Chapter 7
ISAK
"Clover..."
She whipped her head around and looked at me like this was the first time she'd noticed I was Isak Kingman. Fuck. I hated that look.
"Uh, thanks for your help. You guys can take off. Don't want Roper to think I wasted any of your time."
Before I could say anything else, she turned and walked toward the cheerleaders. We'd just been summarily dismissed.
Fox said it on the jog back across the field, casual, like he was commenting on the weather. "That was weird."
I kept jogging.
"The way she just… wrapped up and moved on. Very efficient." He paused for a beat, clearly waiting for me to say something, anything. "Very specifically not looking at you when she did it."
The last thing I needed was him figuring out she was my Cheerleader in a Tree. “I have no idea what you are talking about. I am very handsome. My Nana said so.”
He made a patented I'm-on-to-you Fox face. "Sure."
We jogged in silence for about thirty seconds until we got back to our drills.
Martinez broke right on a post route and I threw it exactly where he'd been two seconds ago.
The ball hit the turf.
Fox jogged back past me. Didn't say anything. His face said enough.
We reset. Roper called the play. I took the snap, felt the pocket hold, had Martinez open again on the same route and put it three feet behind him.
"Kingman." Roper's voice from the sideline. Not loud. Worse than loud.
I jogged over.
He looked at me for a long moment. The kind of look that had nothing to do with football and both of us knew it.
"Where are you today?"
"Here, Coach."
He let that sit there between us for a second, which was its own answer.
"Be better," he said, “or no cookies for you.” And then walked away.
I went back to the huddle. Fox was doing his thing where he wasn't looking at me but was absolutely watching me. Martinez was being very professional about the fact that I'd just thrown the ball to where he wasn't, twice, in front of everyone.
We ran the play again. This time I threw it perfectly.
I thought about the way she'd said I think that just might reach the kind of audience I'm hoping to attract without her voice moving at all.
The next one hit the turf.
Roper looked at me from across the field and I looked back at him and we reached a mutual understanding that this was not my afternoon.
Great fucking way to start the season that was supposed to be my year to lead the team to a winning god damned season.
After practice I gave myself a stern talking to about keeping my head in the game before I got in the Jeep with Fox. I'd made him drive me today because I didn't want to risk getting the bike out before my ride with Clover.
But as my best friend, he took on the job of protecting me both on and off the field. Fox being Fox, which in this context meant he was going to sit there looking like a golden retriever until I talked would be pure torture on the ride home.
I needed a distraction or he'd deploy the best of his arsenal which was just existing near me until I cracked.
"You know my sweet baby sister is gonna be here tonight, right?"
"You really are shit at this game, man." He was not talking about football. "You've never called her sweet. You can fool me, pookie."
"I'm not trying to fool anyone. I'm just trying to warn you she's..." a handful, a brat, a princess, my favorite co-conspirator in life, "probably going to give you the Jules-ish Inquisition. So be prepared."
"Right, right, right." He let it go, which he never did. That was either a good sign or a very bad one.
He kept looking over at me instead of the road, but not with concern, but like he had a secret he wasn’t supposed to tell.
“What?”
“I have tea.”
He didn’t mean Earl Grey. I recognized this as another distraction. “Fine, spill it.”
He practically giggled like a little kid first. “The infamous, recently divorced, younger sister team owner, Tiki Barbra was at the facility today. Tea. Key.”
“That’s not tea.”
“She came by the locker room, asked one of the equipment guys which one was yours." He flipped on his turn signal, like it needed some flare. "By your first name. I’m quoting the quote that she said, “Where’s MY quarterback’s locker?” like it already had her name on it."
"I don't even know her." Shit. I’d forgotten about Gabrielle’s email. “She was probably just looking for a signed jersey or something. It’s not like she’s going to wear an old one of Reggie Miller’s New York Pets jersey to one of our games.”
"She had two Chihuahuas in a purse, man. One had a tiara." He glanced over, pleased with himself, because he knew exactly what he'd done, which was hand me a brand-new thing to be weird about so I'd stop being weird about the first thing. "You're welcome."
"I didn't say thank you."
"You will."
We walked through the door of the penthouse and something in the air was different in the way that had been following me around my entire life, the way that meant my sister had arrived and made herself at home and the space was now, in some fundamental sense, hers.
She was on the couch with a bowl of popcorn that she had located and partially consumed in what had apparently been the thirty minutes since she'd texted me that she was in Cincinnati.
Somehow she'd figured out the address, and let herself in, god only knows how, and already had Vito in her lap purring like a damn fool.
Traitor.
Fox stepped in behind me, looked at Jules, looked at me, looked back at Jules.
Jules looked up.
At Fox.
I had known my sister for her entire twenty-three years on earth.
I had watched her face do a lot of things, righteous fury, academic intensity, the particular expression she got when she was about to say something that would end an argument in one sentence and she knew it.
I had never watched it do this, a kind of brief total blankness, like a loading screen, before she caught herself and pulled it back and became Jules again.
Fast.
Not fast enough.
Huh.
"Welcome back to the Broasis Brotel, Julinator," Fox said.
"No," I said, without looking up from dropping my keys on the hook. "We're not calling it the Broasis Brotel."
"The Brotel Broasis?"
"Still no."
Fox rolled his eyes. Then he looked at Jules and winked.
Jules, who had been composed for approximately four seconds, lost several degrees of that composure before getting it back.
Her chin came up. Her expression settled into the one I recognized as her armor.
The Jules-is-flustered face that she'd been perfecting since she was about six and had realized that seven older brothers meant she could never let anyone see her rattled without immediate tactical disadvantage.
She was flustered.
I filed that away. I was going to need that later.
"You are the chaos agent we need," Fox said.
"Isak calls me that?"
"Constantly. It's affectionate."
Jules considered this with the expression of someone deciding whether to be pleased or suspicious. She moved the popcorn bowl approximately two inches to the left on the cushion beside her, which was not an invitation to sit there.
Fox sat there.
I walked to the fridge, got a water, drank half of it, and stood at the counter thinking about the shoot. About the way Clover moved, the way she had been so damn competent from minute one until she'd dismissed us.
About the fact that I had blurted how hot she was on camera and she'd handled it with more professionalism than I deserved and then moved on without looking at me. I didn't know what that meant but the not knowing had been sitting in my chest all afternoon like a stone.
Behind me I heard Jules say something low to Fox. Fox laughed quietly.
I did not have the spoons for that. I turned around and glared at them both.
They were on the couch facing me. Jules had the popcorn bowl back in her lap.
Fox had a handful of popcorn and was watching me like one of those gifs waiting for the drama to unfold.
They had the combined energy of a panel of judges that had already reached a conclusion and was waiting for me to sit down so we could begin.
"Sit down," Jules said like the friendliest of invitations.
I knew better. "I need to get ready."
"Oh, yeah? For what, my dear rakish brother?" She tipped her head to the side and smiled, batting her eyelashes at me like the sweetest of baby sisters.
Shit. I was in for it now.
Fox reached for more popcorn and Jules held the bowl out without even looking. "Ooh, yas. Rakish like the Duke of Hastings. Good call, Lady Julesington."
This was bad. Very, very bad. I did not need an alliance from the two nosiest people in my life. I had to put a stop to this immediately. If not fucking sooner.
I sat in the chair across from the couch. Not the couch. The chair. Some instincts were self-preserving.
Jules looked at Fox.
Fox looked at Jules.
They'd known each other for five minutes and were apparently besties now.
"Okay," I said and waved a finger at them. "No."
Fox ate a piece of popcorn. Jules offered some to me. I took the whole ass bowl just so Fox couldn't have anymore.
"Tell me about the woman," Jules said.
She thought she was going to shock me, but I knew both of these two asshats better than they knew themselves. They couldn't rattle me.
"Fox already told you."
"He told me there's a woman and she was in a tree and you rescued her, kept the helmet on and that she lives in the building. You two flirty text constantly." Jules lifted her chin. "That's the outline. I want the chapter."
"There's no chapter."
She didn't know yet that I was seeing the mystery woman tonight. But shit, Fox did. I mentally threatened to castrate him if he said a thing.
"Oh, and he had a date with her tonight."
Fucker. Hope he wasn't ever planning on having children. Or sex, ever again. "It's not a date, it's a ride. I'm taking someone for a ride on the bike tonight."
"Someone," Jules said, "you like, a lot. I can tell."