Page 58 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

“Since the owner’s daughter, Calliope, started getting really into it and asked her dad if they could take over one of the practice areas since they’re not all in use at night,” Bryson explained.

I whipped my head toward him. “Why do you know that?”

Bryson shrugged, but avoided my eyes, which let me know that he had a reason for knowing that and wasn’t going to share it with me.

Truthfully, I knew what he wasn’t sharing.

He had a thing for Calliope, and he didn’t want to drag me into their mess.

I was thankful, because the last thing that I needed was another scandal.

After not one, not two, but four women came out and claimed that I’d gotten them pregnant—all allegations absolutely, positively false, seeing as I hadn’t had sex with anyone, let alone gotten them pregnant—the team wasn’t real hip on yet another scandal.

In all honesty, neither was I.

Last year, I’d gotten a brand new, three hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar contract with the Thundercats. Then, a week after that, I’d won the lottery—two hundred and fifty million. A week after that, my grandfather had died, leaving me another four hundred million.

And just like that, I’d become a billionaire in the span of a month.

Cue all of the sick fucks that saw dollar signs.

They’d come out of the woodwork in droves.

At this point, I had to have a bodyguard—or my buddies—around me to always have an alibi.

I went to work.

I went home.

There was no other variation in my routine.

Except today.

“How do y’all feel about watching a roller derby practice?” I asked.

Because the way I was feeling was ecstatic.

I didn’t know why I felt so strongly about the woman that had just literally fallen into my arms, but something in this universe was telling me I needed to pursue her. To find out what that spark was that I felt when her skin touched mine.

And her eyes.

They felt like a shock straight to my soul, and eerily familiar. Like I’d seen them before.

“Gotta shower first,” Bryson said, trying to act nonchalant but appearing anything but. “I can’t go in there smelling like swamp ass.”

I tended to agree with him, though.

“Let’s go,” I suggested. “Meet back here in ten.”

“We’re going to the same place, dufus,” Jefferson pointed out.

“I want to go,” Audric, our forward, called out. “But I have to stay back and see the trainer. I’ll meet you here.”

“Same,” Lance, our goalie, said. “This groin is killing me after all those sprints.”

Finnian and Piers, who were directly behind me, said at the same time, “We’ll meet you at the rink. Gonna grab a bite to eat out of the team cafeteria.”

I flipped Jefferson off as we passed through the locker room door.

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