CHAPTER 3
MATTY
“You might as well show him the pictures,” Jace said, resetting the barbell on the squat rack. “It’s a matter of national security…and it’s his birthday.”
I froze mid-rep like he’d just said nuclear launch codes were stored in my jockstrap…and shivered as the lowest point of my life came flashing back to me.
Jace had been gone less than an hour on whatever ridiculous task the secret society we were trying to get into had assigned, and I was already losing it.
He’d handed me his phone, made me download some app, rattled off instructions I only half listened to—because who the hell actually needed to track their friends—and then vanished into the night like it was just another Tuesday.
Except it wasn’t just a Tuesday. It was a Sphinx initiation night.
Which meant when I finally went back, I was pacing the living room, staring at my phone like it was written in Greek, while worst-case scenarios scrolled across my brain like ESPN highlights.
Mauled by a wild dog.
Buried alive in some crypt.
Sacrificed in a candlelit ceremony by dudes in masks.
I stabbed at the screen again. “Come on, Jace. How hard can it be?”
The app blinked back at me, useless.
That’s when the knock came.
The door swung open before I could answer, and in swept Darla, our terrifying next-door neighbor, wearing leopard print pants, a floral blouse, and enough patchouli perfume to fumigate the house. A Tupperware container of cookies was tucked under her arm like it was a baby.
“Evenin’, Matty,” she said sweetly, dropping the cookies on the coffee table. “Brought you boys a little treat.”
I sighed, dragging a hand down my face. “Darla, it’s midnight.”
I appreciated Jace forgetting to lock the front door after he’d left. Real thoughtful of him to leave me accessible to home invaders, Girl Scouts, and the local population of aggressive cougars on the prowl.
“And?” She popped the lid off the cookies and shoved one into her mouth. “You look stressed, honey. Sugar helps.”
I eyed the cookies. Then my phone. Then her.
Desperate times.
“Darla,” I said slowly. “How are you with apps?”
She perked up instantly, like a cat hearing a can opener. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I vaguely remembered her mentioning she worked in IT. Or maybe she’d just said she was good with hardware. Either way, this was Jace’s life we were talking about. I apparently had to gamble.
“Depends,” Darla repeated, licking chocolate off her thumb. “What’s in it for me?”
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean, what’s in it for you? It’s an app. You either know how to use it or you don’t.”
She leaned back against the couch, crossing her legs. The clash of leopard print and daisies burned my retinas, but at least she was wearing pants. She’d flashed her vagina at us a few times since we’d moved into the house, and the scars from that sight were never going to go away.
“Oh, I know how to use it, Matthew. Question is, how bad do you want me to?”
Fuck. She’d smelled my desperation. Or saw it, I supposed. I’d been pulling my hair out since I’d realized where Jace was going.
I groaned. “Jace could be dead in a ditch right now.”
“Then you really want me to help, don’t you?” she said brightly.
I raked a hand through my hair. “Fine. What do you want? Money? Cookies? You already brought cookies, so—”
“Pictures.”
That stopped me cold. “Excuse me?”
Her grin widened. “Pictures. For my collection. Something tasteful. Something…cowboy.”
My stomach dropped. “What?”
She was already digging in her tote bag, and when her hand came out, it was holding the ugliest, dustiest cowboy hat I’d ever seen.
And also…why had she been carrying that around in the first place?
At midnight.
To my house.
What was happening right now?
“You’ll look perfect in this.”
“Darla…”
“Shirt off,” she said cheerfully, like we hadn’t just crossed five lines of sanity. “Don’t be shy. You’ve got the muscles for it.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Jace is going to die because you’re trying to turn me into some kind of…playgirl rodeo clown.”
“Briefs,” she said as if she hadn’t heard me. “Black ones. You know the pair.”
My brain short-circuited.
“What the—How do you even—” I blinked at her, my words tripping over one another. “Are you tracking my laundry now? Do you have, like, a camera in my drawer? Because if so, I swear to—”
Darla just grinned like she’d won something.
I stepped back, scrubbing a hand down my face. “Absolutely not.”
“Then I guess Jace is on his own.” She turned the cowboy hat slowly in her hands, like she was auditioning it for a Western.
I stared at her. Stared at my useless phone. Stared at the clock.
Then I swore under my breath and stomped toward my room.
Ten minutes later, I was standing in the living room in nothing but my black briefs and the fucking cowboy hat.
“This is a violation of human rights,” I muttered.
“Shh.” Darla crouched low, holding her phone like she was Annie Leibovitz and not just some patchouli-scented menace in clashing prints. “Tilt your chin up a little. Think…desire. Think passion.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
She snapped three pictures. “Perfect. Now put one foot on the couch cushion. Power pose.”
“Power pose? This isn’t the The Lion King, Darla.”
“Confidence!” she barked. “Hand on your hip. No—your other hip. Yes! That’s the one.”
I slapped a hand to my hip, glaring at the ceiling like it might cave in and crush me. “If anyone ever sees these—”
“It’s for my private collection,” Darla said dreamily, snapping more shots. “I’d never show anyone. Oh! Give me a smolder. Think…seductive cowboy.”
“I don’t do smolders!”
“You do now.”
She snapped another burst of photos, then gasped. “The briefs. Pull the waistband down just a tiny bit.”
My eyes bulged. “Absolutely not.”
“Do you want to find your friend or not?”
I groaned so loud it rattled the windows, then tugged the waistband down a fraction of an inch. “Happy?”
Darla squealed like Christmas had come early. “Yes! That’s it! That’s art.”
“This is actually called blackmail.”
“Art,” she corrected, angling her phone. “Now, tip the hat forward. Just over your eyes. Mysterious cowboy. Brooding cowboy. Man who loves horses.”
“I don’t even like horses!”
“Pretend!”
Click. Click. Click.
By the time she was satisfied, I’d posed like a tragic cowboy, a sexy cowboy, a confused cowboy, and—her words, not mine—“a man who just lost his horse but still wants love.”
I was sweating. I was humiliated. And I was praying Jace was at least getting waterboarded for this level of sacrifice.
Finally, Darla lowered her phone. “Okay, sugar. Let’s get that app open.”
She plopped down beside me, crumbs falling in between the couch cushions from the cookie in her other hand, and took my phone. Two taps, one swipe, and boom—Jace’s blinking dot lit up on the screen.
“That’s it?” I choked. “You made me do all that for two taps?”
She tucked her phone into her tote bag, smiling smugly. “Sometimes art requires suffering.”
“How dare you bring that up at a moment like this,” I snarled at Jace, coming back to the present as I racked my weights and sat up fast enough to see stars. “That wasn’t part of the deal. That was a private moment in exchange for tech support to help your sorry ass.”
Jace shrugged, all casual betrayal. “I feel like the American people have a right to know.”
Parker glanced over from the dumbbell bench. “I have two questions,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “Why is this a noteworthy moment for the American people? What pictures are we talking about? And why do I already regret asking?”
“That was three questions, Big Brain,” I snapped. “Guess all that genius doesn’t come with basic counting skills.” He was basically a genius—honors program, perfect GPA, probably solving quantum equations for fun—but he liked to play dumb sometimes when it suited him.
Cough. Like to get Casey, his girl. Cough.
Parker huffed, wiping sweat off his forehead with the edge of his T-shirt. “I was being rhetorical, dumbass.”
Jace smirked. “I’m still going to call him Big Brain despite his mistake,” he said seriously. “Even if his brain doesn’t come with an extra inch.”
I groaned. Loudly.
Because, of course, he’d bring that up as well.
My one collective lapse in judgment—a drunken post-win “scientific” comparison that should’ve stayed buried in the hazy depths of tequila and bad decisions.
Jace was never going to let it go.
The stupid thing was, I didn’t even know if Jace actually had the extra quarter inch he claimed. We’d been too drunk to see straight, too busy laughing to measure anything properly. It could’ve been a trick of the light. Or the angle. There was no way my hands had been steady while I measured.
Hell, we might’ve been the same damn size…or I could even be bigger than him.
Still, every time Jace brought it up, he got smug and I got annoyed, which meant it was basically tradition now.
I made a mental note that in the near future, we would be remeasuring.
For science, obviously. Not because I had any interest in seeing any more of my best friend’s dick than I already did in the locker room.
But also for my fucking sanity because every time Jace brought it up, I was tempted to punch him.
And we couldn’t have that.
Jace would complain about it for the rest of our days.
The man in question grinned, clearly proud of himself for steering the conversation straight into chaos. “I was talking about Matty’s nudes, by the way. We got a little off topic there for a moment, so I’m going to bring us back in line.”
A deep laugh cut through the weight room, far too amused for my liking.
Garrett Harper.
Of course.
The guy was leaning against the squat rack like he’d been there the whole damn time, a towel draped around his neck, dark curls plastered to his forehead, and that trademark smirk that had half the campus ready to throw themselves in front of him if he so much as blinked.
He was the team’s star running back, quick and lethal and infuriatingly unbothered.