Finally Us (11 page)

Chapter 15

El

After the initial call I made, Jag and I
have talked several times a week while he’s been at training camp but nothing like that first call. Well, maybe one other time. Okay, two. But, God, does he give good phone. Damn.

But we mostly
just talk about everything, what’s going on with my job, how his arm’s feeling, how he thinks the Cubs will do this year, my new obsession with Veronica Mars reruns. We’re becoming friends again, which I think is good. Very good.

I
’ve also talked to Austin a few times and that’s been nice too. He doesn’t always answer, but he usually calls me the next day to let me know he’d been asleep when I called. But he’s really funny and sweet and I’m really getting to know him. And I don’t feel bad for talking to him. I’m not dating anyone, so it’s not like I’m cheating. Bec thinks I’m crazy for talking to both of them, but I told her I have no expectations about either of them, so it’s okay. She told me I needed to choose then rolled her eyes and said someone’s going to get hurt in the end to which I added it’ll probably be me, but whatever.

But
I feel so much better about myself. I’m not mopey anymore. I go out with friends. We joke. We laugh. I feel like me again, and that’s awesome.

It’s the last Sunday morning of March and I’
m running on the Lakefront Trail. I’d stopped running when school got so hectic then I got my first PT job, but I’ve always loved to run, I was a hurdler in high school, and I’ve missed it. I’ve got my iPod going, Pendulum’s “Hold Your Colour” blasting in my ears and I’m feeling great, just got my second wind, when there’s a tug on my jacket from behind. Whiplash anyone? Jeez. I turn and a huge smile forms on my face when I see Austin.

“Hey!” I say as I take the earplugs out.

“What’s shakin’, baby?” he asks with a grin.

I giggle at that. “You’re so weird,” I tell him and he snorts. “So I’m assuming training camp’s over?”

“Yes, ma’am. Lookin’ good too.”

“You or the team?”
I ask with a snort.

He grins again, and, man, is he cute.
His hazel eyes sparkle green in the early morning sun. His dark hair’s all messy on his head and he’s sporting some seriously sexy scruff. Gah!

“
Both,” he teases.

“Wanna finish with me? Still got five miles to go,” I inform him.

The look on his face makes me laugh. Then he says, “Hamstring,” and grabs the back of his leg acting as if he’s still in pain which makes me laugh even more because I know it’s healed. “I’ll just meet you at your car, how ‘bout that?”

I go up on my tiptoes
and brush his lips with mine. “Got it,” I say before I take off running again, turning to see him staring after me with a wicked grin.

I finish my run and go back to my car
where he’s leaning against it texting on his phone.

“Finished already?” he asks with a smirk.

I’m sucking wind because I kicked it in hard on the last mile and I’m sure I’m looking fabulous since I’m about to keel over. I put my hands on my hips and stand there breathing heavily giving him a look.

He chuckles then comes to me and kisses my forehead. “Wanna get coffee?”

“Love to,” I say between breaths. When my breathing slows, I say, “Follow me,” and get in my car, drinking from the water bottle I have in there.

I take him to a Starbucks and we go in and get a table.

“You used to work here?” Austin asks.

“Well, not at this one, but I worked at a Starbucks on Northwestern’s campus and at one in Los Angeles.”

“You were a sexy, little barista, huh?” He smirks at me from across the table.

I chuckle at him. “Something like that. Hard to be sexy when you smell like a giant macchiato.”

He waggles his eyebrows. “I happen to loooove the smell of giant macchiatos.”

Dang. I blush because he’s being super
flirty. I guess being away at spring training has made him horny.

“So, you gonna go to dinner with me tonight?” he asks.

Crap. Jag asked me last night if I’d go with him tonight. Bec might be right about all this.

“No, sorry. I’ve got plans.”

He looks at me for a couple seconds narrowing his eyes. “Jensen?”

I nod. Uh, busted.

“Huh. That’s funny ‘cause when we were in Mesa, he was having a pretty good time.”

This makes me frown. Jag told me he wasn’t going out at all, that he was so beat after each practice and game, he went back to his hotel room, ate, showered and went to bed.

“Doing what?” I ask.

“Well, it’s really none of my business, but let’s just say there were lots of college girls around the clubs who were big, um, fans of his.”

“He said he was too tired to do anything,” I whisper.

Austin pulls out his phone and messes with it for a bit then hands it to me. And there’s the frickin’ proof. Pictures of Jag at the bar drinking with the rest of the team, Jag on the dance floor surrounded by
women.

Wow. Just, wow.
I’m stunned for a few minutes as I look through them, but then I know I’ve got to be reasonable here, objective. He was having fun. He deserved some fun, didn’t he? I mean, he’d worked hard at camp, his shoulder was healed, so he decided to celebrate some. Big deal. As I look at the pictures, I see he’s wearing the same outfit, so it’s not like he’d gone out other times, or at least I don’t see any other pictures of him in different clothes. So this was probably one time and the whole team was there with him. And the women he’s dancing with? Well, Jag’s hot, women want him and I’m guessing he kept getting asked to dance, so he finally gave in. I also see some of the other guys out there with him, so it’s not like he’s slow dancing with one chick in particular.

I clear my throat and sit up straighte
r. The new and improved me is more mature and more rational, but the old me, the jealous girl inside suddenly speaks up and I tell Austin, “Of course I’d love to have dinner with you.”

So much for self-improvement.

After dinner, we go outside and there’s a
horse drawn carriage waiting. I look at him and my mouth falls open.

“Seriously?” I ask
in awe.

He
gives me his smirk then with his hand in the small of my back, leads me to the carriage and helps me get in. I’ve got on a cute navy halter dress that I bought last month that crisscrosses in front so it makes a sort of tear drop opening that’s pretty revealing. The dress is also very clingy and very short, so getting up there without flashing him is a tad difficult. And my new Manolo Blahnik’s (I’ve become a total shoe aficionado, what can I say?) are super high heeled, but I manage it, adjusting the wrap I’m wearing while he gets in and I feel like a kid when the carriage takes off.

“I’ve always wanted to do this!” I squeal. How freaking cool is this right now! I wrap my arms around his bicep and lean in and kiss him hard, tongue and all. He holds my face with his hand and it feels so good and he smells so good and the kiss is so good that I want to jump him this very minute.

I pull back from the kiss and the look he gives me makes my stomach do flip flops. Wow. We continue intermittently making out and seeing the gorgeous sights of my home city the rest of the ride until the carriage takes us back to Everest.

He helps me out of the carriage then leads me to his car where he pins me up against it with his hips and
suddenly devours my mouth with his, his tongue almost desperately seeking mine. My hands go to the back of his head, my fingers twisting in his hair as I pull him harder to me, and the kiss gets hotter, more urgent. I pull away for air, my head falling back as he runs his lips over my jaw, down my neck, sucking and licking in different places, giving me goose bumps, then he presses small kisses over my collarbone and I sigh.

He then pushes his hips against me and I can feel him, hard against my stomach.

“Oh, God,” I moan, and then his mouth is back on mine, his kiss now hard and demanding, and I reciprocate. When he moves his hand down and swishes his thumb over my nipple, a shiver runs through my body and I press my hips harder into him.

“Want you, Ellen,” he says with a gravelly voice against my lips.

I’m more than ready and willing. “Let’s go to my apartment,” I whisper back.

He kisses me again then opens my door helping me into his Porsche then walks quickly around and gets in. After starting his car, he leans over and kisses me again and gives me his smirk when he pulls away.

“Your place it is,” he says then puts the car in gear and zooms out of the parking lot.

Chapter 16

Jag

I told El last night after my game and
after some amazing phone sex that when I got back from camp today, I’d like to take her to dinner tonight. She said she’d like that, but I’ve been calling her since my plane landed at six and haven’t gotten an answer. I would’ve been here sooner, but I stopped and got her In-N-Out Burger at the last second, which is her favorite, so I had to schedule a later flight. I may have overstepped my bounds, but since I still have a key to her place, and I really want to see her, I’m waiting inside her apartment. I showed up at seven, put her food in the fridge, it’s now nine and I have no idea where she is. I thought something may have happened, but I had Mom call El’s mom and nothing was up, so I’m just sitting here watching TV when I hear her key in the lock.

And in she walks with her mouth glued to fucking Eddington’s. They’ve got their hands all over each other and I jump up from the
couch a little shocked to tell the truth.

“You gotta be fucking kidding
me,” I mumble.

She pulls away from him with a yelp. “You scared the shit out of me!” she shrieks at me, her hand at her chest.

I stand and stare at her and Eddington, my teeth and fists clenched.

“
Hey, Jensen. Guess your plans got changed,” Eddington says with a smirk as he closes her door.

“Something’s gonna change
,” I warn as I stare at him.

“Talk about your ultimate cockblock,” he mutters as he takes El’s wrap from her shoulders and hangs it up
then he throws an arm over her shoulders pulling her to him.

I look at El and
see her face has gone white. “You gonna fuck him?” I ask incredulously.

“I-I…” she says and I know
that was her plan.

“And it’
s gonna be a beautiful thing too,” Eddington throws out there and I’ve had enough.

I narrow my eyes at him. “She tell you she got off talking to me on the phone last night? Finger fucked herself as I told her what I was gonna do to her when I got back.”

“Jag!” she hisses, her face turning red as she scoots out from under his arm.

I stalk to him, sto
pping three feet away. “You tell her?” I ask.

He frowns and looks puzzled. “Tell her?”

“About the college girls?”

El sucks in a breath when I say that and I
have no clue why she reacted that way.

“Yeah, I told her,” he says with a smirk.

Huh. He’s told her and she’s still wanting to sleep with him. Damn.

“Tell her how many?”

“No. Just told her there were a lot.” His face is so smug, I really want to pound on it for an hour or two.

I look at El in disbelief. She’s crossed her arms over her chest and is glaring at me now. At me. That fucking glare should be aimed at the bitch-ass motherfucker standing to her side. What the hell?

“And here you are,” I say to her.

“Yeah, here we are,” she snaps and grabs Eddington’s bicep with both hands.

“Huh,” I huff and nod slowly taking it all in. This has got to be a joke. Or I’m asleep and dreaming or some shit because this is totally unreal right now.

“So, you’re leaving now, right?” Eddington hints with another fucking smirk.

“Yeah, I guess I am.” I go and grab my coat off the couch then turn and look at El again as I put it on wondering what the fuck’s going on. They move out of my way when I walk to the door, and as I open it, I turn and look at her. “Might wanna check your fridge before you get started. Might need the protein.” I start to walk out.

And then my fucking mind returns.

I turn and look at El. “This is it?”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, this is it? You sayin’ we’re done?”

“Well, I, uh, I mean, I saw the pictures. And you just all but confessed.”

I narrow my eyes at Eddington now who’s suddenly not looking so smug anymore. “Pictures?”

She glances up at him
then pulls her hands from his arm as she sees the look on his face, and she frowns again. “Well, Austin showed me pictures of you at a club…”

And here we go again. More pictures.
Christ. I’d gone out Friday night with the whole team thinking it’d be a good bonding experience because I hadn’t gotten to hang out too much with any of them yet.

“Yeah. Went out with the
team
,” I explain.

“But the college girls. You even agreed,” she says.

Now I’m confused. “Don’t know what you’re sayin’, El.”

She lets out a breath. “You just said there were college girls… a lot…”

“Yeah, there were.”

She throws up her hands. “So what’s the problem, Jag?”
she snaps.

I shake my head
slowly as I look at her trying to understand what’s causing our lack of communication and then it occurs to me that she thinks
I
went out with these girls. “What’d he tell you, El?” I say nodding toward Eddington.

She crosses her arms over her chest now, which
makes her cleavage look amazing. But she wore the dress for him and that makes me want to annihilate the bastard.

“
He said that you’d gone out with a lot of the, uh, college girls in town,” she informs me.

I look at her for a second then ask,
raising my eyebrow, “I answer the phone when you called?”

“Well, yeah,” she replies.

“You call him when we were gone?” She nods. Fuck. I take a breath and let it out. “He answer?”

“
Yeah. Well, sometimes. He didn’t always answer, but he usually called the next…” She frowns again as if the light bulb has gone on in her head and she looks up at Eddington.

“What?” he asks. “That doesn’t mean anything. I was asleep sometimes when you called.”

“One time a woman answered and you said she was your sister,” she replies.

“It was!” he retorts.

“And a different time another woman answered and you said it was the maid…” She continues looking at him, and I’m hoping she’s not buying into his bullshit. Then she turns and looks at me guiltily. “I did it again, didn’t I?”

The corners of my mouth twitch because she’s so fucking cute standing there as it dawns on her that I’ve been s
et up (again) and she’s jumped to conclusions (again). I mean, I’m of course a little pissed, but watching her “Holy shit” moment overrides my anger and, really, I’m just glad she sees the whole picture.

S
he walks toward me, grasping my forearms and looking up at me says, “Oh, God, Jag, I’m so sorry,” the regret clear on her face. She turns and looks at Eddington. “You lied.”

“
Oh, lighten up,” he hurls at her. “It was just a few girls. A man’s got needs,” he says as if that makes what he’s done perfectly okay.

“Leave,” she now tells
him.

He takes a step toward her and I’
m there in an instant, using my arm to push her behind me. “She said leave.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway?” he snarls at me now. “I’m
so
much better than you!” he yells.

I stand looking at him just wanting him to get the fuck out.
Oh, and not giving a shit about his opinion.

“
That scholarship at South Carolina was mine! And then your sorry ass stepped in and took it away from me!”

I frown at him now.
What the fuck’s he talking about?

He con
tinues his rant. “Had to go to Clemson!
Clemson!”
he snorts and the crazed look on his face makes me push El back even farther. “And we got beat by you every year!” he says with a huff.

“Think it’s time you left now,” I state,
still not giving a shit about anything this strange motherfucker has to say.

“My dad could
buy
SC! But when I got passed over by them because of
you
,” he glares at me, “he told me I was on my own.
My whole family went there!
We have a fucking legacy there! And you killed that for me! So I had to make you pay!”

This is just getting
too weird now. What the hell?

“Um, Austin, you probably should—” El begins and he cuts her off.

“Shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch! Already wasted too much fucking time on you!”

And I’m done. “Watch your goddamned mouth,” I hiss as I grab his arm to throw his ass out of here.

He jerks it away and starts laughing maniacally. “Was gonna take your girl, Jensen. You took my dream, so I had to make you pay. Except she was so caught up in you, crying and whining about you all the time; didn’t get to fuck her good and ruin everything for you like you did for me!”

Holy shit.
Is he serious? What the fuck’s wrong with people? First Alessandra and her crazy-assed bullshit and now psychotic Eddington. Jesus.

He continues. “But the stupid cunt wouldn’t give it up.”

And I land my left fist into his nose which immediately starts gushing blood and it feels awesome when I see it. I know. It’s a guy thing.

“You broke my fucking nose!”
he screams cupping his hands over his face. Then he comes at me getting me in a bear hug and knocks me to the floor and now it’s on.

I hear El scream
Stop!
but there’s no stopping us. This has been long overdue for me. But let me tell you, it’s tough fighting using just one arm to hit, still I somehow managed it. Eddington isn’t as smart, using his right arm, but that’s okay. I could care less about his career, and if that means taking the two hits to my left cheek when he pinned me for a moment, then so be it. But right after he nails me, I roll us to where I have him pinned to the floor then I do some more damage to the right side of his face. He somehow gets away and jumps up, his fists up, ready for more.

“C’mon, Jensen. Gonna fight for your slut’s honor or what?” he grins which looks particularly creepy with the blood on his teeth.

I fly into him knocking him into the wall, immediately landing two hits to his ribs. His loud
Umph!
on both hits is so satisfying I want to howl at the moon or some shit, but the next thing I know, I’m being jerked away from him by two police officers. Another two have grabbed him and now he’s screaming that he wants to press charges. Fucking pussy.

As I’m handcuffed, I look around for El and see her standing by her dining table holding her cell phone, her eyes huge
, tears threatening to fall. “I’m sorry,” she mouths and I grin at her, which makes her eyes go even bigger.

God, that
was just what I needed. It felt
so
good to hit that asshole.

The
officers lead Eddington out and he’s still cussing up a storm, screaming out that I stole his scholarship, that I stole his legacy. Fucking lunatic. When I’m taken outside, El follows.

“Jag! I’m sorry! I
didn’t know what to do!” she hollers, her face full of remorse, the tears now falling down her cheeks.

“Baby, it’s okay,” I
answer. “Call Ross. Tell him to come bail my ass out. Get my key from him and wait for me at my condo.” I grin at her again and she shakes her head with a small, confused smile as she wipes her tears away.

“Okay,” she replies. I see her making the call and she stays outside watching until I’m driven away then I see her run back inside.

“So, what started all this, Jensen?” one of the cops in front asks.

Not surprised he knows me. I can
’t wait to see the fucking sports headlines tomorrow. “Guy’s a douche bag. Tried moving in on my girl. Had to put him in his place,” I reply.

He nods as if that’s a good enough explanation, and to a man, it so totally is. He understands just like any othe
r guy would. Sometimes you’ve got to fight for what’s yours.

I call Ross from the payphone in the
holding cell I’ve been taken to. I don’t know where Eddington is, but it’s a good thing they didn’t put us together so I don’t have to bother with finishing shit and knocking him the fuck out. “Call Hoffman for me, will you?” I tell Ross.

“He take calls at home?
On a Sunday night?”

“That’s what I pay him
the big bucks for,” I answer.

“Damn. Should’ve been a lawyer,”
he says with a chuckle.

Three hours later, I’m picking my things up from the front desk in the precinct
.

“
Didn’t have time to bake you a cake with a file in it,” Ross says with a snicker as we walk out. I look over at him with a raised eyebrow, which sobers him some. “So, how’s it feel bein’ thrown in the slammer?”

“Good. And I’d do it again a million times over
. Fucker needed to be shut down.”