Page 7 of Force Play

“Oh, Mom.” I cringe at the same time Daelyn laughs darkly.

“Ancient, Mom. That makes you ancient,” my middle sister says with zero remorse.

“Don’t talk to your mom like that. She’s the most stunning mummy on the planet. Look at her all wrapped up.” He wiggles the arms that are still around her to emphasize his terrible dad joke.

Beside me, Dottie just hangs her head, not impressed by our old man at all.

“Please get me out of here, before that new rookie comes out. I’ll die of embarrassment, Dom.” Daelyn tugs on my arm, leading me away from the locker room and towards the parking lot. I wasn’t in a hurry, but fuck if we are staying here where she’ll run into my teammates. She’s only nineteen, way too fucking young for any of them.

Especially Braxton Hayes. His brother may have had a great reputation while he was here, but Braxton is the league’s bad boy; just traded from Minnesota for his off-the-field shenanigans. And that means something coming from me.

That’s not the kind of trouble she needs in her life.

“Yeah, let’s go back to the house and we can order some pizza.”

“You’re not going out?” my dad asks, sounding way too eager to be rid of me.

“No, why would I go out when you guys are here?”

Daelyn’s foot stomps next to me. “I was hoping you’d take me to Draft with you.”

“You’re not twenty-one yet, Dae.” If she were a cartoon, there would be steam coming out of her ears. “We are all going back to the house, or stopping to grab pizza together. No one is going to Draft, and I’m certainly not going alone.”

“That’s settled then; pizza and back to the house to get this one to bed,” my dad says, patting Dottie’s head.

Her mouth opens in a wide yawn as she protests, “I’m almost ten. I can stay up now.”

“Sure you can, sweetie,” Mom assures her, wrapping her arm around my sister’s shoulder. In front of her, Dae trudges through the parking lot towards my truck like a night in with her family is a death sentence.

“You know, you don’t have to change your routine just because we’re in town. If you want to go out with the guys, we can take the girls back.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me for a reason?” I bite back, feeling a little hurt over his insistence.

“Not at all, I’m happy to spend time with you. And it means the world to your mom and sisters. But we have all day tomorrow too. If you have a date or something—”

Turning to face my dad I unlock the car so the girls can get in. “No date tonight.” I grip the back of my neck. “Actually, I’ve been laying off the . . . um—”

“Dating?” my dad supplies, his eyebrow arching in amusement.

“Actually, I’ve been doing more dating, and less of the other stuff.” My dad just stands there, his lip tipped up in a crooked smile as I fumble my way through this. “I want what you and mom have.”

“And you just realized that you won’t find that by fucking around?”

“Jesus, Dad,” I choke out.

“I’m not stupid, son. I know what you’ve been up to these last few years. Is someone specific making you slow down your whore ways?”

“Oh my god, you did not just say that. Nowadays, we don’t use that word as a put-down old man.”

“That’s weird. Your mom—”

“Finish that sentence and I swear I will barf all over your shoes. I’m going to have to bleach my fucking ears tonight as it is.”

“So who is she?” my dad asks through laughter as I fight off a shudder.

Untamed curls, paired with dark eyes that seem to see right through me, and a soul she pretends is blacker than the coffee I know she drinks flash through my mind, stealing my attention like she so often does. From the start, I got a thrill out of the way Indie sparred with me, tossing around insults like they were candy at a parade. All our banter was just verbal foreplay leading up to the night that made me want more.

Between fucking and talking that night, we couldn’t have slept more than a few hours. When the sun came up, she made a pot of the strongest, most disgusting coffee—seriously, that shit could have been used to neutralize nuclear warheads—and she drank it without even cringing. Then she disappeared from my house like I was the worst decision she’s ever made, telling me, in no uncertain terms, that it was a one-time thing.

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