Page 25 of Catching My Dreams

She also didn’t need to know how he’d felt when he’d seen the bruise on her face earlier, though his reaction had probably already given him away.

“Why don’t we play something a bit more chilled next? Like Carcassonne?” Riley suggested.

“Yes, please,” Chris replied with a groan. “I thought this was meant to be fun, but Asshole One and Asshole Two over there are killing the vibe.”

“You’re welcome to leave at any point,” Noah informed him unremorsefully as he started packing away Monopoly.

Chris paused his movements of unpacking the next board game and sent him an unimpressed scowl. “Shut up and play Carcassonne like a good little boy.”

But Noah proceeded to do the exact opposite. He and Ella played every move in a way that hindered the other, more focused on making sure the other didn’t win than on winning themselves. Which was how Riley won, and he and Ella barely scored any points. Totally worth it, though.

“We better get going,” Asher said after they’d cleaned up Ella’s dining room table and the games Noah had borrowed from his mom’s collection were neatly stacked up.

“If you want to stay for some coffee, you can,” Ella offered, but Asher shook his head.

“I promised Riley’s mom I’d have her back by midnight.”

“I better get going, too,” Chris agreed. “Noah and I have strength training tomorrow morning, and I need to get in my beauty sleep.”

“Your face was starting to look a bit less pretty during that last round,” Ella told him with a click of her tongue.

“Did you really just insult the money-maker?” Chris asked as he stepped around the table to stand in front of her.

“I believe you were the one who first implied you weren’t looking your best,” Ella pointed out, her neck tilting back to look up at Noah’s friend.

She looked far too small in front of the football player, and Noah had to stop himself from stepping between them.

“You’re such a little shit,” Chris told her before he bent down and scooped her up so her upper body was hanging off his back.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ella shrieked when he started toward the front door.

Noah, Asher, and Riley followed after him, but while Asher and Noah’s stepsister were smiling at their friend’s antics, Noah’s jaw was clenched so hard he was about to crack a tooth.

“What does it look like? I’m taking out the trash.”

Chris opened the door while keeping his other arm locked around the back of Ella’s thighs, and Noah had the sudden urge to break the hand that was touching her. Instead, he picked up Archie before the little guy could escape through the door.

If Chris had said those same words weeks or months ago, they wouldn’t have held any of the teasing lightness they did now. He’d also been hurt by Ella’s abrupt dismissal of them. But everything they’d been through together after Asher’s disappearance had thawed him to the confusing brunette, which was why Noah didn’t step in or tell him to back off.

Ella giggled, the sound breathless from being manhandled upside down. “Wow. You’re kicking me out of my own house? Rude.”

“I’m not the one calling other people ugly.”

“I said no such thing!” She lifted her upper body with a strength that impressed Noah and rested her hands on Chris’s shoulders. “Now release me, you brute.”

Chris did so with a laugh, and Noah’s fantasy progressed to chopping off both his hands as Ella slid down his front. Archie licked Noah’s chin as though sensing the dark thoughts and wanting to provide some comfort. Noah distractedly scratched behind the dog’s ears.

Ella slapped Chris’s chest and took a step back. “Do that again, and I’ll bring out the self-defense moves Riley and I learned on Thursday.” She lifted her fisted hands and pretended to punch him in the cutest and least menacing display Noah had ever seen.

Fuck. He needed to stop thinking about her like that. There wasn’t anything cute about the ruthless woman who’d decided he wasn’t good enough for her years earlier. When he’d tried to apologize, she’d made it more than clear that she’d thought him unworthy of her then and unworthy of her now.

Maybe she was right, considering how he’d treated her in the years after she’d ditched him, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d been the one to strike first. She’d punched a hole through his naïve teenage heart, and he needed to remember that.

She’d hurt him. Discarded him. Decided he was nothing even though he would have burned the world down for her.

“Okay, Champ,” Chris said with a chuckle, holding his hands up in defeat. “Wouldn’t want to get on your bad side when you have moves like those.”

“Damn straight,” she agreed before flexing the biceps no one could see beneath her baggy sweater. “Who’d want to mess with these guns?”

---