Page 15 of Home Game

Contract Ready to Sign: The Fixer Brothers

I couldn’t keep a smile off my face.

“There it is, man,” I said to Kace, showing him the email on my phone.

Kace smiled at me. “I wasn’t allowed to tell you, but Nathan let me know last night that they were going to go forward with you.” He held up a hand to high-five me. “Welcome to the club, bro. If you think you’re already famous with football fans, wait ‘til the home TV network fans learn who you are. Those ladies are going to fall inlovewith ol’ Stormy Eyes.”

“Nah, don’t need that,” I said. “I’ve had plenty of attention from women since going pro, but I’m more excited about Emmett.”

Kace raised an eyebrow at me. “Didn’t know you were into guys. But that’s hot, Storm.”

“Oh. I’m not,” I said, heat creeping up to my cheeks. “I didn’t mean I’minterestedin Emmett.”

He shrugged. “All I know is that he is single, gay, and looks so hot, like he belongs in a glamorous old movie or something.”

“I’ll admit that’s true. He really does, doesn’t he?”

Kace nodded. “So what are you excited about, then?”

“About rubbing it in his greedy little face that I’m going to be on the TV show,” I said. “He hates me. He’d probably pay me a million dollars in cashnotto be on the show.”

Kace furrowed his brow. “Emmett hates you? Emmett Waycott?”

“That’s the one,” I said.

Kace seemed confused. “I’ve only had dinner with him a few times, but that guy seems like he could befriend anyone. He could make a panther with a machine gun into a docile kitten in two seconds flat.”

I snorted. “Don’t even try to explain how a panther would hold a machine gun.”

“In its teeth, obviously,” Kace said. “But I mean it. I really doubt Emmett hates you. You’re a charmer, he’s a charmer…”

“And he thinks I’m going to ruin the Fixer Brother’s reputation,” I said. “Because I tell it like it is. And because I talk shit to homophobes, like the guy who fucked with you in that bar.”

Kace nodded. “The guys do really want that deal with Racks,” he mused.

I shrugged. “Emmett Waycott isn’t the first guy who’s had a problem with me, and he won’t be the last. I’ll figure something out. He’s just a wealthy, Mad Men-type anyway. I don’t need him to like me.”

The thought of Emmett gnawed away at me all night, though. An hour later, back at home, I signed the digital contract, finalizing my home renovation plans and appearance on the TV show.

I was going to do it.

And I knew Emmett was going to be pissed about it.

I walked out into my backyard afterwards. The wood of the old failing patio deck creaked under my feet, and the air wasfilled with the sound of crickets. Somewhere far off, a charcoal barbecue gave off its last embers of smoke.

I looked over the top of the fence, toward Emmett’s backyard. I could faintly see the glow of a dim light coming from one of his upstairs windows.

Emmett could befriend anyone, Kace had said.

Well, apparently not me.

A bitter coil of resentment tightened in my chest. The ghost of some emotion that had been in me since I was a kid. I was used to people like Emmett treating me like I didn’t matter—like I was nothing, the same trailer trash nobody that I’d been when I was a kid.

But Emmett didn’t just want to ignore me. He wanted to change how I acted. Who I was.

Nobody usually got under my skin for longer than a few minutes, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. What the hell was with me?

The next morning I woke up to the sound of my doorbell and, right afterward, Oreo going into a stage-five nuclear barkfest.

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