Hooked: A Stepbrother Romance (5 page)

“Red!” I yelled after everyone had shambled into place with their practice balls. They casually strolled towards the red line, moving at a pace that would’ve made one of the senior citizens over at Johnnie’s impatient. Off to the side of the square, Emilia and the other players were laughing.

Turning towards another group, I motioned for their attention.

“Now you guys get in there, too. No balls for you. Instead, your goal is to prevent the other team from scoring a try. Anyone care to guess how you do that?”

“By tackling them?” Shauna suggested.

“That’s right! You’re not allowed to go for the head, neck, or shoulders, but everything else is accepted.” The second group milled their way into the square.

“Red!” I shouted, and immediately the defenders ran to grab the attackers as best they could. It wasn’t exactly rugby yet, but we were getting there.

“Shauna, get in there,” I called after noticing she was loitering outside the game area.

She didn’t move, glaring at me in defiance. I raised an eyebrow, returning the stare, and eventually she got the message.

“Fine,” she muttered, reluctantly entering the painted-on square.

“What do you call Emilia?”

“‘Coach,’ I guess.”

“Then I guess you can call me Coach, too,” I said, politely overlooking her rolled eyes as she took her position. Without warning, I threw one of the remaining balls at her. She caught it midair without any trouble.

Pulling a whistle from my pocket, I blew on it and called
blue
. Shauna sprinted towards the line without missing a beat, effortlessly pulling ahead of everyone else. No one was able to catch her, and she scored with ease.

I shot a furtive glance at Emilia, only to find that she was already staring at me. Clearly, she was thinking the same thing I was. Shauna was a natural.
 

The second practice game went much faster than the first, and by the third game everyone forgot that they were supposed to be hating this, the taciturn reluctance replaced by laughter and enthusiasm. Soon after that, I assigned a couple of the older players to paint more squares, and within half an hour the entire crowd was running to the sound of “red” and “blue.”

I glanced at Emilia, only to discover that she was once again staring at me. Her eyes caught mine and she blushed, crossing her arms over her chest before spinning around with an annoyed grunt.

She’d won the first round, but I had just won the second.

What the fuck does he want me there for? He says that he’s found me a damn
football
team to train with, that he wants to reconnect, to know me better, that we can be like father and son in spite of the time lost.

“Time lost,” what the fuck does that even mean? He didn’t lose it, he threw it away.

He doesn’t know what I can be like. I’ll make sure he gets a good idea fast.

Very
fast
.

Waves of heat poured from my oven as I opened its door and threw a frozen pizza inside as quickly as I could. Warming up my small apartment in the hot, muggy stillness of an early June evening was not ideal at all.

Even so, I was too hungry to care. I hadn’t eaten anything today. Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten anything yesterday, either. Not since the news of the rugby deal had knocked me off-balance, and Simon had waltzed over and toppled me the rest of the way down. It had been a rough couple of days, that was for sure.

I grabbed an icy bottle of beer from the fridge and downed half of it in a single, long draught, the condensation forming right away and dripping onto my sticky skin. Drinking myself into oblivion seemed like a good plan, but one I couldn’t afford to follow. Sitting down at the kitchen table, I went over my sports binder and the lesson plans I’d so painstakingly made last night.

Beginners’ rugby.

Not that it had mattered.

Against all odds, he’d somehow been
good
at teaching. A natural. Thoughtful, patient, with just the right tone and just the right amount of authority. Infuriatingly, he’d even been exactly the right level of friendly, something that had taken me years to perfect. Too little and they resented you, too much and they’d try to walk all over you.

Somehow, he’d fucking nailed it.

Asshole.

I’d expected to see his rebellious streak back. I thought he’d get pissed off at the first little mistake, cussing them out into little balls of self-hate who could only see their own shortcomings.

Thirteen years ago, he’d been a natural at
that
.

I chugged down the rest of my beer and snatched another from the fridge, my head swimming a little from the sudden rush of alcohol on a completely empty stomach.

Did he handle them so much better because they
were
better? Had I really been, as he’d described so eloquently, a good-for-nothing piece of shit?

No, I didn’t believe that. I’d proven myself time and again over the years, and I wasn’t about to let Simon send me into another tailspin of angsty self-doubt and handwringing.

Still, what did that leave?

That he’d changed?

That somehow, he’d crawled out of the primordial ooze and turned into a human being?

Give me a fucking break.

Whatever the cause of his good Samaritan act, I wasn’t going to be fooled. This was still a war, and I still had one weapon left. One he’d given me himself earlier this morning.

I know what everybody is thinking, but they’re wrong.

It wasn’t just another bar fight. There’s no way those guys were going to back down. I threw the first punch, but it was self defense. If I hadn’t, they would’ve killed somebody.

Coach isn’t really going to kick me off the team for this, is he?

He can’t.

I’ll do whatever he wants, even teaching rugby at that summer camp.

I’ll learn.

I won’t let anyone else down, not again.

I leaned back with a stretch as Johnnie came back to the counter, my food finally ready. Not that I minded the delay. It’s not like a small-time diner could reasonably expect a huge order first thing in the morning, and I had nothing better to do this early.

Waiting around for freshly baked muffins seemed like as good an idea as any.

A
lot
of muffins, I realized sheepishly as I eyed the stack of boxes in Johnnie’s thick arms. It had made sense at the time, but maybe I’d gotten a
little
carried away when I bought a dozen of every flavor.

In retrospect, some muffins probably weren’t going to be very popular. Unless I had stumbled across an unlikely enclave of banana bread lovers in the middle of Colorado, I was probably going to end up with leftovers.

Well, stranger things have happened.

Like, say, me being nervous about teaching rugby to a bunch of troubled youths, even though I’d done it a million times before.

By the time I made it to the center, I found Theo already waiting inside. He waved when he saw me, helping me with the door.

“Thanks.”

“Welcome,” he answered, and then sniffed the air. His eyes went wide when he realized what I was carrying. I nodded towards the end of the hall, silently suggesting he run along and share the good news.

Breakfast was an important meal, but the look on Theo’s excited face before he zoomed away really drove home how much
more
important it was now. It drove home something I’d known all along; this center was a good place. Hell, if I’d listened to the people who worked here when I was Theo’s age, it would’ve saved me a whole world of trouble.

Of course, without that trouble I would have never been shipped off to England, never learned that I was a natural at rugby. I’d have probably ended up in prison or something, and never been able to come back here.

Funny how these things work out. Who would’ve guessed? Certainly not me.

Of course, I also hadn’t guessed just how
difficult
this was going to be for me. Over the past decade, I’d helped plenty of people and places. I’d never imagined how different it would
feel
this time. Being back here was surreal enough, but seeing my stepsister running around in those tight shorts, seeing them ride up her sweet little ass for hours on end….

Well, I was starting to question just how altruistic my motives really were.