Boden
Kershaw is gonna kill you, man. Messin’ with his sister like that.
Jonno
She looks miserable with you, dawg. You need to treat her right.
Macker
How far you gonna take this, dude?
Take what? Alarm streaked through me. What was going on here?
I looked up and there he was, leaning against the bar, flirting with the server. He spotted me, gave a bright smile, and headed back over.
“Hey, we good?”
“Yeah, great!” It sounded fake. “How about we get another round of drinks in?”
That surprised him. “Uh, yeah. Why not?”
ChapterNineteen
Lars
Mabel was irritable.I knew exactly how she felt.
Rowan MacFarlane showing up at my house to take Adeline on a date had to be the most outrageous example of trolling I’d ever seen. And I’d been a pro hockey player for sixteen years. Trolling was our currency.
But this asshole? It felt like he was trying to fuck withme, with his smirk and his hand on Adeline’s back. And the way Adeline had looked at me as she left, like I was not worthy of an opinion here.
So what if she was right? I’d told her kissing her was a bad idea. I still believed that, but unfortunately this bad idea had felt so damn good I was getting hard just thinking about it. The way she’d felt in my arms, that supple strength and soft power. Her lips, her tits, the feel of her ass in my hands, the way my cock notched into the cradle of her body. All of it perfect.
And perfectly wrong.
I didn’t need to count the ways, but I did it anyway because the reminders were the only things maintaining the thin veil of never between us.
Her youth.
Her father.
Her employment.
Her crush.
That was all before we factored in my unsuitability for a woman of that quality. Adeline was young and fresh and just starting her life. I was none of those things, not to mention I had a baby to consider. Leaning on Adeline, using her as a crutch right now was bad enough. Adding sex to the mix would not make the path any clearer.
I shouldn’t have called. But I had to check in on her, make sure she was safe.
“Alright, Mabel, what are we going to do to entertain ourselves?”
There was a game tonight between Boston and Denver, but that was entertainment for me, not Mabel, so I switched over to the Disney channel and picked the first movie with a princess on the thumbnail.
Mabel was doing her crawling-but-going-nowhere thing, so I gave her a little boost, closer to the bars of her play-cage. The bright colors on the screen held her in thrall for all of ten seconds, then she flapped her arms like she was trying to fly. Back to the screen as the princess belted out something. Kind of catchy, to be honest.
I checked the score of the game and considered calling O’Malley or Jacobs, or even Theo to see if they wanted to hang. Only I wasn’t good company. Neither did I want to explain to Theo why Adeline wasn’t here.
Oh, haven’t you heard? She’s dating MacFarlane. Yeah,thatMacFarlane.