Page 28 of The Baller

I wasn’t going to add that the thought had briefly occurred to me during my midnight to six a.m. tossing and turning, because now it was voiced aloud, it sounded stupid… but also very possible.

“Maybe. But I don’t think we should risk it. We don’t need them hearing us decide whether or not you’re going to date Radley Andrews.”

“We’re all deciding?”

Parker picked up a slice of pineapple and threw it in his mouth. “Yup. We all got beaten up. We’re all in this.”

“Can we stop saying we got beaten up?” grumbled Tanner. “If they are listening, we shouldn’t give them the satisfaction.”

“Yeah, because they didn’t.”

I turned back to the stove, flipping the final four pancakes onto the stack I’d been building while my roommates made decisions about my love life.

Parker held his plate out. “Why don’t you want to date her?”

“I never said that.”

“What do you want then?”

I put the pancakes down and leaned back against the counter, scrubbing a hand down my face. What I wanted was the thing I’d been battling all night.

“When I saw her in the book store, she was hot. Cute… no… hot. Smoking. I saw her in the bar, and… yeah, she was hot. I did what we always do… got my game on, got her number, but my thoughts never went past hooking up. Right? That’s never been what we go for.” I looked around at the guys, all nodding, except for Ace and pointed at him. “Not you, anymore.”

He grinned an annoying grin. Come to think about it, he had been kind of annoying since he fell in love. Smug was the word for it.

“Anyway, I can’t have a hook up with the President’s daughter.”

“Doesn’t have to be a hook up,” said the only one of us with a girlfriend. “You liked her.”

I nodded slowly. I had liked her. I liked that she was kind of snarky. I liked that I found her in the bookstore. I liked the way she was climbing up the shelves when she knew she shouldn’t have been, and the fire I’d seen in her eyes when she snapped at me. I liked the way she’d asserted herself overthe Secret Service douche, because it was a total contrast to the way she’d been standing at the bar, her hands tying up in knots.

“I heard that’s she’s been having a hard time with the guys.”

My palms flattened on the island, and I leaned forward to Ace. “What?”

“Payton’s bestie is one of her professors. She said the frat boys are making things hard. Something about photos.” He snapped his fingers as something clicked in his brain. “Hey, that must have been why she was so popular in the bar last night, and why her security was so intense.”

“I bet they’re always intense. Did you see the big guy?”

I frowned at Parker. “He wasn’t that big.”

“He was Captain America.”

“You mean Special Agent America.” Ace snorted a laugh before he could stop himself, his hands flying up to hold his nose. “Ouch, fuck.”

Yeah, that had to hurt.

But I was already thinking about any guy getting near to her, uninvited access like those two dickheads in the bar. I was very familiar with how invasive people could be, like you were public property, someone they owned just because they knew your name.

The line between public and private was fine. Most of the time I ignored it, managed to keep my temper in check when I wanted to smash a phone or two. But thinking about her going through what I did woke the caveman I was becoming familiar with.

Though on second thought, he was more like a dragon wanting to burn everything to the ground and take out anyone in her way.

It was unsettling to say the least.

Ace pushed off his stool and disappeared down the hallway leading to mine and Tanner’s bedrooms. When he returned, he was holding my phone out to me. “Text her.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

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