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It’s all wrong. It’s stupid. I can’t get caught up in something five minutes after I arrive in town. I have a game to focus on with new teammates. I have to work to find my place in Vegas as I fight against the accusations of nepotism that brought me here.
I have to hold my own against my coach, my troubled youngest brother, and my father…all family members I’ll be interacting with more than most grown adults tend to interact with their family members.
I have to move to a new town where I know very few people—including packing up the old place and leaving a life eight years in the making behind me.
And somehow, having this woman next to me as I face all these new challenges feels…
I don’t know.
It feels right.
I whisper the word in my own brain because it’s ridiculous. I can’t come to terms with something this big this soon, but I guess sometimes people have a way of knocking you off balance, and this woman has. Already. In the ninety minutes since I met her.
Is that all it’s been?
Because I’m sitting here talking to her as if I’ve known her my whole life, and that has never happened to me before. Fuck, a woman I’ve taken back to my hotel has never asked me for a dinner date first, either. I’ve never shared a soft pretzel and nachos with a hookup before sticking my dick in her.
I haven’t had that many hookups. Not as many as Asher, anyway, but for the last year, I spent less time hooking up and more time benefiting with my friend. But even Daphne was less of a girlfriend and more of a girl I occasionally screwed—even if she didn’t see it that way.
“What was it like growing up with three brothers who all played football?” she asks as we dig into the nachos. She goes for the chips with hardly any toppings while I dive in and get my hands dirty.
“Mostly fun. Linc and Ash are almost a decade apart, so we didn’t spend a ton of time playing together when we were kids. We do now when we get together as a family, but that’s rare, and we’re getting too old for the types of battles we had when we were younger.” I chuckle fondly as I think about my grandparents’ wedding anniversary almost a year ago. It’s always a party when all four of us are together, and we’ll be missing Spencer this season as three of the four of us are on the same team for the first time in history.
It is a historic moment. It’s exciting, and fans are watching us closely.
Which is even more reason why I need to keep my head down and focus on football. I can’t come into town hooking up with a different woman every night because eyes will be on me. I need to make a good impression here because every move I make will reflect on my brothers.
“What about you? Do you have any siblings?” I ask. I notice she keeps deflecting anything about herself and tossing questions back at me, and it’s just one more thing that’s intriguing about her. Most women I’ve been with love to talk about themselves.
“I’m the only girl among brothers. We all scattered once college hit, and we always get together at the holidays, but that’s getting harder to manage now that they’re having families of their own,” she says. “Which of your brothers are you closest to?”
There she goes again, tossing the conversation back to me. “Probably Lincoln, though we don’t talk as often as brothers probably should. I imagine that’ll change now that he’s my coach. I’m not sure if we can be close when he’s my coach, and Asher’s a teammate now, so I think that’ll draw us closer even though he’s five years younger than me.”
“What about your other brother?” she presses.
I shrug. “Spence just got engaged and he’s doing his own thing in Minnesota, so I doubt it. Things will likely change with Ash and Linc as I make the transition to the Aces, but I don’t see how it would bring me any closer to Spence. Besides, he’s the quietest of the four of us, so I don’t really see him reaching out.”
“Who’s the loudest?” she asks.
I raise my hand.
She giggles. “You? Never.”
I offer a wry smile. “I know. Hard to believe, right? I’m also the funniest and the best-looking.”
“I’ll agree there,” she murmurs, and it’s almost as if she doesn’t realize she said it aloud, but in any event, I like it. A lot. And so does my cock. She clears her throat and shakes her head. “What are some funny things you’ve done?”
“I don’t know. Pranks, jokes, one-liners. That type of thing.”
“What pranks have you pulled?” she asks.
“Dumb shit like parking too close to the driver’s side so they have to get out the passenger side, or putting googly eyes on all the jars in the fridge. Oh, signing Spence up for a subscription to a dirty magazine that came to the house in his name when we were teenagers. Things like that.”
She laughs, and for some reason, hearing her laugh at the expense of my own pranks on my brothers makes me want to pull more dumb shit just to hear her laugh again.
Oh, fuck.
I think that means I might be in a little deeper than I first thought.
