Page 1 of Home Game

1

EMMETT

It was early September, and a professional football player was about to ruin my life.

I didn’t know that, of course. Not yet.

The cocky, bad-boy, pain in my ass new star wide receiver of the Denver Ferals team wasn’t on my radar. I drove into the Jade Brewery parking lot and shut the door to the Porsche with a satisfying quietclick. It was a quiet afternoon, and a breeze blew through, shuddering the leaves and pine needles of the Aspens and Spruce.

For the first time in months, there was a promising chill in the air.

There.

It was there. The first hint of fall.

Everything is in its right place, and I’m in control.

Leaves were edging toward the gold that would soon fill the mountains, and I was about to be locked into the most promising brand deal of my entire career.

Aimed like a steel arrow right at a bullseye.

And all I had to do was make it happen. To get what I wanted. What I’d known for years that I deserved.

I smoothed out the front of my custom Zegna suit. I’d had it made with subtle lines of crimson on black, to match the red of my favorite car.

Jade Brewery wasn’t exactly the kind of place where I needed to be dressed up. All of small-town Jade River, up here in the mountains, was populated by more people in T-shirts and hiking athleticwear than anything approaching fancy. Even down the mountain in Denver—hell, all ofColorado—wasn’t the kind of place where tailored suits or Italian leather shoes were necessary.

But it was like my armor. Fine fabrics, custom tailoring. I could do anything if I was suited up—I’d once negotiated a client into a deal that ended up making usbothmillions in this suit, and I was about to do it again.

I caught sight of a couple holding hands, walking into the front doors of the brewery, and bitter regret hit my throat.

Everything was in its right place, sure.

But I was still alone, single for the second autumn in a row.

Had it really beenthatlong since Sam had left? He’d been my whole world, and then one morning he’d been gone. And God, I craved a man’s touch.

Hell, who am I kidding? I craved watching my cock disappear inside of someone. I craved sweat, and skin on skin, and nights that blurred into mornings, delirious and spent and covered in bite marks that I wore like a badge of honor. I craved something physical.

Ineededthat surrender.

The breeze ripped through the air again, stronger and chillier at the back of my neck as a grey band of clouds crossed through the sky.

Onward and forward, Dad would have said.

No time for broken hearts and touch-starved desperation when there was business to be done.

I swung open one of the front doors of the brewery, heading inside with my head high. I’d long since decided that I was going to enter any business meeting with the same level of respect. Today it was a meeting with construction guys in a bar, but it may as well have been a meeting with a queen at a castle—I gave everyone my full presence and attention. Just like my father had, too.

“Emmett!” I heard from the side of the brewery as I walked under the awning and swung open the wooden front doors. I spotted Shawn and Nathan, the brother duo behind Fixer Brothers Construction, sitting at one of the bigger leather booths near the edge of the bar.

I gave them a wave as I walked over. Something intoxicating was filling the air, and it wasn’t just vaporized alcohol coming over from all of the giant metal brewing tanks at the side of the room.

“This whole place smells like beer, apple, and cloves,” I said as I approached. “Allspice, maybe? It’s like I just walked into fall heaven.”

Shawn held up a pitcher of amber-colored beer on the table in front of him. “Harlan is testing out batches of this year’s fall ale as we speak. We’ve got a sneak-peek sample pitcher here.”

“Lucky us,” I said, sliding into the opposite side of the booth. “Shawn, did you see the announcement for the new Preston Gildon book? Fifth in the series?”

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