Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (39 page)

His eyes mirrored back a look of hurt, of longing, that I knew was plastered across my own face. I dropped my arms, crossed them over my chest. Ice was seeping into me at that look, at this taboo breath that was passing between us. We both knew we couldn't have what we wanted, and that we never could. I reached out, just once, a single hand grasping for a love I knew could be, but Florian didn't reach back. Instead, he backed up, chest rising and falling with rapid breath, his lips still moist from the touch of my own. And then he turned toward the front door and left. Just like that.

“Yeah, Dad,” I called back, fighting to keep my voice strong and steady. I didn't want him to find me down here like this, panting and red cheeked and moist lipped and … hurting. I slid to the floor as tears stung my eyes again. “I'll be right up.” I put my forehead against my arm and waited for the emotions to pass.

But they never did.

And Flor never touched me again.

We never even spoke of it.

CHAPTER ONE

I set the box down on the counter and eyed Flor's ass as he bent over and set a second, much smaller box on the floor with little care or consideration as to what was inside. I didn't mind scoping him out anymore. I had long given up on anything happening between us. I mean, our parents were head over heels in
loco
love with one another and they even referred to us as “their kids”. It would kill them if they even knew I thought my stepbrother was hot.

“Um, hello,” I said, knowing the exact look Flor was going to toss over his shoulder.
Ah ha! I was right; it's a scowl.
“It says
fragile
on it. It also says
bedroom.
” I put one hand on my hip and smirked, knowing how frustrated I was making him, forcing him to carry the smallest boxes while I shouldered the largest ones. Call it a case of raging feminism or what have you, but I liked pissing him off. Big tough guy that he was, I let him carry in the pillows and the lamps while I hauled in the pots and pans, the kitchen stools, and the boxes of books – with great glee, mind you.

“How the hell was I supposed to know?” he said, letting his scowl relax into a smirk as he leaned back against the counter. “Maybe it said
fra-gee-lay.
I thought it was fucking Italian.” He stood up suddenly and snapped his fingers, breezing past me before I could get out another word, make fun of him for his infatuation with a
A Christmas Story.
I decided to follow after him and try anyway.

“Can't even come up with your own jokes?” I asked, following quickly behind Florian and down the steps to the street. I don't know what was putting the pep in my step – the fact that I got my first place or the fact that I could tell I was getting under Flor's skin. “Have to pull material from old movies? That's pretty sad there, Flor. How do the girls at the shop take that? Or are they even cultured enough to know what
A Christmas Story
is?” I hated mentioning the girls at my stepbrother's tattoo studio, even as a joke, but Flor's 'groupies' were a fact of life that I'd since learned to deal with.
Each one like a thorn in my side,
I thought as I continued to scope out his ass. It was watch from afar or do nothing at all. At this point, the absence of Florian in my life hurt more than his distanced presence.

Flor climbed into the back of the moving truck and grabbed a box before pausing and glancing over his shoulder at me. I noticed it was a heavy one and stepped up, putting my arms out like I thought he was trying to hand it to me. He scowled again and I smiled.

“What do you take me for?” he asked, raising his dark brows in a way that made my toes curl. “An idiot? That's my pre-sex question right there. Tell me about the leg lamp or I don't take you home tonight. Works like a charm.”

“Oh, I'm sure it does,” I replied, smothering the surge of jealousy that threatened to take over me and kill my mood. Flor and girls and … sex. This was yet another thing I'd learned to deal with. I wasn't his, and he wasn't mine. We could never belong to one another and much as I fantasized about him staying celibate for me, pining over me every waking day and night, it wasn't going to happen. I was a big girl; I knew that and I could handle it. Or at least I thought I could.

I took a deep breath and smoothed a hand over my curls, hoping they hadn't already dissolved to stray strands of fluff in the blustery afternoon air. Addison was going to be here any minute, dragging her longtime boyfriend and
his
brother along for the ride. She'd promised me this one was cute, tall enough to wear heels with, and had a brain at least three times the size of my brother's. “I bet they just can't wait to dive into bed with an underdeveloped boy who still watches his favorite Christmas movie every night before bed.”

“Not every night,” Flor said, pulling the box from the truck and purposely sidestepping around me. He leaned in and breathed hot breath against my ear, making me shiver. “Just on weekends. And who said I was underdeveloped?” I kicked him lightly with my bare foot and climbed into the truck, searching for a very specific box that had somehow gotten lost in the fray. Inside was my long ago dismantled shrine to my stepbrother: a series of pictures and notes and gifts that he'd given me over the years. I used to keep it all in one of the bottom drawers of my dresser, but after … the 'incident' as I liked to refer to it, I put it all away in a box, taped it up and hadn't looked at it since. Unfortunately, it had somehow ended up on the truck even though I'd meant to throw it away. For three years it had sat on the top shelf of my closet collecting dust. I was lucky the bastard never found it, nosy little asshole that he was. Once, I'd come home to find him sitting on the edge of my bed, an unlit cigarette between his lips, and a condom I'd gotten from my sex ed class clutched between two of his fingers. It had taken me an entire hour to convince him that I was actually still a virgin, not that it should've been any of his business anyway.

I felt a frown crease my lips as various Florian flavored anecdotes flashed through my memory, several of which involved Flor's bare ass as he screwed whoever happened to be the flavor of the week.
Why could he never manage to close his damn door?!
I wondered as a hot flush lit up my cheeks.

“Boo!”

I nearly jumped out of my skin, spinning to find Addi standing on the street with her hair in pigtails and her shirtsleeves rolled up, ready to move her stuff into our new place. Even dressed as practically as she was, she was still stylish in a way I could never be – partially thanks to her longterm friendship with a drag queen named Theo. That man was the epitome of glamour and, although I might not ever admit it, I was horribly jealous of his ass. It wasn't fair for a man to be so much prettier than me.

I clutched a hand to my chest to still my beating heart and felt a grin split my lips. Here I was, knocked out of my reverie by the best friend I hadn't seen in person more than a half dozen times in the last few years. With Instagram, Skype, and Facebook however, it didn't feel like it'd been more than fifteen minutes. Probably because it hadn't. Pretty sure I'd snapped a photo of Flor's ass and texted it to her when we'd first gotten here, not that she appreciated him the way I did. Honestly, I was actually a little suspicious that she wished him an untimely death at the jaws of rabid wolves.

“Addi!” I squealed as she climbed into the truck and we proceeded to squeeze the life out of one another. She always seemed to bring out the kid in me, something I desperately needed. It didn't take Flor's constant nagging to remind myself that I could be a little too serious sometimes.

I pulled back and grinned at my best friend who returned the smile, holding my hands in hers as we passed silent signals to one another.
We're finally out. We have our own place. This is going to be fucking awesome.
I think I also detected a slight twitch of her brow and a little,
you better not still be on about that, bitch
in regards to Florian, but I couldn't be sure. Maybe I was projecting? “I cannot even believe you're here.” The words came out in a rush as I tilted my head back and stared up at the rusted white ceiling of the moving truck.
No more hanging out with people I can barely stand, who use me to hang out with my brother, just so I can have a social circle.
The thought that some of those same said people were going to the community college instead of to the university with me didn't escape my notice. It wasn't that I was reveling in being better than them, only that I knew how lazy most of them had gotten the last few years of high school.

“You better believe it,” she said, pulling her hands from mine and poking me playfully in the shoulder. “Because I just drove halfway across the country to go to school with your ass – and be an Oregon
Duck.
” Addi shivered, not at all impressed by our university's stellar football team. The only kudos she would grant them was that they'd made a pretty awesome parody video of Psy's song,
Gangnam Style.
“Now. Show me our new place, Abigail Sharp, or more specifically, the bathroom. I have got to
piss
like a racehorse.”

“Classy, Addi,” I said as I swept past her, still surreptitiously looking for the missing box. If Flor found it before I did, I could be in for a world of trouble; I'd never hear the end of it from him. “Nice to know you've matured well beyond the foulmouthed fifteen year old you once were.” I gave her a wink while she simultaneously flipped me off, and jumped from the back of the truck, pausing to examine the two men waiting a respectful distance away from us. Addi climbed down next to me and elbowed me in the side with a Flor-worthy smirk plastered across her full mouth.

“What do you think?” she whispered, raising a dark brow and running her tongue along her lower lip as she gazed through lovestruck eyes at the man in the short sleeved white button-down. He had red curly hair and skin as milky white and pale as Addi's was rich and brown. I sat somewhere in between with skin the color of a really good caramel macchiato from Starbucks – with just a dash of extra cream. Or maybe that was my mind fantasizing about coffee again. Flor and I had yet to find the coffee maker his mother had bought for me and proudly loaded on the truck herself. She was as happy for me to start my life as she'd been for her own son. It made me feel almost guilty for checking out his beautiful butt no less than three times today.

“He's … ” I struggled for the right word to describe Patrick Browne and decided an overly analytical dissertation on the looks of Addi's boyfriend would not be appropriate.
I need to get out more.
Luckily, Addi's arrival would pretty much guarantee that. “Gorgeous, babe,” I told her, examining the splotch of freckles across her beloved's nose, and the way his skinny arms struggled with a box marked
heavy as shit
in scrawling black Sharpie. Okay, so maybe
gorgeous
wasn't exactly the right word, but what was I going to tell my best friend about the love of her life? I'd seen plenty of pictures of him and had always managed to avoid commenting on his looks.
I'm such a shallow bitch,
I thought as I smiled and wished I didn't have Florian around to compare every Tom, Dick, and Harry against. I decided to let my comment stand as is and moved on to checking out her boyfriend's brother when Flor stepped in front of me, arms crossed and smirking.

“Hey Addi,” he said, giving her a friendly hug, that stupid smirk still stuck to his lips. “Hope your trip didn't suck too much dick.” I cringed at Flor's crudeness, but at least I knew Addi was used to it. She looked Flor up and down and then smiled, not at all interested in him. It was one of the reasons we'd stayed so close all these years: she was one of the few girls I'd ever met who hadn't developed a crush on my stepbrother, and wasn't using me to get close to him. I knew for a fact that she didn't even find him attractive. For whatever reason, skinny Irish boys had always been Addi's thing. Maybe it was the accent? “Or should I say, hope
you
didn't suck too much dick during your trip.” He nodded his chin at Addi's boyfriend, Patrick, and his brother.

“Nice to see you, too, Flor,” she said evenly, “and nice to see you're still an annoying asshole.” The two of them stared at each other for several long moments, the bad blood between them sizzling in the gentle autumn sunshine. Addi let her eyes swing over to mine. She knew how I'd once felt about him, even knew about the shrine and the missing box. And she'd never judged me for it, not once. I loved her for that. “Let me get the guys over here, so we can get the introductions out of the way. They're both shy by nature, so it might be awkward.” She paused to give me another look, opening her brown eyes wide enough that I knew I was supposed to pay attention. The fact that they were rimmed in bright blue and silver eyeshadow didn't hurt either. “Just give 'em both a chance for me, okay?”

I nodded and Addi moved away to grab them. She knew how picky I was when it came to men. I tried not to pretend that growing up around someone like Florian hadn't gone and screwed it all up for me. He was tall and muscular, with full lips and hair as soft as silk that he barely styled but always managed to look good anyway. The scar on his chin was – for whatever reason – a big turn on for me and the myriad piercings and tattoos he'd collected over the years didn't hurt either. Plus, he worked at a tattoo shop and inked skin for a living. Somehow, football stars and science nerds and bankers and even CEOs … none of that did it for me. I think Flor, in our many years living together, had somehow infected me with this dangerous, funky streak that I didn't know how to express.

“She's setting you up?” he asked, face all a-scowl again. “On your moving day? What if this guy is a freak and he starts stalking you or something?” I ignored my brother's overprotective urges and tried to keep my mind from correcting me.
Step. Stepbrother. Not brother.
As if I needed to be reminded.

I reached back and scooped my hair into a messy ponytail, snapping a hair tie from around my wrist to hold it in place. Sweat was already beading on the back of my neck and my palms were moist with nervous energy. I closed my eyes for a brief second, pretending Flor's body heat wasn't warm and comforting against my right arm.