Page 3 of Worlds Collide

Everyone knows the Sounders last name. The export and import company is one of the oldest in the country, but still not older than his mother’s family’s fortune. The Clemson family is more infamous than anything nowadays, and CJ is basically the heir to two of the biggest fortunes this country has ever seen.

Not the biggest though, I think as I see Tristan—my PR manager—talking to his billionaire boyfriend. Another man who screams “old-money rich” without making a sound.

I scoff to myself. Why am I musing about how much money the little rich boy has? Who even gives a fuck? I have more money than I know what to do with myself, so what’s the big deal?

Thedealis, he’s clearly had the perfect life so far and will probably keep that up forever. I, on the other hand, well, let’s just say “fucked up” has been used to describe me way too many times to count.

“You okay?” I hear from my left and turn to see Derek’s little sister, Gracie, come over and sit next to me. She’s nice, a bit of a smartass like Derek, and she also just moved to the city to work at the same hospital as CJ—she’s a pediatric nurse, so another saint, but for some reason I don’t question her motives, I simply know she’s a good person.

Since she announced her move to LA, and she and CJ found out they would work together, they decided to be roommates—a fact that might’ve made me avoid her the last few times she came over. She’s now family—kinda—and I have to be nice to her.

Iwantto be nice to her, I correct myself.

“I’m fine,” I tell her, unable to hide my uneasy thoughts. “Just thinking,” I say lamely, and turn my face down so she won’t see me wince.

I’m so fucking pathetic.

“What are you?—”

“Hey, roomie,” I hear the little rich boy’s deep baritone interrupt Gracie, and once more my molars grind against each other.

“You shouldn’t interrupt Gracie, little rich boy,” I drawl as I look up.

Like he always seems to do, he smirks down at me with mirth in his eyes.

Adam, though, has more of a reaction to the nickname I gave CJ the first time I met him after the Super Bowl.

“Watch it,” the muscular quarterback growls at me.

I turn to look him straight on, give him my most unimpressed stare, and stay silent.

“It’s okay,” CJ tells him, but Adam and I keep looking at each other. “Wolf here just seems to have a bit of an obsession with size.”

I dig my thumb nail into my other palm to stop myself from laughing. That was funny, but I don’t want to laugh at his jokes.

I’ve been doing all I can to just stay the fuck away from CJ since he moved here and my brother and Derek decided he justhasto be a huge part of our lives now. It bugs the fuck out of me, and the fact that nothing I say ever fazes him only infuriates me more.

It’s been an issue the last few weeks.

So much so, that I’ve actually been spending less and less time around the two most important people in my life because CJ is always around. I thought surgical residents were supposed to have no time off or some shit like that, but he seems to have spent a lot of fucking time at Derek’s place—which is where we lived before our houses here were ready just over a week ago.

I narrow my eyes at Adam when he raises one eyebrow at me. I hear Gracie and CJ talking, but my head is so full of thoughts that I can’t pay them any mind.

CJ being around all the damn time shouldn’t be an issue for me, and yet it is...

It is, even though I know he’s straight and clearly has no reaction whatsoever to me. Not the way my body seems to freeze every time I seehim.

It’s a big fucking problem, because I’m less than a year sober and my therapist at rehab told me not to start any relationships, and preferably remain celibate altogether until I reach one year. Then again, Adrian also told me it’d be good if I found a therapist outside rehab but I didn’t do that.

In any case, I’m only halfway there and the little rich boy, who is never going to be queer, with his perfect hair and perfect jaw and perfect smile, is fucking with my brain.

He laughs, head thrown back and chest bouncing up and down, at whatever Gracie said, and it’s only then that I realize I completely forgot about my little staring contest with Adam.

When I look back, his eyes are narrowed at me and his lips twisted in a way that tells me he knows exactly what I was thinking while gawking at his BFF.

I need to get my damn shit together and there’s no way I can do that while being less than a hundred feet away from CJ, so I stand, nod, and smile awkwardly at Gracie, then make my excuses. “I’m gonna go hang out with Hawk and Derek.”

But I don’t do that.

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