Page 16 of Mr. Charming

Kyleigh looks around the space. “No one else is here.” She walks over to Rowan and wraps her arms around his waist.

He kisses the top of her head. “How was the park?”

She rests her cheek on his chest and stares up at him just like Tedi used to look at me in the early days. “Turns out dogs are kind of a dick magnet.”

Rowan’s smile slips from his lips.

She laughs. “Don’t worry, Bodhi made sure to tell them we were all taken.”

Rowan lifts his hand, and Henry’s seven-year-old, Bodhi, jumps up to slap it.

“Can I have a kiddie cocktail?” Bodhi asks his dad.

“Ask Ruby,” he says, pulling Jade over to him.

Bodhi climbs up on the stool next to me. He doesn’t even have to ask Ruby before she’s dropping three cherries into the drink. “There were all these birds at the park. I thought they flew south in the winter?” Bodhi says to Ruby.

All three of my teammates are coupled up, and I’m definitely the odd man out, but that’s the way I want it. Don’t I?

I gave up the hope a long time ago of having what they have, but I can’t deny that after seeing Tedi today, the ache in my chest stings a little more than usual. Which tells me I’m gonna have a helluva time keeping my distance from her.

Nine

Tweetie’s Journal Entry

Twelve years ago

Florida

* * *

To my teenage self,

* * *

You’d be so proud of me, man. We’ve got a girlfriend. Yeah, I asked Tedi to be my girlfriend, which sounds really juvenile now that I’m in my twenties. Things are coming around for us, though. She’s different than the other girls. She’s like us. Crazy, wild, and spontaneous. But let me tell you how it all went down…

* * *

Our season ended, so I booked us a flight to stay in one of those huts over the ocean. The water was so clear, the sand so white, and the sky so blue. It was the perfect place for us to decompress after all the traveling during the season. (We’ve come a long way.)

She changed into a bikini right after the bellhop left our private hut. Damn, she looked so good. She already had a bronze glow since we live in Florida, but somehow under the sun there, she was even hotter.

Tedi walked up to me and slid her hands under my shirt and up my chest. I love her hands on me. “Come on. The water is begging for us.”

I let her push up my T-shirt, and I helped her shed it from my body. She cast small kisses along my collarbone as her fingers manipulated the button of my shorts.

“This is amazing, Tweetie.”

I just watched her, still amazed that she was mine. I rested my hands on her waist, wanting so badly to pull the strings at her hips and watch the flimsy fabric float to the wooden floor. “You like it?”

“What’s not to love?”

We hadn’t said the words yet. The three words I’ve never told anyone because of my fear of abandonment. (Yeah, we still have that problem.) Even though I haven’t said them, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel them. I do. She’s changed me, and all I see and want is her.

“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked.

She pushed my shorts down, leaving me in my boxer briefs. “I’m not hungry for food. What I want is to jump into the ocean with you. Don’t you want to feel me all wet?”

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