The Captain (Vegas Blue #3)

Prologue

Cliff

Sophomore year….

We are at the fifty-yard line and need to get to the thirty-nine to at least kick a field goal.

We need a touchdown to win the game or get into field goal range to tie the game and go into overtime.

I throw a pass to my best friend and best wide receiver, Charles Mackey, with forty-six seconds left on the clock.

The ball is a bullet right into Charles’s hands.

He beats one tackle, two tackles, and he’s at the thirty-yard line.

The fullback blocks, and Charles has an open field left.

He scores, and we win the game and the conference!

The entire team runs on the field, and a group picks me up while another group picks up Charles!

After the game, it is party time. We all head over to Lucas’s house.

His family is loaded and has a pool. When we get there, we are all out at the pool, and it is the first time I notice Charles’ twin sister, Charlotte.

I mean, of course, I had noticed her before.

I mean, she is always around when we are at their house.

I always thought she was pretty and friendly, but this year something changed about her, and I began to really see her.

Tonight, though, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.

It was like I was Eve in the garden, and Charlotte was the forbidden fruit.

Whatever I was beginning to feel, I couldn’t act on it.

She is my best friend’s twin sister. He would never go for it.

***

Senior year….

It’s been two years, and I still can’t stop thinking about Charlotte.

I have dated, had girlfriends, but my feelings for her have never changed.

I was very protective of her and that last boyfriend she had; I couldn’t stand him.

She accused me of being a second brother who got on her nerves.

If that is what she thought of me, okay, I couldn’t change it, but that was not why I was so protective of her.

Thinking of her as a sister was the very last thing I thought about when I thought about her.

We won the state championship again this year, and the seniors received a special award at graduation. But it wasn’t the championship party that changed everything; it was the graduation party, once again at Lucas’s house.

There was so much booze and food! The party was going hard, and we were all drunk.

I ran into Charlotte upstairs as I came out of the hallway and into the bathroom. We literally bumped into each other. She looked at me and smiled, then pushed me back into the bathroom.

“I thought I saw you go in here,” she said as she pushed me back inside, shut and locked the door.

I was intrigued, of course, so I let her push me back in there. I figured someone was bothering her, and she wanted me to handle it for her, but her demeanor was different, and I couldn’t figure out why.

“What’s up, Char?” I asked. “Someone bothering you?”

“No one is bothering me. I followed you because I am tired of the dance you and I have played for the last two years. You think I don’t know that you like me.

You think all those times I introduced you as my other brother, that I didn’t say that just to get a rise out of you! ” she told me, giggling.

“What are you talking about?” I asked somewhat, egging her on.

“This,” she said as she stood up on her toes and kissed me. When she pulled back just a little, I looked into her eyes and saw that look that I had been dreaming about for years, the look that said, ‘I want you!”

That’s all it took for me. I threw caution to the wind and picked her up and set her on the bathroom counter. All the chemistry that we have combined with the passion that I didn’t even know she had for me; all came out in that moment.

Thirty minutes later and all hell broke loose when Charles saw us coming out the bathroom together. That night I lost my best friend and the woman I loved.