Cam
Baloo made him look at the selfie again. “Is it too much bulge? Or not enough?”
“Sorry, man. I don’t want to vote on the nude ones. I’ve seen enough of that in the showers.”
“I’m not nude.” Baloo pushed the phone at him again. “It’s implied nudity.”
He had been. They all had. But nothing anyone had said had given him the confidence to press send.
“We’ve all voted, man,” Quaid reminded him. “I liked the muscle shot. You look jacked.”
“I like the one that looks like a Goya,” Noah said. The guys exchanged confused looks. “Goya? The artist? Honestly. It’s like none of you have been to a museum.”
Baloo’s normally cheery face looked anguished. This was really tying him in knots. Cam had to put him out of his misery.
“Give it here.” He held out his hand for the phone, flicked between the top three choices, then gave it back to him. “The muscles one. Quaid called it.”
Baloo beamed his thanks, then gave a whoop.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teagan squeezing her way through a group of gray-haired suited dudes who Ryder had told them were on the board of Regis Airlines.
She looked good. He’d only seen her in workout clothes or school clothes. She was always pretty, but the flight attendant’s outfit she was rockin’ stirred something in him that it would probably be wise to squelch.
“Food!” Baloo shouted when he realized Teagan was steering a trolley full of party food toward them. The team fell on it so fast, she stumbled backward.
“Hey.” He steadied her. “I didn’t realize you were working the party.”
“Yeah,” she frowned, eyes trained on the guys as they stuffed fancy finger foods into their mouths. “I didn’t either.”
She clearly didn’t want to talk about it. He knew better than to press.
“Has Quaid been behaving himself?” she asked. “He’s gone almost a whole week without an incident.”
“So far so— Oh shit.”
She followed his gaze and groaned. “Seriously? Cabrera brought Ethan as her plus-one?” She looked around, panicked. “Quick. We’ve got to get Quaid somewhere safe so he doesn’t see him.”
She was right. Quaid would flip if he knew Ethan was here. “Hey, guys!” She clapped her hands. “Why don’t you go look at some of the planes?”
They looked up from the party food, confused. “Why?”
“Because… because… they’re old.”
“Yeah, like the rest of Josh’s invite list.” Perry cackled at his own joke.
“It’s definitely less young and depraved than Josh said it would be,” Crabcatcher said, yelping when Teagan ran over his foot.
“I don’t know,” Noah mused. “Sometimes all you need is a dry rosé and good conversation.”
“Yeah,” Quaid guffawed. “If you’re a Real Housewife.”
“Guys!” Teagan shouted, desperate now. “Go look at the old planes!”
“Why?” Ryder asked. They were clearly happy where they were.
“Because I’m the cox and I said so!”
Cam winced. She’d been getting so close to winning the team’s full support and in the blink of an eye, poof!—off it flew.
Teagan tried again. “I know. I’m sorry. Can I take it back?” She looked around the group. They all avoided eye contact until she hit Cam’s arm. “Too late. It’s out there.”
The rest of the team went back to talking—and eating. “Did you have to leave me hanging like that?” Teagan whispered.
“If by hanging you meant trying to force Quaid to look at a plane he had zero interest in seeing, yes. I was going to leave you hanging.”
“I was doing it for the team.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t go about it the right way.”
“What’s the right way? Tell me,” she commanded, after another look over her shoulder at Cabrera.
“Not that way,” Cam said drily. “Barking orders.”
“I am try-ing to help!”
“They don’t know that, though, do they? They think you’re just telling them what to do.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then shook her head, defeated.
He was right and she knew it. “Look, I know the things we do don’t always make sense, but teams are kind of like brotherhoods.
Family,” he corrected, because, in that outfit anyway, the guys would never see Teagan Tao as a bro.
“We don’t necessarily all like each other, but we look out for each other the same way you’re looking out for your mom—who I’m guessing is the reason you’re wearing this uniform even though it feels humiliating. ”
She laughed. “How’d you guess?”
He shrugged. “That’s what family does. They have one another’s backs even though most of the time you want to strangle each other.
” He didn’t want to strangle his parents, but thought it best to leave that part out.
“Look,” he said, when it was clear Cabrera and Ethan were going to start circulating soon.
“The guys will listen to you if they know you have their backs.”
Teagan nodded, like he’d just given her a complicated calculus problem. “How about we ditch them and start our own team.”
Was this… was this Teagan flirting?
“It’d be a lot less drama,” she said, fired up now. “We’d be great. I’d compromise, get in sync with your rhythm, and lead us to victory.”
No. Not flirting. Just reducing the number of people she’d have to fight for supremacy.
“Hey!” Crabcatcher yelped. “He just took my last blini!”
They all turned to see who had done it.
Oh shit.
Ethan Cabrera.
Like it was a tennis match, the team’s heads all turned to Quaid.
This was serious. Quaid could not go caveman on Ethan. Not here. Not in front of all of these people. Everyone on the team would probably get expelled, meaning no more crew, no University of Washington, no Olympic medals, no engineering degree. No future.
He was regretting not at least attempting to lure Quaid into one of the planes. He probably would’ve liked playing pretend pilot. For about two seconds.
Time froze as Quaid silently calculated his options. Then, to their collective shock, he took off in the opposite direction. Which kind of seemed worse. Scarier. Like he’d known Ethan was going to show up, and had a plan.
No one was brave enough to follow. No one, that is, apart from Teagan.
As Cam watched her disappear into the crowd, he realized something.
She had as much to lose as he did if they got expelled.
Crew. College. Her mom would probably get fired if whatever it was Quaid was up to was as bad as he imagined it would be.
“Guys”—he tipped his head in the direction Quaid and Teagan had gone—“we probably better check on them. For the team.” He set off, not bothering to look back to see if they were behind him.
His gut already knew what the answer was.