Chapter 12
Hazy
Not even a week after his team paraded through his house, Hazy celebrated a birthday.
The week had crawled by in a storm of self-pity and isolation.
He didn’t attend practice. He didn’t call his parents.
Lover hadn’t been around in days because of the Freeze’s back-to-back game schedule.
The only bright spot had been the uninterrupted time with Livy.
They spent the days couch-rotting and wallowing, both contemplating everything wrong with their lives and spiraling into depressive episodes.
Hazy in no way felt like celebrating, but he also wasn’t one to deny his friends a party.
For his past five birthdays, Daisy had planned a perfect event, per usual. Her career as a team-building expert earned her friends in fun places, and she always pulled strings with bar owners, caterers, and entertainment companies to spoil the Connors on their special days.
With Hazy’s broken leg, the plans she’d been working on for weeks got tossed out the window, but she still came through for him.
On the evening of his birthday, his friends and teammates all gathered in a circle around his card table, playing blackjack.
The table was pulled close to the couch so Hazy could sit in the corner he liked and keep his leg elevated.
Lover squeezed his body between Hazy and Livy.
As the night progressed, he scooted as close to Livy as he could get.
He was practically on top of her, and Hazy’s attention remained locked on the contact between them.
When Lover left to pee, Hazy breathed a sigh of relief.
Toma Novikov slapped the overturned cards in front of Livy. “You’re bad at this,” he told her in an accent that effortlessly made panties drop. It never did the panty-wearers any good. Toma wasn’t for the girls. Sadly, he wasn’t for Hazy either.
Livy let out a shocked laugh. “It’s all luck. You can’t honestly believe you could do any better.”
Toma turned his nose up at the taunt. “Of course I can do better. I will do better right now.”
Reesy dealt a new round, and Hazy blocked Toma and Livy’s view as he checked his cards. He tapped on the table and Reesy handed him another. He stayed at nineteen.
Toma glanced at his cards and indicated he would like to keep his current hand.
Livy examined her cards. Then the ceiling. Then her cards again. She rubbed her forehead. Then she tapped on the table and Reesy handed her a new card. Her shoulders drooped, and she flipped over her card, busted.
“See?” Toma said as he gathered the chips he’d earned. “You are bad.”
Livy flipped him off, and Harland shuffled again before dealing another hand.
Lover returned in the middle of a game, so he stood on the opposite side of the table. Hazy watched him tap out a message on his phone.
Livy’s phone beeped with a notification, and she pulled it free from her pocket. She checked her messages, and a private little smile formed on her lips. She typed a reply, set her phone on the table face down, and stared at Lover.
He glanced at his phone, and a grin spread across his face before he locked eyes with Livy, and she matched his energy.
Hazy furrowed his brow, trying to parse what they were talking about. He couldn’t help but feel excluded.
“What’s funny?” he asked Livy.
“Just a meme.”
“Can I see?”
Livy picked up her phone, but instead of showing him the joke, she stuffed it back into her pocket.
“None of your business,” Toma butted into the conversation.
Hazy’s hands balled into fists.
“Yeah, Connor. It’s none of your business,” Livy ran with Toma’s comment. She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Jeez, only wanted in on the joke. My bad.”
Daisy reached across the table and patted Hazy’s hand.
“Sweetheart, you are the joke,” she teased.
He worried that was truly the case, but he faked a smile and mimicked being stabbed in the chest, earning a laugh from the table.
Beanie elbowed Lover in the hip, and Lover swatted his elbow away. Livy slid over to make room for him.
Hazy still couldn’t figure out Lover’s game. If Connor Valentine were interested in a woman, he’d never be able to joke around with her freely. But the more time they spent together, the more their banter seemed like flirting.
Reesy shuffled the cards, but before he could deal another hand, Livy said, “Let’s play a different game. Real poker, so it’s not all luck.”
Hazy objected. “Livy, you don’t know how to play poker.”
“You don’t know everything about me,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows, skeptical. She was gambling with his money, and the boys didn’t play about poker. But he’d let her have her fun. At least for a little while.
To his surprise, Livy won the first round and poked Toma in the ribs as Reesy gathered the cards again. “Who’s bad now?” she asked him.
He rolled his eyes. “Is one hand.” He gestured to his significant pile of chips. “I’m still winning.”
When they got their next hand, Toma looked at his cards and rubbed his beard, a telltale sign that his hand was good. Sure enough, he raised the bet.
Livy and everyone else folded.
The next round, Toma had another good hand. He raised the pot until everyone but Livy had folded.
The table grew quiet as they revealed their cards. They both had straights. Livy’s was higher. She jumped from her seat and pumped a fist in the air.
Toma laughed and said, “Okay, sit down. You got lucky.”
She kept getting lucky. Every time she’d win, she whispered in Lover’s ear, and he grinned ear-to-ear. For a while, she tilted the table in her favor, but Toma eventually won his chips back.
After hours of card games and great food, everyone cleared out.
He breathed a sigh of relief, even knowing all his favorite people would be gone for a week on their last road trip before Thanksgiving.
Maybe he could spend some time figuring out where Livy’s head was.
He waited for Livy to close the door behind the last of his guests.
When she started clearing the card table of the few snacks and drinks that had been left behind, he reached out to still her hand.
Fuck, he wished he could help. Having people wait on him hand and foot was painful. Having Livy do it was a million times worse. As the only girl in her family, he’d watched her clean up after Jayden and their dad for years. She shouldn’t have to lift a finger for him.
He pulled her around the card table and to his side. She plopped onto the couch next to him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, dragging her as close as he could without jostling his aching leg.
Taking the hint, she snuggled in, pulling her feet up under her and resting her head on his shoulder.
He kissed her hair. “Leave all this. Daisy arranged for cleaners to come in the morning.”
Livy reached across him to snag the remote and flipped the TV to Phineas and Ferb.
They’d gotten through the first two seasons already.
Rewatching with her was a painfully nostalgic experience.
She relaxed further into the couch, and he relaxed with her, the tension from the evening seeping out of him.
They watched two episodes of the show in silence before he gathered the courage to broach a sensitive subject.
He paused the show. “What’s going on with you and Lover?”
There. It was out in the open. He hated himself for asking. Neither of them would do anything to put their relationship with him in jeopardy, but he still had a nasty little voice in the back of his mind warning him that their ending badly would tear his whole world apart.
Livy stiffened against him when the question sank in. She pushed against his shoulder to sit up straight. “Nothing is going on.”
God, he was in dangerous waters. One tiny misstep and he’d be groveling to them both. “It seems like you’re getting close.”
Livy frowned, a line appearing between her eyebrows. He resisted the urge to reach out and rub it away with his thumb. With her on high alert, if he tried, he’d get bitten.
“I’m allowed to have friends, Connor.”
Hazy sighed. The last thing he wanted was to turn into her ex, limiting who she could talk to and hang out with. He risked his life to squeeze the hand resting near his uninjured thigh. “Of course you’re allowed to have friends. I’m preparing myself. Are you two dating? Flirting? Messing around?”
She snorted, the anger leaving her expression as quickly as it appeared. “None of the above.”
“You guys were texting across the room tonight. Seems like something to me.”
Livy smiled. “He told me Toma rubs his beard when he has a good hand.”
Hazy’s mouth popped open. “I knew you weren’t that good!”
“Hey! I held my own.”
“Hell yeah, you did! I was seriously impressed.”
She preened. “Thank you.”
He chuckled, and they watched their show until the end of the episode, but try as he might, he couldn’t let it go. “There’s no interest, then? You’re always flirting.”
“I didn’t say there’s no interest. I’d climb that man like a tree. Have you seen him?”
Hazy grinned even as his stomach dropped. “He doesn’t even know he’s hot. It’s kind of hilarious.”
“Does he date? If I want babies by thirty, I need to get serious.”
Rolling his eyes, Hazy said, “You’re twenty-six. There’s plenty of time.”
“No, there isn’t. Not for me.”
Her mood changed rapidly, a sign that she had tired herself out. She’d been happy, then suspicious, then annoyed, then amused in the matter of an hour. Hazy tugged her closer and wiped a stray tear away with his thumb.
“Everything is going to work out, Livy. There are plenty of ways to have kids, and if you need to do some fancy fertility treatment, so be it.”
“It’s so expensive. I could never afford that.”
One of the first things Hazy had done when he got his first signing bonus was to put money aside for Jayden and Livy’s college expenses. It had taken months of arguing before they would accept.
Unbeknownst to Livy, he’d also set a sizable sum aside for her family planning. His own future remained unclear, but Livy would be an incredible mother.
“It’s a good thing you have a multi-millionaire older brother on your side then, isn’t it?”
Livy twirled a finger in the air. “Yay me,” she said, with false, mocking positivity. “My brother is going to help me have babies.”
Hazy cringed, retched, and playfully shoved her head away from him.
“Why’d you have to make it weird? I was trying to be sweet.”
They melted into giggles.
“You’re the one over here both calling yourself my brother and asking about my dating life. Jayden doesn’t care about who I date.”
“Jayden doesn’t know Lover like I do. He’s an amazing friend. A loving dude. But he’s never been in a relationship. If you’re looking for fast-moving family planning, he’s not your guy.”
Livy shrugged. “Could still be fun, though.”
Hazy curled his lip back in teasing disgust. “I don’t want to know about your fun.”
Livy, exasperated, said, “You don’t want to know about my fun? That’s a little hypocritical. You were getting your dick sucked when I came to you for help.”
Hazy offered a sheepish grin. “To be fair, you came into my house unannounced. And you watched.”
Livy’s cheeks turned pink, and she rolled her eyes. Ignoring his taunts, she pressed play on the next episode of their cartoon.