Page 39 of The Wrong Game

The memory of Zach’s mouth hot on my center flashed in my mind like the brightest lights, and just like that, in a split second, it was gone.

But my blush was not.

“Hey, I hope I didn’t upset you with this,” Ben said once we were inside the gates and climbing toward our seats. He gestured to his shirt. “I’ll take it off, if you want. Hell, I’ll go buy a Bears jersey right now.”

I smiled, squeezing his arms. “While I wouldn’t mind seeing you take this off,” I said tugging on the fabric. “It’s okay. It might be kind of fun to have a little friendly competition.”

“Should we place a bet on it?”

“Hmmm… what would you wager?”

He pulled us over to a beer stand, fishing his wallet out. “Bud Light okay?”

I nodded, and he paid the vendor, handing me the aluminum can as we started walking again.

“How about this. If the Lions win, you owe me a strip tease.”

I laughed, spitting out a little of my beer. “A strip tease, huh?” I asked, surveying him. “Real original.”

“You scared you’ll have to pay up?”

I narrowed my eyes then. “My Bears won’t lose to theLions. You’ve got a deal. Andwhenwe win, it’syouwho owes me a strip tease.”

“You really can’t wait to get this shirt off me, can you?”

I laughed, leading the way to our seats with relief washing over me. Ben was funny. He was charming. And he definitely wasn’t hard on the eyes.

I glanced back at him as we shimmied through the row to our seats, and I smiled.

See? Everything according to plan.

But when I turned back around, my heart skipped, and the universe laughed in my face as I blinked, again and again, to make sure what I was seeing was real.

“There you are,” Zach said, a stupid grin on his face as he stood to let Ben and me pass. He was wearing a white Bears jersey, the sleeves tight against his tan, bulging biceps. His hair was mussed, the stubble on his chin thicker than the last time I’d seen him.

He was all sex — the way his hair fell, the way he stood, the way his eyes hung under hooded lids, the way he licked his bottom lip as he watched me. My stomach did a little flip for joy when his eyes slid down to my waist and back up again, but I stamped that feeling down with a hard, heavy shoe.

He wasnotsupposed to be here.

“It’s almost kick-off,” Zach said when I didn’t acknowledge his first greeting.

Ben ran into the back of me, because I’d stopped dead in front of the empty seat next to the one Zach was standing in front of. It was the seat Roy should have been in. And the one Zach was occupying belonged to Janet.

He grinned wider at my dumbfounded expression.

“Hey, man,” Zach said, extending his hand past me to where Ben stood, waiting. “I’m Zach.”

“Ben,” he responded, confusion in his voice. He looked at me, but I couldn’t stop shooting lasers via eyeball beams at the man I was never supposed to see again.

Everyone stood for the national anthem, jolting me out of my daze, and I wiggled past Zach as he continued to gloat. I took the seat next to him, letting Ben have the same seat Zach had last game. We recited the anthem — the words morphed in my ears, since my heartbeat was currently taking up all the available space — and at the end, the entire stadium cheered.

I didn’t.

I poked Zach hard in the ribs.

“Ouch!” he said, rubbing the spot where I’d assaulted him. But then, he laughed. “What was that for?”

“Don’t play dumb. What are youdoinghere?” I whisper-yelled.