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BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

FULTON

I knew I was bad at flirting, but I didn’t think I was handshake bad. Judging by how poorly that interaction went, I can kiss the fantasy of skipping into the sunset with Shiloh goodbye. I freaked her out. Not only that, but I stood outside of her work like a stalker just to talk to her again. Normal people don’t do that!

Asking her out on a date is one thing, but asking her to fly to another country to stay with me for three weeks? Hell, if I was her, I’d probably be changing my phone number and deadbolting my doors. This is the start to every Dateline case, and I’m not sure why, but Shiloh seems like the kind of girl to know her fair share of Krav Maga.

“I blew it,” I groan.

Gage—who’s watching my misery unfold before him—arches a brow. “How? All you did was ask her, right?”

“Yeah, and then she looked at me like I was crazy and gave me a handshake.” I face-plant into the couch, effectively obstructing my words so my teammates won’t hear the embarrassment lodged in my throat.

“Come on, Ful. I bet it wasn’t as bad as you think,” my captain—Bristol—consoles, sitting down next to me and patting me on the back. Although the gesture is thoughtful, it only exacerbates my hopelessness.

Bristol’s a great guy, one of the nicest I’ve ever met. He’s the team’s built-in therapist. He pretty much has a solution for everything, and unlike the rest of my idiotic roommates, he doesn’t kick me when I’m down or laugh at my (frankly expected) female-related failures.

My lungs empty a drawn-out sigh. “I’m never stepping foot out of this house again.”

Even though my vision is impaired, I don’t have to clock the face to match the annoyingly arrogant voice that interrupts the conversation. It’s deep, thick, and has this I-know-everything drawl to it that I’ve become familiarized with too many times to count. In fact, this exact voice haunts me in my nightmares—usually the ones where I’m publicly humiliated or missing pertinent clothing.

“You’re a hot, twenty-something bachelor with an endless bank account. What girl in her right mind would say no to that?” Kit butts in.

Still debating the most painless way to kill myself, I roll onto my back, glance at the giant man taking up the entire doorway and reroute my gaze to the bleak ceiling above me. “Shiloh’s not like other girls,” I mutter under my breath, dejection coming to a screaming boil in the pit of my chest.

“Did you ever think that maybe she’s just as nervous as you are?” he asks.

Hayes, the soon-to-be husband, is just the salesman I don’t need promising me happily-ever-afters wrapped in a pretty little bow. “Yeah, a handshake isn’t always a bad thing. Maybe she just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable by going in for a hug.”

Gage nods in Hayes’ direction. “Blondie has a point. You’ve got to give yourself some credit, dude. Not every woman you meet is repulsed by you. Shit, if I was gay, I’d let you tap this.”

The whole room riots with unrestrained laughter, but I can’t even find it in myself to join in with a hollow chuckle or a fake smile. All I can think about is Shiloh…and the possibility that I’ve just ruined the chance of anything happening between us.

We had a good thing going, alright? Sure, if you asked any of the guys, they’d say that my “thing” was less of a thing and more of a—ahem—“delusional projection of my innermost desires,” but there was something there. It was like this unspoken understanding between us. A symbiotic relationship of sorts, where I’m the tiny Egyptian plover bird cleaning her teeth, and she’s the intimidating (yet nonthreatening) crocodile who protects me. I pay her in compliments, and she pays me in the priceless gift of getting to breathe the same air as her.

I slowly pull myself up into a sitting position, and Gage plops down next to me, jostling the couch and spurring the anxiety permanently residing in my gut. He’s looking at me like he’s about to deliver the news that my mother just died on the operating table and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.

“You and what’s her name have spoken before, right?” he asks.

I sigh dreamily, feeling some of my tightly wound nervousness ebb upon remembrance. I don’t just remember the exact date I spoke to Shiloh—I remember everything she said to me.

On January ninth, she asked me if I wanted my nondairy raspberry tart heated up, and when I told her no, she said, “I feel like food tastes weird when it’s warm, you know? It gets all mushy and gross. Cold food is so much better. You don’t burn your tongue on anything, and the texture is consistent. I can’t eat hot-and-ready pizza. I have to order it a day before I actually want to eat it so I can have it cold the following day.” And my God, was that the most insightful, thought-provoking, intelligent hot take I’ve ever heard in my entire life. She’s right, of course. There’s something about cold, day-old pizza that hits differently.

I even remember the outfit she was wearing: a burgundy sweater underneath her work apron. Red suits her. It’s one of my favorite colors on her, but she looks good in anything she wears. I don’t think it’s physically possible for her to make a piece of clothing look unappealing.

“Shiloh,” I supply.

“Okay. You and Shiloh have spoken before, and it obviously must’ve gone well if she kept wanting to speak to you during her shift.”

My eyebrows draw together in confusion, and I shake a few cobwebs loose in my head. “What do you mean?”

Gage grabs the cap of my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Here’s how I look at it. If she really didn’t want to talk to you again, she would’ve avoided you when you came into the shop, yeah? Maybe asked one of her coworkers to take your order instead. But you told us that you two had a legitimate conversation, and she even complimented you. That’s huge! You’ve got charisma, Ful. Somewhere deep, deep inside.”

“Thank you? I think?”

The widening gorge of self-deprecation inside me seems to be retracting its monstrous fangs, but jumping to conclusions is a sport I have a gold medal in. I always expect the worst so disappointment can never creep up on me. It’s just easier that way.

Shiloh has a conventional job. She can’t just up and leave whenever she wants to. She has commitments, friends, family, a completely separate life that I probably don’t even fit into. I’m just a returning customer. That’s all I am to her. To think that we’re going to be like one of Aeris’ rom-coms is preposterous. Strangers don’t jet to Cabo for three weeks and instantly gain feelings for one another in that short a time.

What was I thinking? I wasn’t! And that handshake sealed my fate. I didn’t expect her to leap into my arms or anything, but I wasn’t expecting her to look so… terrified .

Kit grumbles to himself, reaches for my discarded phone on the coffee table, and begins to twiddle his thumbs away. “Since you’re clearly going to lose sleep over this, let’s get it sorted out right now.”

There’s a chalky taste on my tongue, like the remnants of an undissolved pill. “What?”

“I’m just going to text her?—”

I think my heart just dropped to my ass. He’s going to…WHAT? I barely trust myself to text her, but Kit? KIT? He’s going to blow everything up. And not from a safe distance either. No, he’s going to charge headfirst with one of those suicide vests on, blow himself and everyone in a ten-foot radius up, and leave me with the fallout…if I even survive the initial blast.

I don’t remember ever moving as fast as I do—not even on the ice—and I lunge for my phone, only to have Kit dodge me with those annoyingly honed reflexes of his. He jogs around the back of the couch while giggling maniacally, and I’m huffing for air as I chase after him. Realistically, me catching Kit would be like a mouse catching a grizzly bear, so I was pretty much doomed from the beginning.

“Kit, I swear—” I yell at him, a whip of fire wrapping around my thighs with each labored stride. I definitely regret not hitting legs the other day at the gym.

Kit’s not even breathless as he taunts me. “Dear Shiloh. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you shook my hand today. It was the greatest moment of my life. I think I’m in love with you?—”

“You guys are just going to stand there and watch my love life go down the drain?” I exclaim as I brace myself on my knees.

Gage gives me an unhelpful shrug, and as I try to siphon more air into my burning lungs, Bristol snatches the phone from Kit’s grasp so fast that it practically teleports in a flurry of gray.

“Hey!” Kit says.

Bristol tosses me my phone, flicks Kit on the forehead, and then proceeds to give the entire room one of his disapproving captain looks. “What’s the first rule of being a Reaper?” he echoes in that stentorian voice of his.

“Don’t drink straight out of the Brita?” Hayes answers.

“Don’t be dicks to each other,” Bristol corrects in a clipped tone.

I quickly glance at the text, and a rush of relief shudders through me like balmy air through fronds of swaying palms. Kit might be a dick, but he’s not a big enough one to actually send it.

I begin to delete the absolutely idiotic paragraph taunting me—which teeters on the tightrope between the truth and the slightly more exaggerated truth—and then shit hits the fan. Because not only do I fail to delete the text message that has the potential to ruin my love life, but I accidentally send half of Kit’s stupid text to Shiloh with a slip of my thumb.

Dear Shiloh. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you shook my hand today. It was the g

Oh. My. God.

Unadulterated terror surges through my bloodstream, circling my heart and looking for the tiniest tear to wiggle its way into the rapidly thrumming muscle.

What have I just done? I look like a fucking creep. If I was worried about her declining my invitation before, she definitely has a good reason to now.

Stupid Kit! This is all his fault. I wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for him trying to bust my balls. Maybe…maybe she won’t look at it. Yeah, she probably doesn’t even know who’s texting her. I could be anyone, really. It’s not like I signed my name or anything. She probably shook hands with a ton of people today.

“I sent it,” I whisper under my breath.

Casen, our tough-as-nails defenseman, immediately abandons his sandwich fixings. “You did what ?”

“It was an accident!”

Gage’s face flushes, and it would be comical if it wasn’t for the severity of the situation. “Holy shit. You need to block her. Now.”

My hands shake as they fumble with the small device that now dictates my fate, fear throttling my helpless body with hands of ice. “I can’t do that! How will we stay in touch?”

“I don’t know, man, but this is a level one security threat. She’s hit the Pentagon.”

“There’s a possibility she won’t even look at it,” Bristol offers, trying to placate the frenzy that’s shot straight into the anxiety-charged atmosphere. Everyone’s looking around at one another for a solution, all while the life-ending possibility of Shiloh reading my text increases by the minute.

I need a bag to hyperventilate into.

I start pacing around the room, busying my legs even though there’s still a searing sensation beneath my muscles, and all my thoughts turn into a slurry of worst-case scenarios. The guys are all shouting out a next plan of action, but I don’t hear anything over the deafening gallop of my heart.

You’re such an idiot, Fulton! No wonder you have no game. Hell, you couldn’t even win a girl’s heart if you were given a head start. Get used to the single life, because there’s no way on God’s green earth that you’ll make it past anything but the friend zone.

“Fuck, Ful. I’m so sorry,” Kit apologizes, raking his hand through the front of his hair .

I’m about to ameliorate his guilt when a ringing peals through the air, and every set of eyes latch onto the device vibrating in my trembling hands. The one time I actually wouldn’t mind a scammer calling, and I get Shiloh’s number splayed across my screen like a flashing billboard.

“Shit!” I scream, instinctively chucking my phone toward the nearest body—which just so happens to be Gage’s.

Gage manages to catch it before it crashes to the ground, and he juggles it like a hot potato. “I don’t want it!”

“Neither do I!”

Without so much as a heads-up, the device goes flying into the hands of another teammate, rendering Hayes stock-still as he stares down at the magnified numbers.

I cautiously approach him with my arm outstretched like he’s some feral stray. “Don’t answer it, Hayes.”

Kit stands next to him, mouth twisted into a grimace. “Don’t do it, dude.”

There’s an interval of five seconds where no one even breathes , and then, of course, Hayes disregards all our warnings and answers the call with a disturbing amount of nonchalance. “Yello?”

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK! I can’t hear anything on the other side, but judging by Hayes’ earnest nods, I can only assume she’s cussing him out or threatening to get a restraining order against me.

Hayes raises his eyebrows. “You want to talk to Fulton?”

I shake my head rapidly.

“Yeah, he’s available. He’s actually right next to me.”

I’m going to kill you, Hayes Hollings.

Before I can flee the scene like a wanted criminal, Hayes thrusts the phone into my face, and I scramble to press it to my ear, hoping that the microphone won’t pick up how utterly breathless I am .

“Uh, hello?” I answer, wiping the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead.

“Fulton? It’s Shiloh. From Deja Brew. I got your text.”

Even through the crackling speaker, her voice is a balm to my nerves, soft in cadence and so beautifully melodic that each word from her lips cocoons my eardrums. It’s funny how she thinks she needs to explain who she is, as if I haven’t been dreaming about this moment for years.

“Hey, Shiloh!”

Less enthusiastic, dude.

I clear my throat, deepen my voice, and try not to sound like a teenage boy going through a second puberty. “Hey, Shiloh.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything. I saw your text and wanted to reach out. I didn’t really know how to respond to it,” she admits, her tone curling around a modicum of embarrassment.

Heat blooms in my cheeks, and I’m glad I can’t see the subsequent redness that I assume is rushing beneath the surface. “About that—I’m so sorry. That probably came off as?—”

“Oh, no! Sorry. I didn’t mean it as a bad thing. I thought it was sweet,” she clarifies.

She thought it was sweet?

Some of the tension in my shoulders deflates. “Oh.”

She giggles. “Oh.”

Thankfully, I made the smart decision not to put her on speaker so my teammates could eavesdrop on our conversation, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying. I slip into one of the unoccupied rooms down the hall for a little more privacy, and once I shut the door, I slide my back down the partition.

I exhale a breath of relief, feeling the visceral discomfort in my chest snuff out within seconds. “Is everything okay?”

Her voice quiets just a smidge, belying that sturdy exterior I’ve come to associate with her. “Yeah, everything is fine! I just had a few questions for you, if you’re open to talking right now?”

I have all the time in the world to talk to you.

A smile claims purchase over my mouth. “Yeah, of course. Ask away.”

“I know you said you were going to cover the expenses, but I really think I should pay my way.”

“I’m inviting you on a trip, Shiloh. I’m not gonna let you spend a penny, okay? It’s really not that expensive.”

She snorts. “Coming from the guy who makes seven figures a year.”

My pulse trips against the thin skin of my wrist. God, this girl gets my heart beating like no close-match game ever has before. “I’m serious. This is my treat.”

There are a few beats of silence, but she eventually changes the subject. “What about the sleeping arrangement? Are we sharing a room?”

I’m not sure how well I tamp down the obvious nerves that flare up among some PG bedroom fantasies, but I practically choke on my own saliva when she springs the question. The hotel said that the suite I booked included two queen-sized beds, but sharing a room could lead to so many treacherous factors. What if…what if I keep her up with my snoring? What if I’m secretly a sleep talker?

“Yeah, if that’s okay with you. There are two queen-sized beds for us to sleep in. Separately. Very separately. Far away, even.”

“So you don’t want to sleep in a bed next to me?”

A drop of perspiration dribbles down my temple, my heart badgers unrelentingly against my chest, and some parts of me tingle that should be on a no-tingle basis. “What? No! I didn’t mean…I, uh, I just meant that I respect women. I’d never ask a woman to sleep with me unless she wants to. Which I have experienced before, in case you were wondering. ”

“Is that so?” she drawls, which definitely doesn’t help with the aforementioned tingles. They’re storming through me, wreaking havoc on my hormones and conjuring up this image of Shiloh in her sleepwear, only a few inches from me.

Wave the white flag! Fess up! Don’t dig yourself a deeper hole.

Considering my brain is the consistency of wet tissue paper, I’m not surprised that I’ve spouted some barefaced lies during this conversation, but I am surprised at just how unconvincingly bad I’ve made them out to be.

“Oh, yeah. I love sleeping with women. It really gets the blood going. I do it. All the time. And…a lot.”

Fulton, the only time you’ve touched a pair of boobs was when you accidentally fell into a store cutout of Flo from Progressive.

“I didn’t realize you were such a hot commodity, Cazzarelli.”

She just last named me. Shit. That sounds way too good coming out of her mouth.

“Does that mean you’ll accept my invitation?” I ask, desire brimming in my belly.

Her breath hitches, and I’m not sure whether it was deliberate or not.

“I guess we’ll just have to see how far those flirtation skills of yours get you.”