“Oh God. Remember when I was going to ask her to prom junior year and Mason all but actually killed me?” Ben says.
“Yeah,” Todd laughs.
“We all learned early on to not see you that way,” Del says.
“I feel some type of way about that,” I laugh. “Especially because they scare off everyone I date. They’re going to make me die alone.”
“Well… In their defense, you date shitty people,” Todd says. “Also, one day they will pull their head out of their ass and tell you they are in love with you.”
“Yeah okay,” I laugh.
“You know they’re going to toss your little ass to the ground, right?” Jake asks. I look up and see the guys watching me.
“Yeah,” I say as I smile and flip them off from across the field. “Just have me run it. I’m faster than them.”
“Not when it’s three against one, but okay,” Todd laughs.
“I’m gonna die of a heatstroke,” I say as I pull my long, curly hair up into a high ponytail. It’s a strawberry blonde color and in the sunshine, the red really shows. I opt to go ahead and take my T-shirt off so that I just have my tank top on.
“Do you ever wear anything other than black?” Jake asks. “No fucking wonder you overheat.”
“Black is slimming. I’ll take all the help I can get,” I say, shrugging.
“Oh, no you didn’t,” Todd says, glaring at me.
“Did what?” Mason asks when we meet the others in the middle of the field.
“Go ahead, Sadie. Tell him what you just said,” Todd says.
“Hell no,” I laugh. The guys hate it when I make comments like that. I figure if I’m the one to make the jokes then it won’t hurt if anyone else says it.
Mason, Dean, and Lance are gorgeous men. They are all over six-foot-three and are just as solid as they were in college.They’ve lost some muscle mass since graduation, but that’s only because they aren’t running as hard as they were then. Now they work out in the morning before work. The basement has a full setup for them, but I only run on the treadmill because they won’t let me actually go out and run anymore since a woman was kidnapped a few blocks over while running.
Lance has dark brown hair that is shaved short on the sides but fades into longer, shaggier hair on the top of his head. He keeps it styled for work, but otherwise, it’s disheveled, and it looks amazing no matter what he does. His beard is close cut and trimmed neatly.
Mason’s hair is also dark brown, but his hair is cut relatively short all around. It’s just long enough that he has to style it but short enough that he can get away with it if he doesn’t. He is just as tall as Lance. His beard is slightly longer but has a reddish tint to it.
Dean has jet-black hair and a short, neatly trimmed beard. Just as the others are, he is tall and built like a brick wall. He has the ultimate resting bitch face, and he is so quiet that he can easily scare the fuck out of someone by just existing. When we are in public, I have to remind him that he looks like he’s going to murder people so he needs to be a bit more expressive. His answer is always the same. “Iwantpeople to be scared of me when I am close to you, Little Demon.”
“What did she say?” Dean asks.
“I told her she overheats because she wears nothing but black and she said that black is slimming and she will take all the help she can get,” Jake says.
“Rat,” I laugh. Dean narrows his eyes but doesn’t say anything.
“Let’s play,” Mason says, also glaring at me.
We separate and start the game. For a while, Todd keeps the ball away from me, knowing the guys will take the first opportunity they see to take me down. Eventually, he startspassing the ball off to me so I can run it. I notice immediately that they are setting me up so that Lance can tackle me.
“Run,” Todd says as he changes the play at the last second and tosses the ball to me. Mason is just a few feet away from me so I turn and sprint, narrowly avoiding being taken down by him.
He gets too close and I immediately take it out of bounds instead of risking him taking it from me. That's the bad part about being so much smaller. They can and will just take the ball. I have had to learn to adapt to them. None of them have ever gone easy on me so I have had to find other ways to play without getting decimated by nine burly men.
“You little shit,” Mason laughs. “Scared of getting tackled all of a sudden, Little Demon?”
“Absolutely,” I laugh. Mason lunges to try to grab me but I squeal and slip away from him.
“Come on, kids. Let’s finish this,” Todd laughs. I walk back over with them and he nudges me when the guys aren’t looking at me. “I just want to warn you of something.”