Page 68 of Hometown Hottie

“You got engaged to Jessie yesterday,” I said, deadpan.

“No. What the hell?” He grunted, adding another weight to the bench press machine. “Shit, man. Talk about stealing my thunder. Now my news seems weak.”

“What’s the news?” I asked as I eyed the weights he’d already added. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“Nope. Just to set a new personal record. I can’t let myself go now that we’re not forced to push ourselves anymore.” As he lay down, he wrapped his fingers around the bar and grinned again. “The news is that I put in an offer on a house this morning when the bank opened. I can’t live at my parents’ place forever and this place ticked enough of the boxes that I took the leap.”

My chest tightened. “Wow. Congratulations. I can’t live with my mom forever either, though she’d love that, but I still haven’t found a place to call my own.”

Vance huffed out a breath and braced to lift more weight than he ever had before. He lifted, and his voice was strained when he spoke. “Yeah, but I’ve been looking at houses while you’ve been too busy trying to help out the Murphys to pay attention to the property market.”

I shrugged, but my chest was still a little tight with either jealousy or panic about accidentally living with my mother for the rest of my life if I didn’t get a move on. “Fair enough. Maybe I need to balance those things a little better. Keep looking for a property while trying to convince them to let me help out.”

Vance nodded slowly, balancing the weight for a moment to get a feel for it. He started lowering the bar. We were both quiet for a minute, but when he seemed to tense up halfway through, I took the weight off his hands.

“Maybe you were a little too confident there. I’ll take some of those off for you.” I pointed toward the weights. “We could also find out how much the middle-schoolers are pressing these days. That’d probably be more your speed.”

“Fuck off, Drake. It’s not like you could do any better.”

“Want to bet?” I asked.

His eyebrows shot up as he nodded. “Sure thing, but not for money.”

“What, then?”

“Information.” He pumped his eyebrows at me and sat up. “You and Nova. I know something happened between you this weekend and I want to know what it was.”

“What? No. I’m not talking about that. It’s personal.”

Vance scoffed back a laugh. “Since when?”

“Since now.”

“Fine, but then you’re going to keep spotting me and I won’t give you a turn to show me up.” He lay back down again, his brow furrowing with concentration. “So something did happen, then?”

“Yep, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to go anywhere.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t heard from her since. I reached out, but I think this might’ve been a one and done thing for her.”

“Or maybe she’s just freaked out that Ryan will kill you both if he finds out.” Having now had some time to get used to the weight, he started showing off a little, speeding up and doing well until I added a little extra pressure to the bar.

Vance started laughing when he realized and he couldn’t lift the bar anymore. I put it back on the rack. A pretty girl nearby was watching us. I rolled my eyes as I nodded at Vance. “What a weakling, huh?”

Lightning fast, he swiped his gym towel off the floor and smacked me in the crotch with it. Pain streaked through me, and I doubled over, only barely aware of him smirking at the girl. “Who’s the weakling now?”

I groaned but laughed through gritted teeth as I tried to breathe. “Thanks for that.”

“Got to keep you faithful to your girl, man. If you’re already trying to get with⁠—”

“That wasn’t what I was I doing,” I protested, pain still radiating through me. “Not at all. Don’t even think like that, or it’s somehow going to get back to Ryan that I’m not serious about his sister.”

“Are you, though?” he asked. “Serious about her, I mean.”

I considered the question carefully before I answered, but the truth was that I already knew what to say. All the errant thoughts I’d had this weekend had already confirmed it for me. “Yeah, but I need to talk to Ryan about it. I just can’t do that until Nova and I are on the same page. Since she doesn’t seem to want to talk to me at all, it’s a lot more complicated than I would like.”

“Maybe it’s for the best,” he said. “You need to be really sure about what you want from her before you talk to her brother, man. If you’re even a little bit uncertain while you’re having that conversation, Ryan will smell it like a shark and chum.”

“I know what I want,” I said in no uncertain terms. “For starters, I don’t want to sneak around with her.”

“Yet that’s what you’ve been doing.”

“Yep, but no more. I want to take her on dates. All that stuff.” Ask her dad for permission to propose to her one day.

I blinked hard at the second thought I’d had about marrying her in less than one damn day.

Vance laughed. “It sounds like you’ve got it all planned out, man. What’s stopping you, then? Go talk to her and then tell Ryan that’s the way it is.”

“I’ve known that she’s it for me since we were teenagers. The Murphys are the ones who are making it complicated. I have to show him I’m serious about her. I get that, but I need to get her to talk to me about it first.”

Vance let out a low whistle as he motioned me toward the machine. “I think I’ll give you a turn after all. It sounds like you need to blow off some steam a lot more desperately than I do. Your life is like a soap opera these days, man.”

“I know.” I swapped places with him and hoped that I wasn’t about to buckle under the pressure. Although it wasn’t the actual weight I was worried about so much as the emotional weight.

Who knew being back in tiny Silver Springs would be worse than running onto a football field as a veteran in the NFL? Not this guy. That’s for damn sure.