CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Hardy
T here are only so many times a man can play foosball with himself before he loses his dignity.
And I’m about there.
I wander around my penthouse aimlessly. What the hell have I become? The guys invited me to go out with them. Again . To go sit in a bar and throw back a few but that’s honestly the last thing I want to do—sit in a bar, stare at other women, and wish for the one who was back at my place.
Kind of pathetic.
And yet kind of the best feeling in the weirdest way as I’m sitting here alone, with a bottle of beer in one hand, the city laid out before me, wondering if this is the something I’ve been missing in my life. The wanting—to take care of someone, to be with someone, to worry about someone, to be better for someone.
“You’re bloody mad, Har.”
My cell alerts a text from Lennox. Have several options and people interested. Will vet them and get back with you .
And no sooner do I set my phone down, does it ring again. I almost don’t answer it. It’s most likely the guys again and their crass nickname calling—pussy-whipped, dick-dazzled, who knows what else—over why I haven’t gone out with them tonight. But when I look at my screen, I’m scrambling to answer it.
“Whit? You okay?” Worry is a constant presence these days.
“Hardy-Har-Har.” She giggles and has my heart lifting up off the floor where it just flopped in concern. “That was funny, wasn’t it?” Another bout of laughter.
“You’re drunk.”
“Yes. I am. I think . Antibiotics and alcohol probably aren’t the best mix.” Another giggle. “Kind of makes you get drunk super fast.”
“It sounds like it.” I miss her . “Are you having fun?” How can I miss her when it’s only been a few hours?
“Yes.” There’s silence with just the normal bar chatter in the background. “Can you come bring me home? There are too many doors, too many buttons on the elevator, and ... can you come bring me home?”
Home . The word hits me strangely. Have I ever had a home? Or rather a place that felt like a home?
Not since I was ten years old.
Since then it’s been wherever that framed jersey of my dad’s is hanging? Probably. But I’ve never quite called anywhere home.
Until now. Until she just asked me to bring her there and I just realized I am the home. It’s wherever I am that is home.
“Yes. I can bring you home . I’ll be right there.”
My stomach flutters as I make my way down the lift, across the courtyard to the other tower, and then to the bar beneath it.
When I walk in, I spot her right away. Patrons turn and look my way, some stare as I was so excited to see her, I forgot my baseball cap. Luckily they’re polite enough to stay in their seats and keep their distance.
I watch her from afar. She’s animated and laughing. Her eyes are alive as she sways and rests her head on Suri’s shoulder. Suri sees me before Whitney does and locks eyes with me. She offers me the slightest of smiles—almost as if saying she sees it too. The acceptance that Whitney has slipped into that there’s something here. That I care for her best friend. That she’s happy.
“Hardy!” Whitney shouts out when she sees me, throwing her arms up and pulling my focus from Suri. If people didn’t recognize me before, they sure as hell do now. But I don’t mind. Not when she’s looking at me like that with a wide smile and adoring eyes. “There you are.” She jumps up from her seat and virtually falls into my arms and holds on tight like she hasn’t seen me in years. “I missed you.”
Every word is over annunciated.
“I missed you too.” I laugh the words out, but fuck if they aren’t true.
“Take me home, Alexander.”
“Okay. Let’s go.” I glance over to Suri. “You okay? Do you need me to give you a ride home?”
“No.” She smiles and leans in to brush a kiss to my cheek in greeting. “She deserves the world. If you can’t give it to her, don’t promise it,” Suri whispers in my ear.
“I never make promises I don’t keep.” The words come out without thinking. Hard to think when I have Whitney pressed up against me, her head nestled under my chin, and a whole host of feelings coursing through me.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Suri warns.
“Don’t I know it.”
There’s a first time for everything.
The phrase is on repeat as Whitney and I make it back to the penthouse but in such a different context in this moment than any other in my life.
Oblivious to my train of thought, Whitney is flirty, giggly, carefree, and everything she says makes me laugh.
“Foosball,” she shouts when she sees the table and runs toward it like a loopy gazelle. “Come on, Hardy. Show me your moves.”
“My moves?” I ask.
“Yes. Your moves,” she says, drawing her words out and shimmying her hips. “I want to see them.”
“You have seen them.” I lean my shoulder against the wall and enjoy the show of everything that is Whitney Barnes.
“All of them?” she asks suggestively. She licks her tongue out to wet her bottom lip and grins as her eyes scrape their way over every inch of me.
My cock jerks in reaction. “I still have plenty more to show you.”
She rolls her eyes dramatically. “I doubt you have any of the right moves to beat me here. I am the foosball master, you know.”
“Foosball master?” I chuckle.
“Right here. Right now.” She points to the table like she’s challenged me to a duel.
“You want to play foosball?” I can think of a dozen other things I’d rather do. All of them have to do with what those puckered lips can be wrapped around.
“Yes.” She gives a dramatic nod. “The rules are—”
“There are rules?”
She waggles her eyebrows. “Baby, once a competitor, always a competitor.”
I throw my head back and laugh but love the way that word makes me feel— baby . What the fuck is happening to me?
“Whoever wins the point gets to ask a question.”
“A question? Like what?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Really?” I take my position opposite the table from her. “This really is a silly, little game, you know. Shoot the ball around pretend men into a tiny goal.”
“Well aware.” She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and spins one of the handles so the men on that rod go spinning.
“I’m beginning to think the only reason I have any remote chance here at winning is because you’re drunk.”
“Tipsy.”
I eye her as she hums a song and practice spins the rod. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
“They don’t call me Lucky Shot for nothing, Hardy.”
My eyes move to her breasts. How they move beneath that thin, tight tank top she has on. This is going to be torture.
“Game on,” she says and grins.
We play the first ball and it doesn’t take more than thirty seconds for her to take me to the cleaners.
“Woo-hoo!” She throws her arms up and does a little dance.
“This is not fair. That was such a ...”
Her grin widens. “Lucky shot?” Her laugh floats around the room. “My first question is ...” She makes a show of thinking over what it’ll be before her eyes light up. “Biggest failure?”
My sigh is deep. “I think we need to make a new rule.”
“You can’t change the rules once you start.”
“Yes, I can because if I’m about to have my arse handed to me in a game of foosball, I better get something out of it.”
“And what do you want out of it?”
My gaze is slow and deliberate as I run it up her body. By the way she squirms, my point is made. “Winner has to answer the same question or lose a piece of clothing.”
“Ha.” She grins. This playful side is new and sexy as all fucking hell. “Answer my question, Hardy.”
“Biggest failure? Taking the contract that brought me here. Financially it was smart, but I’m letting my team down.” I shrug and spin the rod. “How was I to know after signing the contract that my team was going to gel so well? Not being there this year is a rough one. For me. For them.”
“Simply bad timing.”
“I know, but I’m letting them down and that’s brutal on all fronts.” I shrug. “Your turn, Lucky Shot.”
“I’ve failed at a lot of things. Overcoming my ACL tear. The inability to bring the academy to its full potential. Failing at making my mom love me more than the drugs.”
“Whitney.” Jesus . That last one is like a knife to my chest.
“Nope.” She holds a hand up and smiles through the tears welling in her eyes. “I’ve been drinking. Enjoy the candid side of me because you won’t get it often.” She chuckles, but I wish I could erase the sadness in her eyes.
“For the record,” I say quietly, “I couldn’t make my mum love me more than money and prestige. So, I know.”
“See? That’s why we’re the perfect pair.” She holds the ball up. “Moving on. Let’s play.”
I lose. Again . And I think maybe it’s on purpose to see her smile chase away the touch of sadness that still lingers.
“Question time. Biggest fear.”
“Christ. Are you trying to make this a therapy session or foreplay?” I cough the words out and then hold up my hands in surrender. “Fine. Okay. Um ... let’s take our parents off the table here, or else every question is going to revolve around them.”
She high-fives me and then leans in to brush her lips over mine. She tastes like gin and Whitney, and I’m not going to complain. “Deal,” she says with a definitive nod. “Now answer up.”
I grin at her playfulness while trying to think of a response that doesn’t involve either of my parents. I don’t want to die young like my dad. I don’t want to value the wrong things like my mum, which is already fucked up, considering I took this contract because it was so garishly large. “Okay. Hmm. My biggest fear is that I’ll miss out on the most important things in life because I’m so busy trying not to be my parents.”
“What are you afraid of missing out on?” she asks.
“That’s two questions.”
“You’re right. That is.” And without batting a lash, she pulls her shirt over her head to reveal a pink, lacy push-up bra that gives me the slightest hint of her nipples beneath. “Better?”
My mouth goes dry, and my dick goes hard. That didn’t take long. It never does when it comes to her. “Yes. Much better. Please, ask me more questions.”
Her throaty laugh fills my ears. “I’m waiting.”
“Jerseys.”
“What?” She laughs the question out.
“Never mind. It’s stupid.” I play with the handle of the game, hating this question and my answer.
“No. Explain.”
“The one thing I remember most about my dad was how, when he was on the pitch, the pride that owned him when he’d look in the stands and see my mum and me in our Hardy jerseys. It sounds stupid, but he’s out there living his dream, and he’d look over at us like we were the best things that ever happened to him.” I can still see his face clear as day. Can still feel that bursting sensation in my chest when he’d look at me that way.
“I’m not following you.” She gazes at me with a puzzled expression. “How is that your biggest fear?”
“I want that feeling. I want to be able to make someone feel how I felt when he used to look at me. It’s stupid and weird but I fear that with my lifestyle, with the attention I’ve brought to myself, that I’ll never get the chance to feel that way or make someone else feel that way.” I draw in a sigh and strip my shirt over my head.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Trying to entice you with these rock-hard abs so that we can change the subject.”
“I’m not complaining. But for the record, my biggest fear is that I’ll never know what a normal family feels like.”
Of all the things I didn’t have, at least I had that for ten years. There’s that for sure. “You will. I’m sure of it.” I put my hands on the handles. “Ready?”
I win this round. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s toying with me by letting me win one so my ego isn’t bruised.
“Yes.” I pump a fist. “And if you let me win, don’t say a word otherwise. Now, my turn.” I smack my hands together and rub them. “What is your guilty pleasure?”
Her grin is lightning quick, and her eyes dip below my waistband.
“I can make that happen,” I murmur.
“That’s for later.” She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip. “True crime documentaries. Cannolis with mini chocolate chips in the ends. Sleeping in.”
“Not exactly what I thought you were thinking, but those are all very feasible things.”
“Oh, and orgasms. The second time around because they’re always more intense than the first one.”
I bark out a laugh. “If that wasn’t laying down the gauntlet, I don’t know what is.” But hell if I’m not already stooping over to pick it up.
She lifts her brows and rounds the foosball table. “What’s yours?”
“Sunsets with palm trees overhead. Snickerdoodle cookies. Oh, and giving second orgasms.”
Her smile is a slow slide of seduction as she leans over the table, picks up the ball, and purposely deposits it in my goal. “Ask me a question, Hardy.”
“What are you thinking about right now?”
“How I want to walk on the wild side.”
Fffuucckk .
“Pretty sure I can arrange for that to happen.” I step forward and run a hand down the center of her chest. I love the hitch in her breath. The parting of her lips. The widening of her eyes.
“Then get to it.”