All Played Out

Both our throws end up in cups, so now it’s up to Stella and Ryan to decide.

We end up forfeiting first toss when Stella breaks eye contact with Ryan as she throws. It’s a closer game than our last one. Torres and Ryan are stronger opponents, and their presence seems to have put both me and Stella off our games.

When Torres sinks a shot and mine bounces off the rim of a cup and misses, I have to drink my first beer of the night. It tastes just as bad as I remember, and I have to close my eyes and force myself to chug it quickly. When I set the empty cup on the table, Torres’s expression is drawn in dark edges, and I think he’s somehow even angrier at me than he was before. Which makes no sense because it’s his fault that I had to drink.

Gah. Men.

The game stretches on longer and longer, and the room is now packed full of people. Tension that’s about more than just competition spreads taut between us, and by the time we get it down to one cup on each side, my nerves are frayed. It’s just a game, but it feels bigger than that. As if we’ve all got something on the line. Pride, I guess. Our remaining cup is directly in front of me, and theirs is in front of Ryan.

Torres steps up to take his shot, but his eyes find me instead of the cup. I wait for him to look away, but he doesn’t. He keeps his eyes on me as he tosses the ball, and it hits the rim of the cup and bounces off.

This is my chance. With his miss, I could end the game if I throw the ball into their last cup.

I close my eyes. I’ve had to down three cups of beer in all. They weren’t very full, so I think I’m still fine, but I also don’t want to be overconfident. I blow out a breath and focus in on that cup. I think about the trajectory I want, how soft I want my throw so it’s more likely to bounce into, rather than away from, the cup if it hits the rim, then I let go.

It falls perfectly into the cup, and Stella throws her arms around my neck at the same time as our audience goes crazy.

My eyes pass briefly over Torres, and I could swear he’s smiling, but I don’t let myself look back to check.

“Keg stand, and then leave,” I tell Stella.

She nods, and while she tells the crowd that we’re done for the night, I start making my way to the door. Stella’s small hand grips my elbow a moment later. “You okay?”

I nod. “Yep. I just want to do this and get out of here.”

“The keg’s usually in the backyard. Come on.”

I resist the urge to look back over my shoulder. I’m hoping Torres won’t follow. Stella told everyone we were done for the night, so maybe he’ll leave me alone if he thinks I’m leaving. Even so, I walk a little faster. There were a lot of people in that room, and even if he does follow me, I have every intention of being outside and out of sight before he can catch up to me.

Chapter 28

Mateo

Fuck . . .” She’s long gone when I finally push my way out of my room. I spin, scanning the party for her dark hair, her curvy form. “Fuck.”

It had been such a shock to walk into my room and see her there. She’d looked vibrant and confident and unbelievably sexy. And everybody was watching her, and that asshole friend of Ryan’s with the beanie hugged her, and it took all my self-control not to suffocate him with that beanie.

I hadn’t had any intention of partying tonight. I was coming into my room to drop off my bag, and then I was going to go to Nell’s apartment. And by some miracle that I still didn’t understand, she was already here.

What did that mean?

She certainly wasn’t here at the house to see me. The way she’d tensed up when I volunteered to play told me that. But why would she come here if she didn’t want to see me? Was it to rub my face in the fact that she’s just fine, and I can’t walk or talk or do fucking anything without thinking of her? Because she sure as hell looked like she was doing just fine without me.

I knew she’d gained a lot of confidence and was more comfortable in her skin than when we first met, but I still never would have expected to find her completely at ease playing beer pong at a party like this.

God, I’d spent the whole damn football game thinking about her, aching to go after her. I thought about her as the team’s trainer examined me on the sidelines and went through all our concussion protocols. I’d thought of her when Coach said he’d rather not chance sending me back into the game. She’d been the only thing that kept me sane on the sidelines as we traded points with the opposing team. Our defense had an off game, and our opponent’s wasn’t particularly strong to begin with, so it ended up becoming about who could score the most points.

And in a game like that, you’re never safe. Even when you’re ahead, things can turn around so fast. I paced and paced and paced, and I thought of her. I planned out what I was going to say to her. During halftime, I grabbed a spiral from my bag and wrote it down. Then time ran out, and we won, and all I could think about was talking to her. But Coach wanted to talk after the game, check in on how I was doing, and give me the nonabbreviated version of the lecture he gave me on the field. And all that fucking time that I’d been sitting in his office, she was here in my house. She’s still here somewhere . . . unless she’s already left.

I hear cheering and clapping in the backyard, and follow the pull in my gut to the door. When I walk out onto the back porch, I catch sight of her immediately, hands balanced on top of the keg, and her perfect fucking legs straight up in the air. Stella stands beside her, but she isn’t tall enough to keep a hold on her, so some other dude I don’t recognize has his hands around her ankles, holding her up.