Stealing Home

Book 3: Beyond the Play

by Grace Reilly

Genres: Romance; Contemporary Romance; Sports Romance; LGBT Bisexual; LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

I should be focusing on my game–not on falling for my gorgeous, grumpy roommate… especially since she’s already left me once.

 

Sebastian

It’s my final season to prove myself before the MLB Draft. The last thing I need is a distraction–and especially not one as tantalizing as Mia di Angelo.

She’s the drop-dead gorgeous astrophysicist-in-training who ditched me the moment I wanted to take us from casual to committed. Yeah. Ouch. But when she needs somewhere to stay for the summer… well. I offer her my place.

Being roommates shouldn’t be so hard. Not distracting at all. Not the least bit challenging…

 

Mia

I have two goals this summer: get into a study abroad program, and get over golden baseball god Sebastian Miller-Callahan.

Doesn’t mean it’s easy to stop thinking about him, but he deserves better than a prickly, career-focused girl like me. Our futures can’t be more different. The last thing I need is to play roommates with the only man who can set my body ablaze.

And all the feelings I’ve tried to pretend I never had? They come rushing back far too strong for either of us to ignore.

 

Stealing Home is a spicy new adult sports romance with reverse grumpy-sunshine, forced proximity/roommates, dual POV, and a guaranteed HEA. It is the third in a series of linked, yet standalone, novels in the Beyond the Play series.

Release date: February 7, 2024

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 448

Sample

Chapter 1

Sebastian

February 18th

I swear to God, Mia di Angelo is wearing those jeans to fucking torture me.

Penelope Ryder’s best friend is a lot of things, but right now, “vixen” is the only descriptor that comes to mind.

She’s dancing with Julio, and his hands are low enough on her hips to brush her ass. Her long dark hair is loose around her bare shoulders. Between the bright green halter top and the black jeans that fit so perfectly she may as well have painted them on, I can’t stop staring. The way she’s dancing is mesmerizing—the only issue is that she’s doing it with my teammate, not me.

I stare at her toned stomach, listening to her laughter as she grinds against him. My grip tightens around my glass.

Two nights ago, I dipped my tongue into her belly button to make her laugh before I slid to my knees.

Two weeks ago, she dragged me into a classroom on the fifth floor of the library and kissed me until I couldn’t breathe.

Two months ago, she smiled at me for the first time. Looked at Penny and my brother, Cooper, then back at me and smiled, and I swear the universe tilted on its axis for half a second. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do a fucking thing but look at that smile and melt. I can see that face in my mind in perfect detail: the slightest little gap between her two front teeth. The black lipstick. The winged eyeliner and earthy brown eyes.

She had given me scowl after scowl, like I was personally responsible for whatever shit was annoying her at that moment, and then suddenly, gifted me a smile.

An angel’s smile.

I hear, distantly, Cooper’s teammates joking around. His friend Evan Bell asking if they think he could handle Mia.

No.

I know exactly who can handle her, and it’s not him. Not Julio, either.

I take a sip of my drink, then clap Evan on the shoulder. “Buddy, respectfully, she’d eat you alive and spit out your jockstrap.”

Mickey, another teammate of Cooper’s, whistles. “I could fuck with that.”

I don’t hide my glower all that well. Mickey could win his way into Mia’s bed, sure, but he’d have a hell of a time staying there.

I’ve been with her four times now.

Each time, she tells me it’s the last.

But if she’s fucking anyone tonight, it’s me. I know I should let her turn her attention to Julio or Mickey or anyone else she’s interested in. She’s made it clear that our connection can’t go further than the physical. I don’t know if I’m capable of it, so I ought to be leaving her the hell alone.

Easier said than done.

When Cooper goes to find Penny—something about playing a game of beer pong—I peel away from the wall and cut through the dance floor. “Mind if I take a dance?” 

Julio raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t seem too miffed. I haven’t told anyone on the team about my back-and-forth with Mia. No one knows, in fact, except me and her.

“It’s up to the lady,” he says.

Mia stutter-steps through the next beat of music and glares at me. She’s wearing some kind of makeup that makes her face shimmer. The glitter even trails down her throat and the swell of her breasts.

Her voice holds a precise amount of venom. A façade. I hope. “Seriously?”

“One dance.”

The song fades, and as the notes to the next one start up, I hold out my hand.

“Fine.” She makes a show of kissing Julio on the cheek. “You know where to find me.”

I pull her close. So we can dance, sure, but to feel her, to experience her warmth. “You couldn’t have picked one of the two dozen hockey players in this house to tease me with?”

She spins around, grinding that delicious ass against me. I miss half a step before splaying my hand over her belly, keeping her body close to mine.

“Teasing?” she says, turning so her lips are against my ear.

My grip on her tightens. “Julio’s one of my guys.”

“Evan, then.”

“No.” I spin her, and the unexpected, actual dance move makes her smile. I file that away. She has many expressions, but her smiles are the best. A rarity. “Me.”

“Who says I’m still interested?”

I let my breath wash over her ear. Even though it’s hot in here, she shivers. “It’s pretty fucking obvious, di Angelo.”

She twists, looking me in the eye; with her high heels, we’re practically the same height. I want to take off those heels, then peel down her jeans real fucking slow. Her eyes are molten, ringed by that trademark eyeliner. “Penny’s going to spend the night here.”

“Like Cooper would let her out of his sight.”

“You can come to the room.”

I grin at her. Maybe there’s part of her—even if it’s buried—that likes my smile.

I shouldn’t hope so, but God, I do.

Chapter 2

Mia

May 6th

I skid into the Bragg Science Center with a minute to spare before my meeting with Professor Santoro. If there’s one thing she hates, it’s tardiness, so I take the stairs to the fifth floor at a run. I shouldn’t have agreed to drinks with Erin, one of the seniors in the physics department, last night—because it wasn’t just drinks, of course; we ended up at her place after a few rounds—but I was feeling reckless, and now I’m paying the price.

I nearly heave as I take a breather on the third-floor landing. Definitely paying the price. My head feels like someone is hitting it with a sledgehammer repeatedly. And the hookup wasn’t even worth it. Way too much spit.

I’ve always been full of bad ideas. Experiments of the explosive variety in the chemistry lab at St. Catherine Academy. Bonfire parties in the woods at the edge of my hometown in South Jersey. Hookups of all kinds in closets and classrooms and public bathrooms. Lately, I’ve had plenty of extra bad ideas.

It’s easier to jump headfirst into hookups and parties with every bit of my spare time than think about him, after all.

Sebastian Miller-Callahan. Disgustingly nice. Disgustingly good at making me come. Disgustingly good at baseball, too, and that’s something that should have tipped me off—it’s never easy with athletes.

Not to mention the fact he’s my best friend Penny’s boyfriend’s brother. Nope. Mr. Golden Baseball God is in my life for the long haul, and no number of hookups can change that fact.

Hasn’t stopped me from trying for over a month now. Hasn’t stopped me from wishing I was a different sort of girl. If I was a nice girl, and deserving of Sebastian, then maybe I wouldn’t have fled the day his brother walked in on us about to get down to business.

I smooth my hair as I rush down the hallway. I might be hung-over and more heartbroken than I’d ever admit, but there’s no way I’m letting that mess up this assignment. Talking my way into Professor Santoro’s lab this summer, even though I’m only going into junior year, is something I refuse to take for granted. I worked my ass off in high school to get into McKee and its top-five undergraduate astronomy department for this exact moment. A chance to do real research, to start what will hopefully be a long career spent staring at the stars—and to give my application to the astrophysics study abroad program at the University of Geneva a leg up.

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with space. I’d been aware of it before, of course, but it wasn’t until a summer bonfire during a family vacation that I looked up and really saw it. My nonno—a dreamer in a family of practical people—brought a telescope to the beach, and while everyone drank wine from paper cups and laughed around the bonfire, I followed him to a quiet spot by the dunes.

“Let’s find a planet,” he said as he set up the telescope. “Maybe we can see Mars or Jupiter. Summer is a good time for planet hunting.”

It felt like magic, peering at the sky through the telescope. We found them, and Saturn too, my eyes wide as I glued my face to the lens.

“One day,” he said, hands in the pockets of his linen pants, gazing up with as much reverence as I’d seen when he prayed

in church, “maybe they’ll find another little girl gazing at the sky through a telescope, wondering about Earth. Maybe you’ll be the one to do it, Maria.”

He always told me that I could do anything. As I grew up and my interest in space consumed me, he sent me articles from NASA that we’d read together. He encouraged me to sign up for advanced math and science classes and join the robotics club. The morning before he died of a heart attack, he picked me up from school—I’d gotten in trouble with the nuns yet again—and told me that he knew I was destined for something great.

When I get to Professor Santoro’s office, I knock on the door, and spend the five seconds waiting for an answer combing through my messy hair. Ugh. Why did I hook up with Erin again?

Sebastian Miller-Callahan is still in my head, that’s why.

That stops now. I have lab work to focus on. A study abroad program to get into. A future to plan—hello, NASA—that’s far away from New Jersey and the di Angelo family, thank you very much.

None of that involves a certain green-eyed baseball player.

I’m the one who walked out on him, anyway.

I bet he hasn’t thought about me at all.

“Enter,” Professor Santoro calls.

I push open the door gently.

Professor Beatrice Santoro is a major reason I chose McKee University over all the other offers, some with better scholarships, when it came to college acceptances. She’s a badass older Italian woman who took one glance at me and understood my background, both the challenges and the love. And now, after two years spent working my ass off in this department to earn credibility, I’m finally in her lab. She rarely lets undergraduate students into her inner sanctum unless they’re rising seniors, but I earned this spot. Impeccable lab work and attendance. Fluency in Python and C++. Volunteering at the campus planetarium. Attending every visiting lecture and symposium.

My grandfather had been the only one to tell me he believed in me—until Professor Santoro.

You have a bright future, Mia. A future in the stars, if that’s what you want. If you’re prepared to work for it.

I’ve spent two years working to be worthy of those words, and now I’m ready to prove it.

“Mia,” she says in a warm voice. “How are you today?”

Professor Santoro’s office is a little nook of a room. Books everywhere, framed photographs of space and stars on a gallery wall, her degrees in a row behind her desk. She takes notes by hand, regardless of the computer program she’s using, and stacks of those little notebooks line her desk like sentries.

As I sit, she adjusts her thick black glasses, which give her gracefully older face

 a touch of quirkiness. Her silver-threaded hair hangs loose around her shoulders.

I manage a smile, even though I want to hurl on her desk. “Great. How about you?”

Professor Santoro leans back in her chair, pressing her fingertips together. “I’m well. Very happy to have you as my undergraduate researcher for the summer. I think this assignment will be a good challenge for you, given your interest in exoplanet discovery.”

I nearly bounce my leg in excitement, but manage to reel it in. Exoplanets are a relatively recent discovery—they were theoretical, officially speaking, until the 1990s—and now, scientists have discovered thousands. They’re simply planets that orbit a star other than our own. Out of the billions out there, one might be capable of sustaining alien life. Professor Santoro has been involved in this research since the beginning, and the thought of working alongside her, even on a small scale, to discover and classify these planets, is enough to make everything else fade away.

“Alice will email you the lab schedule,” she says. “You’ll have assigned readings for our weekly roundtables, so make sure you come prepared. I want you to work with her to rewrite the program we’ve been using to measure these planets’ atmospheres. I think your eye for code will help us streamline it. I want a mock version up and running for when they release the new James Webb data, so it can be part of the analysis for my current paper.”

I nod. “Absolutely.”

Her gaze turns shrewd. “How are things, Mia? How is your family?”

“Fine.”

“Do they still think you’re student teaching?”

My face flushes. I stare at my lap. My family’s big idea for a woman’s career is temporary—teaching until I have children of my own. My nana did it. My mother and her sister. My older sister, Giana, is teaching for one more year before squirting out kids with her husband, never mind that growing up, she wanted to become a lawyer. It’s what they think I’m studying, and I haven’t corrected them. But if I get into the Geneva program, I’ll be able to use it as concrete proof that I’m meant to be in this field and explain everything to them. It’s not like I want to lie about something this huge, after all.

“It’s easier this

way. They won’t—they won’t understand.”

“Nevertheless,” she says, “they’re your family. My parents didn’t understand my desire to bury my face in a telescope either, but they came around.”

“Your father was a doctor,” I say. “My dad installs HVAC systems.”

She takes off her glasses, folding them carefully. “I’m hosting a symposium at the end of June. Colleagues from several universities will be coming, and I want you to give a presentation on our research.” She holds my gaze. “Do you understand?”

My breath catches in my throat. “Yes.”

“Do well, and you won’t need a recommendation from me for the Geneva program. Robert Meier will hear you yourself. I’ve already told him he’ll be able to see my most promising student when he attends.” She stands, signaling my dismissal. I slide my bag over my shoulder. “I hope you will consider inviting some family members to see it.”

I can tell it’s not much of a suggestion, but I don’t touch it. Not now, when the only person I’d want to invite is dead. I nod. “See you on Monday.”

She’s already turned to the bookshelf, riffling through the tomes. Onto the next problem for the day. “Monday.”

Chapter 3

Sebastian

This early in the morning, the house is quiet.

I rise from my plank, breathing through my nose, and pick up a set of fifteen-pound dumbbells for the next round of exercises. Cooper, by my side, does the same. There’s no need to talk, not when we’ve done this routine together, the exact same way, for years now. Sometimes we play music, but today there’s nothing. No distractions except the ones inside my head.

We could have gone to the gym on campus, the nice 24/7 one specific to athletes, thanks to his position on the hockey team and mine on the baseball team, but he’s leaving on a post-semester road trip with his girlfriend, Penny, in a few hours, and wanted extra time with the cat currently sitting on the staircase.

She blinks her enormous amber eyes at us, unnervingly intelligent. I’m more of a dog person, but Tangerine has grown on me. Cooper and Penny rescued her last fall, and she’s become a permanent fixture in the house since. I still haven’t fully forgiven her for leaving a dead mouse in my cleat, but she’s cute. I can’t tell if being her sole caretaker while they’re on the road trip and our little sister, Izzy, is in Manhattan for an internship, will bring us closer together or end with her attacking me in my sleep.

She swishes her tail back and forth, as if she’s considering it, while we work through the exercises. After the last one, I set the dumbbells on the floor and swipe my hand through my shaggy hair. Baseball hair, Izzy always teases. It’s longer than Cooper’s now; after his team went to the Frozen Four—and won—his girlfriend begged him to trim the beard and cut off some of the mop.

He glances at me. “You’re quieter than usual.”

“I’ve been up for a while.” I stretch; my shoulder protested that last set of reps. During a game a couple days ago, I slammed against the warning track as I chased a deep fly ball. Got the ball. And a bruise. We still lost. Four games in a row now. If we’re going to make the playoffs, we need to right the ship—fast.

He makes a sympathetic noise. “I thought that had been getting better.”

I shrug as I take a sip of water. “It comes and goes. I didn’t manage to fall asleep last night. Got to practice my knife skills, though. And watched a documentary about bread making in France.”

He shakes his head. “I was wondering about all the chopped onion in the fridge. Your hobby is weird sometimes, dude.”

“They were diced, not chopped. And call it weird all you want, but you eat everything I make.”

“Happily. It’s fucking delicious.” He sets down the dumbbells and stretches. Tangerine pads over on light feet, winding around his bare legs. He picks her up, hugging her to his chest. She purrs contentedly. “That sucks, though. Do you want to talk about it?”

“You all set for the trip? Still visiting James and Bex first, right?”

“Sebastian.”

My adoptive brother’s deep blue eyes are full of concern. He reaches out to squeeze my shoulder. “Was it . . .”

A nightmare? One of the persistent, sickening nightmares that years of expensive therapy didn’t squash completely? Never mind how hard his parents—my adoptive parents—tried? 

I swallow. There’s a sudden knot in my throat. “No. Not a nightmare.”

Not a maw of crushed metal and broken glass. Not blood on leather seats. Not a scream, cut short thanks to a severed windpipe. I can call up the memory so easily, even a decade removed. You don’t look into your mother’s lifeless eyes as an eleven-year-old and not remember it like someone cut open your skull and branded the image there.

Cooper’s grip on me tightens. He told me once that he can tell when I’m lost in the memory. We were fourteen, sitting under the bleachers during one of our older brother James’s many Friday night football games, each with a stolen beer in hand. A rare night in the fall when Cooper didn’t have ice time, and I didn’t have a training session. It was October, the Long Island air finally turning crisp after a late-season heat wave. Something about the sudden rain triggered it, I think. We were dry, and safe, and the game was still going on, but I froze as I stared at the downpour, and Cooper had to shake me to drag me into the present.

Now, I shrug off his grip. “I just . . . I couldn’t sleep.”

His gaze turns shrewd. “Because of her.”

I’d never tell Cooper, because he has a strained relationship with his father that’s only just getting better—and our own relationship was strained for a time earlier this year, when his piece of shit uncle came crawling back to New York and tried to swindle him out of his trust fund—but when he makes that face, he looks just like Richard Callahan, down to the furrowed brow.

The Callahans all look alike, with their dark hair and deep blue eyes. No one would ever mistake them for anything but family. Richard Callahan, quarterback legend. His son James, two years older than me and Cooper, now finished with his first year in the NFL. Cooper, my best friend and near twin. Our little sister, Izzy, a vibrant ball of energy with a wicked volleyball serve and enough swagger to get her in trouble left and right.

I’ve got my dead mother’s blonde hair and my dead father’s green eyes, and the last name Callahan now; I’ve used the name on the back of my baseball jersey ever since I turned twelve. Cooper and his family have been my family for a decade, thanks to a pact Richard and my father, Jacob Miller, made when they were just young men with hopes for futures in the NFL and MLB. Richard and Sandra welcomed me into their family with open arms after my parents’ deaths, and I’ll never not be grateful.

Given all that, we’ve been brothers long enough that Cooper knows when I’m holding back. I pet Tangerine between the ears. The silence is confirmation enough: I haven’t gotten Mia di Angelo out of my head.

Enjoy watching me leave, Callahan.

Her words taunt me. Over a month later, they still echo in my mind. One minute, I had her in my bed, in my arms, so close to more. The next, she fled—and told me to watch her leave, like I’d never see her again. I have seen her since, because she’s Penny’s best friend and it’s impossible to ignore someone going to the same university, but she’s acted like every hookup, every conversation, every moment we shared meant nothing. 

 

“Are you ever going to tell me what actually happened?”

“You saw her leave.”

He sighs. “I don’t understand her. I know Penny loves her, but she can be . . . difficult.”

“She hasn’t said anything about me?”

I hate the pathetic note in my words, but I can’t stop myself from asking the question. I worry my necklace, the medallion that once belonged to my father, between my thumb and forefinger.

He just shrugs, no doubt thinking about the moment he caught us together. It wasn’t like we were in the middle of fucking; we were just making out. Yet the second Mia saw him, any vulnerability I’d won from her melted away. The armor went back up, as solid as steel.

“If she has, she told Penny not to tell me. Probably because she knows I’d tell you.”

“Fantastic.”

“It’s not like you’ve told me all that much about what went down.”

I grimace. “Nope. And I won’t.”

“You two are ridiculous,” Penny says from the top of the stairs. She shuffles down, her feet bare, wearing a shirt with a dragon on it that I’m sure belongs to my brother. He has enough nerdy fantasy gear to rival a fan convention. Her rust-colored hair, so different from Mia’s raven locks, is practically a bird’s nest. “For the record, she hasn’t told me anything either. She refuses to talk about it.”

It’s easy to hear the note of concern in her voice. Mia’s her best friend, after all. I’ve kept my own tabs on Mia, and while I know it’s not my fucking business, it seems like she’s been enjoying a lot of company. That’s her right, and sure, I’m doing the same, but after the way we’d been together?

Whenever I think about that moment in my bedroom, I see her smudged lipstick, her bright brown eyes. In between all the kissing, I asked her out to dinner for the second time—for just one dinner, one actual date after months of secretive hookups—and she said yes. Then approximately one minute later, Cooper stumbled in on us, and approximately one minute after that, she hauled her NASA tote bag over her shoulder like a shield and fucking left.

Enjoy watching me leave, Callahan.

Since then, she’s acted like she managed to wipe me clean out of her life without a second thought. I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell Cooper all the details. I still showed up for the date we planned—I waited over two hours just in case she’d show—but she ghosted me. I don’t want to admit that to my own brother. Not when his girlfriend is Mia’s best friend.

“You sure you’re fine on your own for a while?” he asks. He glances at Penny. “Should we stick around? Come to your games? I know that Mia—”

I shake my head. “No, enjoy the trip. Tell James and Bex I said hi. I’ll be fine."

Penny kisses Cooper’s cheek. He pulls her closer, rocking her as he rests his chin on her head, an unconscious motion. I swallow my spark of jealousy. When James found Bex, it made sense—he’s always been meant for a big love. The soulmate of a wife, kids, the white picket fence, the dog. When Cooper found Penny, it was a surprise to everyone, but it clearly suits him, having one person to focus on, one person to love. I’ve never seen him happier, which makes it worse, the way I miss being casual players together.

My brothers are both deserving of that love. Yet it sucks to be alone and pining over a girl who, apparently, wants less to do with me than dog shit on the bottom of her shoe.

“We told my dad we’d get breakfast with him before hitting the road,” Penny says.

I clear my throat. “Right. I need to head to practice, anyway.”

“Text me if you get draft updates while we’re away,” Cooper says with an easy grin. Since this is his off-season, he’s had a ton of time to focus on other things—namely, where he thinks I’m going to end up signing after the MLB draft in July. Whenever I think about it too hard, my stomach ties itself into knots. “Dad mentioned something about the Marlins? Miami would be sick.”

I manage to smile back. I haven’t had the heart to tell him—any of them, actually—that the looming draft is hanging over me like a rapidly approaching storm. It’s ridiculous, because it’s what I’m meant to do. My father wanted to create a legacy, so he made sure that I loved the sport from the moment I first picked up a baseball bat. Baseball has always been my life, and once I’m drafted, it’ll be my future.

But lately, a tiny part of me, just loud enough that I can’t ignore it completely, is wondering if it’s the right future.

When I turned down the first draft offer the summer after high school, instead committing to McKee, it meant that I wouldn’t be eligible for the draft again until I turned twenty-one. It’s the way a lot of top baseball players go—see what the offer would be, then stay in college and plan for the next steps when your skills improve, a couple seasons down the line. If the near-daily articles Richard sends me are accurate, I’ll go in the first round, likely to the Miami Marlins or the Texas Rangers. There’s already talk of the Cincinnati Reds trading for me down the line, so the organization can have a Miller back on the team.

It’s what Dad wanted. If I close my eyes and focus, I can still hear the way he spoke about baseball, the beauty of it, the history, the symmetry that has made it so enduring in American culture. He was famously patient, a coiled rod of energy in the batter’s box, ready to strike. The National League home run record, set by him in his last season before the accident, remains unbroken.

There are a lot of people out there who expect me to be the one to break it. 

It’s poetic, his son being drafted a decade after the tragic accident that took one of baseball’s best players—ever—from the game, way too soon. Not since Thurman Munson died in that plane crash had there been a bigger tragedy in baseball. The Sportsman, the oldest sports magazine in the country, called the other day to ask about me giving an interview, but I haven’t replied yet.

However much I care about baseball—however alive I feel when chasing down a fly ball, when hitting a line drive, when sliding into home plate—it isn’t just mine. When my future in the MLB begins, the comparisons will just get more and more intense. The great Jake Miller’s son.

Letting Dad down isn’t an option. He wanted one thing for me, and it was this. He died in a horrible, unfair instant, arm flung out as if that could protect my mother from death right alongside him. I might wear “Callahan” on the back of my jersey right now, but once this is my job, the expectations will be different.

So I just keep that fucking smile plastered on my face.

“Sure,” I tell my brother. “Maybe it’ll be Miami. Have a good trip. You earned it.”

Chapter 4

Mia

March 13th

I’ve just opened Penny’s text—boys are fine, spending the night at Coop’s—when there’s a knock at the door.

I slip out of bed, shivering as my bare feet hit the floor. My head is pounding from the alcohol I threw back at Lark’s, something that I’m sure I haven’t helped by squinting at my laptop in the dark, letting all that blue light wash over me. But it was between staring at the ceiling and finishing work for my stellar astronomy course, and you don’t get into NASA-funded research labs by slacking off.

And fine, maybe I wanted to distract myself from him.

Sebastian Miller-Callahan.

Sebastian, who has been smiling at me ever since the movie theater last fall.

Sebastian, who calls me sweet when I come.

Sebastian, who threw a punch for me.

Who the hell does that?

Callahan boys, apparently. I’ve heard the stories from Penny about Sebastian’s brother, Cooper, who she’s pretty much disgustingly in love with. I would hate it, except that I love her and love seeing her happy. She’s the kind of girl you want to bring home to your parents. The kind of girl who deserves a loving relationship.

And then there’s me.

I shouldn’t keep letting Sebastian in. I’m just going to hurt him, one way or another. I tried to earlier; I wore Cooper’s teammate’s sweater to the hockey game after Seb asked me not to, and he just gave me a once-over and ignored it. Patient as always. And then at the bar, some creep tried to take a video of me and Penny, and he tore me away from the fray before jumping in alongside Cooper.

I pad to the door and ease it open.

“Hey,” he breathes. His voice is hoarse—not just from the punch to the throat he took during the fight, but from the game earlier. Only his voice was as loud as Penny’s. Penny and I have talked about it before, how we’ve never seen brothers so close. “Can I come in?”

His eyes are dim and exhausted, his cheek swollen with the makings of a wicked bruise. There’s a cut on his forehead, too, half-hidden by his messy hair.

I grab his hand and guide him inside. He sits on the little couch in the common area gingerly. We have a mini fridge, so I grab an ice pack from the freezer and wrap it in a T-shirt before handing it over.

“Sure you don’t have a fucking concussion?” I ask, staying by the door.

He turns to me slowly, as if trying to minimize the pain. The movement makes him wince. I shove down the thread of worry working through me. “They checked me out at the urgent care place. I’m fine. Cooper needed stitches.”

The worry grows deeper. A rapidly expanding black hole, threatening to suck me in.

He jumped into a fight for me.

That doesn’t matter

I try for a scowl. That’s safe. It’s the smiles that get me into trouble, not the scowls. “I didn’t ask you to be my knight in shining armor.”

“I wasn’t about to let that asshole smack you around. Or Penny. Or Cooper, for that matter.” His voice is sharp. It’s a voice that allows no space for argument. I bristle against it, even as part of me—a small, yet annoyingly vocal part of me—likes the tone and what it could promise.

I snort. “Cooper had like thirty more pounds of muscle than that guy. He was nothing. I could’ve taken him.”

“I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.” He stands, walking over to me, and presses me against the door. I swallow, gazing into those gorgeous green eyes that devour me whenever we’re in a room together. It’s a secret, our thing, but shit like defending me in a public fight threatens to let that escape. I ought to tell him to go home, and to stop texting. “Just that I’d never let you fight alone.”

It can’t be more than hookups. Can’t be more than these moments, alone at night like we’re the only two people alive, my body burning for his. Chemical reactions in our bodies, a web of connections unfurling between us. I reach up, tracing over the bruise, and he hisses, dragging me closer. ...