Page 60 of Pucking Off-Sides With My Brother's Best Friend

I sigh, leaning my head back against the couch. The past few days have been a special kind of hell. Jax’s absence feels like a physical ache, a constant reminder of how royally I’ve screwedthings up. And Aiden? He’s here, but not really. We orbit each other like wary planets, careful never to collide.

I mean, what am I going to do? It feels too weird to just go to his door. And if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I’d be able to look at his bed without remembering how it felt to be wrapped in his arms.

A week ago, my biggest worry was hiding my feelings for Aiden. Now? Now I’m wondering if our littlefamilywill ever recover from the bomb we dropped on it. It’s almost like nothing else matters when Aiden and I are together. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I willingly blew up everyone’s spot without caring about what it could do to their friendship and our living situation.

I can’t help but feel like a selfish jerk.

Katarina’s been giving me the side-eye lately, and I know she knows something’s up. And honestly? I’m terrified to say anything, I love that girl to bits, but I can already hear her lecture, “Aurora, honey, banging your brother’s bestie is like, rule number one in the ‘What Not To Do’ handbook’.”

And she’s not wrong.

I mean, who in their right mind thinks, ‘You know what would make this living situation better? A steamy affair!’

“This is such a friggin mess,” I groan to my empty living room. Unsurprisingly, the walls offer zero advice.

I grab my tea, hoping the warmth will inspire some brilliant plan to fix this disaster. Step one, get Jax to come home. Geezus good luck with that. I mean he’s gone full ghost mode on me. My voicemails might as well be going to a black hole.

Then Aiden. Just thinking his name makes my stomach do this weird flip-flop thing. “Yeah, I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole,” I mutter, hoping saying it out loud will make it true.

A knock at the door jolts me out of my pity party. I frown, glancing at the clock. Too early for mail, too late for Girl Scouts pushing cookies …though honestly, I could use a box of those damn Thin Mints right about now.

I tiptoe to the door, mentally kicking myself for being too cheap to spring for one of those doorbell camera thingies. Another impatient knock has me peeking through the peephole, and suddenly, I’m hoping it’s a solar panel salesman. Hell, I’d even take a Jehovah’s Witness over this right now.

Oh. My. God.

Turner’s standing at my front door like some blast from the past I never asked for. It’s been months since I’ve seen him, but I should’ve known he’d pull something like this. He’s always had a habit of sending one of his minions to talk to me before he swooped in to make a grand entrance himself.

He always did like to send in his minions before making his grand entrance.

I pull out my phone and fire off a quick SOS text to Jax. Here’s hoping. And with a deep breath that does absolutely nothing to calm my nerves, I open the door.

“Turner. What are you doing here?”

I hoped time and my absence would hit him hard, but he’s just as annoyingly attractive as he was when I left.

His skin is still lightly tanned, seeming to glow under the Florida sun, and his dark brown hair is perfectly styled with not a strand out of place. He makes me feel downright frumpy by comparison.

“I came to see you,” he says, voice pitched calmly as if he were just talking about the weather.

“Why?”

He does that head tilt thing that used to make my heart flutter. Now it just makes me want to tilt his head right off his shoulders. “Why? Are you really asking me that?”

Nothing he says is ever as it seems, not even when he proposed to me.

I cross my arms, channeling my inner ice queen. It’s taken me way too long to realize that talking to Turner is like playing chess with a cheater. Every move is calculated, every word a trap. Every conversation means having to be on guard.

Not once have I ever felt this when talking with Aiden. It isn’t that we never bickered. Half of our conversations are arguing about stupid things like whose spoon was left in the sink or why coffee isn’t a food group. No intention. No underlying scheme.

With Turner, on the other hand, it’s like going to a war you know you can’t win. I hated it then, and I hate it even more now that I know what it is.

“Yes, I am,” I say simply.

Turner shakes his head as if my answer hurts him so deeply when I know he really doesn’t give a shit— he’ll say anything to get what he wants.

“Aurora, I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened between the two of us, and now I realize that I don’t want to lose you.”

“Now you realize?” I snort at his words— Turner narrows his eyes. ‘Oops,’ I forgot he hates that. He doesn’t like being laughed at—he thinks I’m not taking his wordsseriously.

---