Page 64 of The Playmaker

Well…she has me for a little while longer, anyway.

We fall into small talk as we eat, and when we’re done, I stand and stretch. “I need to get out of this suit.”

Tabby shoos me away. “Go. You too, Jack. When you come back, I want to play a game.”

I groan. “Why do we always have to play a game? Can’t we just watch a movie?”

“No, we can’t. I want to play a game, so we’re playing a game,” Tabby says.

“See what I have to put up with,” I say to Jack.

He laughs. “What Tabby wants, Tabby gets.”

I grunt. “Women,” I say, as the two women in my life clear the table and put the dishes in the sink.

“Men,” they respond at the same time.

Jack and I dash up the stairs, and I step into my room, the scent of Nina lingering in the air. In the bathroom, her swimsuit hangs from the shower. With any other woman, it would feel like an invasion, but not with Nina. No, with her it feels right, like that’s exactly where her swimsuit belongs.

I peel off my shorts and toss them over the rod next to her suit, then tug on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I hear Jack—my soon to be brother-in-law—in the hall, and we walk to the kitchen together, only to find it empty.

“Where the hell did they go?” Jack asks, as an uneasy feeling moves through me, because I’m pretty sure I know where they are. There is only one room in this house Nina has never seen, and it’s the same room where Tabby keeps all the board games.

Shit.

“I think they’re downstairs.” I open the door to the lower level, and when I hear their voices, I follow the sound to the one and only room I designed myself. Jack follows me, and when I round the corner and see Tabby sitting crossed-legged on the floor, going through the stack of cards and games, and Nina beside her, looking at my old movie collection, I try for casual and say, “Find anything good?”

Nina turns at the sound of my voice, and my heart jumps at the softness on her face. “These movies,” she says. “There’re all my favorites.”

I shrug. “Yeah, I remember you and Jess watching them over and over.”

“How come…did you…” Her words trail off when she sees the framed pictures on the shelving units on either side of the big-screen TV. She drops the movies she has in her hands and examines them. There are a ton of Cason and me, Tabby and me…and just as many of Cason, Nina and me. A smile comes over her face when she picks up the one of the three of us at the Aerosmith concert.

“I never in a million years expected your man cave to look so warm and homey. It’s so different from all the other rooms in your house.” She goes quiet and runs her finger over the picture. “Who took this?”

I shrug. “Cason gave his phone to someone. I can’t remember.”

“How come you have it?”

Because I asked for it.

“I don’t know.”

“You hated me, Cole. Why would you ever frame so many pictures of me?”

Oh, maybe because you and your brother represent family, all the things I want but can never have, and I’ve been fu

cking crazy about you for as long as I can remember.

Shit.

“Cole?”

I could lie and say my decorator did it, but I already told her this room was mine.

From the floor, Tabby turns to me. I meet her eyes, and she gives me an understanding look. She knows what the Callaghans mean to me, how hard my life was at home.

“How about a game of Cards Against Humanity,” she says. “Always a party favorite.”

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