13. Diego
I stretchedmy back and neck, sitting down beside Cassandra on the front porch swing. She pulled up the camera on her phone, fluffing her hair and angling us both into frame.
“Ready?” She flashed a smile that made my stomach tumble.
“Yeah, absolutely.” I fidgeted beside her, resting my arm on the back of the swing over her shoulders and then dropping it again. Cassandra’s side pressed against mine, her shoulder resting against my arm, which would piss off her sister, but I couldn’t make myself move.
She pressed the call button. The picture of Becca on her screen was quickly replaced with the real thing.
“The fuck, Cassie?”
“Hey, sister,” Cassandra answered, unbothered by Becca’s seething anger. “How are you?”
“Pissed. Is that Diego?” Becca’s tone set my back ramrod straight. On the off chance she agreed to train me this off season, she’d make my life miserable. “Good. I wanted to talk to him, too.”
“Well, we saved you a phone call.”
“Hey, Bec,” I said, poorly attempting to mimic Cassandra’s ease. “Let us explain.”
“There’s no explanation. I leave town and less than a week later, you’re hitting on my sister? Mysister,” she growled, her face drawn and jaw set.
“Calm down,” Cassandra said breezily. “I can explain.”
“Sure.” Becca inhaled, her voice dangerously low. “Explain it to me. Explain why there are pictures of you two popping up everywhere, one of which has Diego wrapped around you like a damn snake in a crowded bar.”
Cassandra pursed her lips, glancing over. I shrugged, shaking my head. The ghost tour, no doubt, but the pictures were news to me.
She pushed on ahead. “Diego offered to show me around the city and some kids took our picture. The whole thing sort of spiraled. Long story short, I’m pretending to be his girlfriend for the season.”
Becca blinked twice, jolting back in her seat. Her face went slack.
“I think we broke her,” Cassandra whispered under her breath.
“No,” Becca stammered. “No. Absolutely not. This is ridiculous. You’re not doing that.”
The icy tone in Becca’s voice made my heart race. Cassandra broke it with a breezy laugh. “Well, bad news. I signed a contract and everything. It’s happening. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Signed a contract?”
“James thought—” I interjected.
“Oh, so James is in on this too? You’re unbelievable. I trusted you, Diego.”
“I’m not doing anything to break that trust.”
Cassandra stilled beside me, inhaling, and then setting a hand on my shoulder with a squeeze, silencing me. “You need to relax. Both of you. Becca, I wanted to do this. It’s my choice. Nothing is going on between us, obviously. We’re just friends.”
Becca softened, but the emphasis on “obviously” twisted my stomach.
“You know what you’re signing her up for.” Becca’s eyes narrowed on mine. “She doesn’t know.”
“Nothing is going to happen.” An impossible promise to keep, but what else could I say?
Becca’s jaw relaxed. She sat back in her seat. There wasn’t so much as a picture on the white wall behind her. She could have been at home, at work, or in a gym for all I knew. She sighed, eyes darting to the side as her jaw worked. After a beat, she shook her head. “You two…”
“You always said we’d get along.” Cassandra grinned into the camera.
“Yeah, like matches and kindling.” Becca blew out a breath. “Fine. It’s not like I can do anything about this, anyway. I just wish you’d given me a heads up.”
“We didn’t know it’d blow up so fast. Honest.” Cassandra drew a finger over her heart. “I didn’t even know there were pictures from the ghost tour.”
“The entire Breakers offense was there. Of course, there were pictures!” Becca grumbled. “Diego, keep my sister out of trouble.”
The tension drained from my shoulders. “I never thought you’d ask me to keep someone else out of trouble.”
“Well, between the two of you, she’s the one who’s going to cause more of it. I hope you both know what you signed up for.”
“It’ll be great!” Cassandra’s grin brightened her entire face. “I met Noa’s fiancée and Coach Mack, and I’m going to a pre-game party tomorrow. Diego’s the easiest guy I’ve ever dated before.”
“But you’re not dating,” Becca clarified.
“Fake dating.” Cassie rolled her eyes, leaning over and brushing her shoulder against mine.
Becca’s eyes traveled beyond the phone. “Davis, shoulders down!” she barked. “Listen, I gotta go. I’m right in the middle of something, but…don’t make this a thing, okay? The Breakers don’t need another Aria situation, Diego.”
I blanched as Cassandra swiveled to face me. “Aria?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Alright, love you, Cassie. Diego, you’re on my shit list.”
“But I can still come to New Hampshire this summer, right?” I asked, pasting on a charming but contrite grin.
“Yeah, and I’m going to make your life miserable.”
“Can’t wait.”
We waved at the phone as Becca hung up.
“Well, that went better than expected,” Cassandra said cheerily. She drew her knee onto the porch swing, resting it over my thigh. “What now? You taking me home or expecting me to call a car? I’ve never been to a football player’s house before. I don’t know the proper procedure.”
My chest tightened, not ready to bring her home. “I’ll take you home, but how about a tour first?”
“Oh, a tour?” Cassandra leaned closer. The scent of orange made my fingers itch to pull her closer. “Is this how you get all the A-list movie stars into your house?”
“Well, usually we don’t call their sister right before I invite them in, so you’re pretty special.”
She grinned, standing up. “Good point. As long as I’m special, I’m in.”
I followed her to the front door, unlocking and standing aside. Cassandra didn’t wait for the guided tour. She tore through the ground floor, remarking on the faucet by the oven, the breakfast nook, and the dining room that seated twelve.
“What’s in the basement?” Cassandra asked, standing in the hallway with her exploration of the ground floor complete. Her hand rested on the banister, flitting toward the upstairs before resting on downstairs.
I hesitated. The women who’d been to my house before preferred the showroom ready upper floors of the house. They viewed the basement with its ratty college furniture and obvious bachelor vibes as a project, a place to plant the flag of a committed relationship.
“Just computer stuff.”
“Computer stuff…” Cassandra pursed her lips. “That’s pretty vague. Sex dungeon?”
I barked out a laugh before composing myself. “No, that’s upstairs, of course.”
She turned, leaning against the banister. “Of course? What kind of crappy sex dungeon is above ground?”
“My interior designer said basement sex dungeons were passé. All the celebs have a sex spare bedroom now, next to the master.”
“Well, far be it from me to pretend I know the latest in sex dungeon trends,” she said with a lifted eyebrow. “Can I go see?”
“The second-floor sex dungeon?”
Blotches of red bloomed on her cheeks. “No. I meant the basement.”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
I wiped my damp hands on my pants as she went downstairs and reminded myself this was Cassandra.
“What is this?” Cassandra reached the bottom step, and her jaw dropped. I winced, pausing halfway down the stairs and waiting for…a laugh, a joke. “This is amazing!”
“You think?”
She made her way to the pinball machine in the far corner, touching the glass before fluttering over to the Pac-Mac arcade game. “We’re playing this. All of these. I might never leave your basement.”
“Better than a sex dungeon?”
“Please tell me you have an N64.” She flitted away from the arcade games and toward the projector screen against the far wall.
“I have pretty much every game system ever created. Genesis, Atari, Teleco, Odyssey.”
She crouched down to view the row of consoles just below the screen. “I don’t know what half those are, but if you have a PlayStation, I’ve got some chocobo breeding to attend to for the foreseeable future.”
“Final Fantasy?” I asked, surprised. “You strike me as a Mario Party girl.”
She grinned. “My dad got a PlayStation when Bec and I were kids and the only game we had was Final Fantasy VII. Becca always wanted to go on missions, but I just wanted to breed a golden chocobo.”
I laughed and opened the game cabinet. “I have Final Fantasy VII. Isn’t that console a little old for you?”
Cassandra waved a hand. “Probably. We were always three consoles behind. We even had an Atari gathering dust in the kids’ room for a while.”
“I owned a Super Nintendo. It was out of date and the games sucked compared to my friend’s consoles, but Mom couldn’t afford anything nicer.”
“Does she live around here?” Cassandra stood up from the ground, turning to face me.
“No. I’ve tried to convince her to move to Virginia, but she’s been in Mississippi all her life. She’s got a husband and a job. Besides, I haven’t lived at home for years.” I busied myself with searching for the game, distracting myself.
“For years?”
“After eighth grade, I went to boarding school.” I pulled out the game, and Cassandra’s eyes lit up as I placed it into the console.
“Wow,” Cassandra floated over to the couch, collapsing onto it like she’d been in my basement a million times. “Fancy.”
“She couldn’t afford it. I got a football scholarship. A booster paid the bill. I just had to pass classes and win games.”
She studied my face. “That must have been tough, moving away from your mom so young.”
My throat constricted as I sat down beside her. “My mom’s a bit of a badass. She took it in stride. And I was a jerk teenager. It was probably better for us to have some space.”
“You were a kid.”
I shrugged. “I was on the way to be an NFL superstar.”
She laughed, the seriousness draining from the room. “I’m glad that actually achieving that goal hasn’t made you any more humble.”
“That’s a lie. You met me at my most humble.” My fingers crept down the back of the couch.
The night we’d spent together in a treehouse at a football party in college felt like a lifetime away and only yesterday. I’d been a different person then, still smarting from being a third-string backup quarterback who got a lucky break. I’d been all ego and bravado and scared as hell. But a couple of seasons in the NFL had knocked that fear out of me. I’d settled into my profession, treating it less like a game and more like the job it was.
But, in nearly every way, Cassandra was exactly who I remembered. Brash and bold and memorizing.
“Your most humble? You were so full of yourself.”
“See, I even had you tricked.”
“All hat, no horse?”
I laughed. “All jersey, no talent.”
She leaned forward, her hair brushing my arm. “That’s not true at all. Then or now.”
I exhaled, a sudden heaviness in my gut. A heaviness at what I’d roped her into: an entire season in the spotlight of sports reporters and gossip columnists. “We can still walk this relationship back, Cassandra.”
Her green eyes locked on mine, a tiny shudder drifting through her body. “Why do you say that?”
I captured an errant lock of her hair between my fingers, wrapping the brown waves around my finger. “Because I like you. Because I don’t think this will be as easy as you think.”
She lolled her head onto the couch. Her cheek rested on my palm. “I signed paperwork, got a season buddy, and went to your office party. This is happening. Unless you don’t want me around anymore.”
“I want you around, Cassandra,” I whispered, meaning it more than I should. “I just don’t want to be six weeks into the season and realize it’s a bigger headache than you expected.”
She shook her head with a grin. “It’ll be fun. An adventure. And worst case, it’s a giant mistake and, depending on what that NDA said, I’ll still be able to tell everyone that I once dated the famous Diego Salazar. And you can brag about how you once dated the best ghost tour operator on the east coast.”
I laughed. “I thought you were just claiming Virginia?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I’m claiming the east coast. I deserve it.”
“I’ll fight anyone who comes for your title.”
“What a hero.” She swooned against my arm before jolting upright. Her cheeks blushed, and her eyes darted to my arm. “Anyway, you’re stuck with me, which means I have full access to your video games as long as you invite me over. So, cue up some Final Fantasy. I’m about to live out all my childhood dreams that were crushed by being a little sister.”
“This is going to be painful for me, isn’t it?”
“Only if you think hours and hours of chocobo breeding are painful.” She crossed her legs, scooping the PlayStation controller from the coffee table. “I have just one more question before all of our conversation revolves around Final Fantasy. What am I supposed to wear to an NFL game?”
Sinking into the couch, wrapping one arm over the back of the couch, I shot her a wink. “Your favorite player’s jersey.”