Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Apparently it’s rude to poke someone in the forehead and say “skip intro.”
— Jeremiah’s secret thoughts
JEREMIAH
“ She’s about to get clobbered.”
She’d just rounded the corner that would lead her to me when one girl reached for her.
Almost on autopilot, I reached down and plucked Merriam right off the floor, over the barrier, and into my arms.
She gasped, threw her arms around my shoulders, and buried her face into my neck.
I had a hundred and twenty pounds of sexy, sweaty woman in my arms.
Literally , that’s all she weighed.
And she was about to get clobbered by Eliska .
“ Control yourself, darling sister,” Bryson drawled.
I chuckled. “ Yeah , Eliska . Control yourself.”
“ Put her back down here,” she urged, voice strained.
“ Please don’t,” Merriam begged. “ Just hold on to me forever, ’kay?”
As if I would ever let her go.
She’d have to beg me to before I scrounged up the nerve to loosen a single finger.
“ Nope ,” I denied. “ She’s mine now.”
“ Listen , Dixon ,” she growled. “ This is a game. Just put her down here and we’ll be all friendly.”
“ I don’t believe you,” I countered. “ Kind of like when we were in eighth grade, and you told me to try your chips. When I did, you had put one of those world hottest pepper chips in there. And I started to cry in the middle of lunch, and you told me that I was being a pussy.”
“ You were,” she defended herself.
“ I was allergic to habanero!” I countered.
“ I didn’t know that at the time.” She shrugged.
“ You knew that he was allergic to peppers,” Bryson disagreed.
“ This is an old argument,” she grumbled. “ Put her down.”
“ I quit!” the wild-haired girl declared. “ I’m a weak little weenie, and I want nothing to do with roller derby. You can have my best friend, though.”
“ I think that’s okay.” Gisela skated up. “ I like skating, but I don’t like being chased after with the intent of being pushed down. My knees are delicate. I only get down on them for a man that I really like.”
Bryson’s attention focused solely on her. “ Yeah ?”
Gisela turned her attention to Bryson . “ How do you feel about dinner?”
“ What kind of dinner?” Bryson wondered.
“ The kind that involves wings of some sort. They’re …”
“ Mia’s favorite,” Bryson finished at the same time the best friend said, “ Merriam’s favorite.”
“ Oh , boy.” Eliska rolled her eyes. “ Now we’d done it.”
I looked down at the woman in my arms and said, “ You like wings?”
“ Love them,” she admitted. “ But only the really sweet ones. I can’t do heat at all.”
“ Me neither,” I confessed. “ Like you just heard, I’m allergic to peppers. The spicier they are, the worse my reaction.”
“ What happens when you have peppers?” she wondered. “ When I have bananas, I break out in hives.”
“ Things start to swell. Really , it’s only the truly hot ones,” I admitted.
“ He started to die right there in front of me in eighth grade,” Bryson offered up. “ I had to kiss him to keep him alive.”
“ He had to give me CPR ,” I corrected. “ There was definitely no kissing involved.”
“ It didn’t work, though,” Eliska offered. “ His throat was swollen up so bad that they had to cut his throat open.” Eliska pointed at my throat. “ They did it right there in the middle of the cafeteria. They being the paramedics.”
That was true.
It’d been the scariest moment of my life.
Bryson and Eliska’s , too.
We’d been best friends since childhood, and we’d done everything together. It only made sense that we’d all been with each other on our first near-death experiences.
“ Wow ,” Merriam said as she leaned forward and stared at my throat. “ That’s a big ass scar.”
“ It looks worse than it was,” I explained. “ It grew as I grew. And I didn’t hit a growth spurt until I was in eleventh grade.”
“ He was B team, the runt of the litter,” Eliska said. “ Then one day, it felt like he grew an entire foot, put on fifty pounds of muscle, and beat Donny Duvic out of his starting spot on varsity. That was the best day of our lives.”
“ Why is that?” Merriam asked, turning back to face Eliska .
The movement caused her backside to roll deliciously against my cock.
I tried to tell it to calm down, but the way she was squirming on top of me let me know she’d already felt it.
She didn’t get up, though, surprising the shit out of me.
“ I’m hungry. You ready?” she chirped. “ All this talking of wings has me wanting them now.”
“ Sixth Street Wings or BWW ?” I asked.
“ Buffalo Wild Wings has atrocious service. SSW is the way to go,” she pointed out. “ I have to go get these skates off.”
I reached down for her foot, causing her to lean forward as I did, and came back with her foot in my hands. I untied her skates and tossed them down onto the bleachers and said, “ Where are your shoes?”
“ They’re with my bag in that locker room beside the one y’all disappeared into,” she said.
“ That’s the visitor’s locker room,” Bryson said.
I pushed up to my feet and allowed her to slide slowly down the length of my body.
When she was on her feet, she leaned back into me for a few long seconds before she pulled away and said, “ It’s nice to be on dry land again.”
“ You’ve been on dry land this entire time,” Gisela pointed out as she skated toward the door.
“ Hey , where are y’all going?” Calliope called out as we all started to leave as a group.
“ We’re going to the wings place,” Gisela called.
“ What ?” she asked. “ There is still an hour of practice.”
“ We’ve decided that we like our faces just the way they are,” Eliska called. “ Call me when you’re done here, friend!”
We left the arena before she could complain more.
We all went into the locker room as a group, and Bryson and I stopped and stared at the entrance.
“ Wow ,” he said. “ This place is bare bones.”
“ What , spoiled little Oklahoma Thundercats have better digs?” Eliska laughed as she shucked her skates.
“ Actually , yes,” I admitted. “ Way better digs.”
“ Ol ’ Cap here practically has his own throne in the middle of the room. Everyone brings offerings to it when he’s occupying it,” Bryson joked.
I flipped him off. “ It was one time, Bryson .”
“ One time is enough,” the little minx I was highly attracted to teased.
“ And it wasn’t offerings,” I tried to defend myself. “ It was my freakin’ birthday.”
“ Birthday gifts. Offerings . Same thing,” Bryson teased.
I sighed.
“ When is your birthday?” Merriam asked as she shoved her foot into Doc Martens .
I didn’t think it was possible to get cuter, but there she was accomplishing it.
“ One week, three days, and four hours from now,” Bryson answered.
I looked at him with a roll of my eyes. “ That’s right. But Christmas .”
“ Your birthday is on Christmas ?”
“ Yes ,” I answered, thinking it was adorably cute that she didn’t know. I hated to toot my own horn, but I was a big deal in our small town. It was a surprise that someone didn’t know every single thing there was to know about me. “ You’re welcome to come to the game that we celebrate my birthday on.”
Her eyes widened.
“ I can get you tickets,” I offered.
She opened her mouth and then closed it.
“ She’ll take them,” Gisela answered for her. “ But maybe you should leave them at will call so that we can make sure she gets them.”
Merriam turned pink.
“ She’s socially awkward and not so hot on using the features of her phone,” Gisela explained quietly when Merriam busied herself putting on her shoes. “ You’re gonna have to work on this one, hockey boy.”
I shrugged.
The thought of working for this one set my nerve endings on fire.
“ I think that I won’t have any problem with that,” I admitted.
Merriam stood up, Eliska caught up her purse, and Gisela hurriedly yanked off her skates and shoved them into her own bag.
Merriam cautiously walked toward me, her eyes nervously glancing up at me the closer she got.
I felt my heart rate pick up at her nearness and said, “ What’s your favorite wing flavor?”
“ Honey barbeque. Not the regular one, either. The really sweet one,” she answered. “ Yours ?”
“ The honey barbeque, but the mildly spicy one that’s not really all that hot.” I winked at her.
She giggled.
The others joined us, and together we headed out of the arena.
“ Where are y’all parked?” I asked.
“ The back lot with the players,” Eliska answered for them all. “ Calliope pulled some strings with her dad.”
“ Calliope can get a lot of things from her daddy if she only bats those eyes,” Lance called from somewhere behind us.
Where had he come from?
My question must’ve shown in my eyes because he jerked his chin toward the back wall. “ Talking on the phone with my mom. She wanted an update on practice.”
Lance’s mom and Lance had a weird relationship.
She was great on the surface, but it almost felt like she was putting on a show.
Like how she would always make sure that the team got little care packages. But then, when Lance didn’t call her on time after a game, she would ring him over and over and over again until he answered. Then chew him out for ‘scaring’ her.
Needless to say, I felt like their relationship was slightly unhealthy.
But that was for Lance to figure out on his own, not for me to point out to him.