rugby players made up the majority of the guests.

“Yup, this is Aiden’s country estate.” Zach grinned. “There’s gumboots for everyone over there so you can save your shoes.” He nodded toward a whole lot of shoe racks set up against the side of the house.

“So that’s why Jonesy wanted to know my shoe size the other week. Fuck, I thought he had some kind of weird foot fetish. That’s a weight off my mind.”

Zach cuffed my shoulder with a laugh.

I walked over to the gumboot station where, crazily, there was a pair with my name on them.

It appeared suits and gumboots was the style Aiden and Tyler were going for today. At least the wedding photos would be unique.