Page 21 of Irresistibly Risky

“At a sleepover,” he tells me, helping himself to a huge plate of bar food—everything from nachos to sliders to buffalo wings. Great. Junk I can’t eat. Awesome.

“Good stuff.” I lick my lips and then force myself over to the bar, pouring myself a small drink. I don’t normally drink much in season, but I’m not sure how much in season I am right now considering I’m likely having surgery next week. Everyone is watching me do it, quiet and curious, so I decide to cut to the chase. “I had a day. Well, more like a couple of days.”

“We can tell,” Grey muses. “What happened?”

I swivel around as I bring my bourbon up to my lips, taking a long sip and savoring the smooth, sweet flavor of it. “A lot actually. Do you all remember my bathroom lady?”

“Your bathroom lady?” Zax parrots. “You mean the one you gave lousy sex to in the bathroom of the club and have been obsessed with ever since?”

I point my finger at him. “That’s the one.” See, I told you she’s all I’ve thought about for a year and a half. “Well, as irony would have it, I ran into her again yesterday… in a bathroom. The men’s room this time. At the stadium.”

I get a lot of blinking eyes. “And…” Callan drags out the word.

“And her name is Wynter Hathaway. She’s my new orthopedic surgeon, and she doesn’t remember me. At all.” I drop into one of the chairs at the card table, feeling shitty and defeated all over again. How can she not remember me? Was she that drunk? I mean, I was messed up six ways to Sunday, but I didn’t forget anything about her.

Or that night.

Then again, I had just won the Super Bowl, and she was the hottest woman I had ever seen—and still is—and my dick didn’t work. All very memorable events.

“I know Wynter Hathaway,” Fallon announces, and I think my eyes do that cartoon flying out of my skull thing.

“You do?” I practically shout the words. “How? Where? When? Tell me everything.”

Fallon shrugs and comes over to sit beside me. “She’s two years older than us. I knew her at Yale since we were both premed. In fact”—she turns to Grey—“she did her residency in Miami and is the reason I told you that’s where I was doing mine when I lied to you about it.”

Grey frowns but leans in and kisses her forehead. Christ, is love ever easy for anyone? I swear, each of my friends who are now with their women never had an easy time getting where they are.

“Anyway,” Fallon continues, “I didn’t know she was up here in Boston. Last I heard she was in London or something. We haven’t kept in touch much over the last couple of years.”

I scrub my hands up and down my face and then finish off the last of my one and a half fingers of bourbon. “She hates me,” I admit and then start to ramble. “Or maybe doesn’t hate me yet since she doesn’t remember me, but she doesn’t like me because I’m a football player and evidently have a bit of an ego and cockiness about me and I like to inappropriately touch and lick her.” I hold up a hand. “Don’t ask about that last one. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was in the moment, and jealousy had me by the balls. Anyway, she knows my coach somehow and won’t tell me about it, but she hates him too. Even more than she hates me, I think, since she called him a dickface today. As it is, sometime next week she is going to open my shoulder up with the hope she can fix it so I can play ball next season—because I might officially be out for the rest of this one, which I haven’t even begun to process or mourn—and I don’t know how to tell her who I am without making her hate me more, because how could she not?”

I fall forward and faceplant into my forearms.

It’s silent. Too silent.

“I was going to drop hints like timebombs today when I brought her into the locker room, but she had some sort of emergency and had to leave before I could.”

More silence. Argh.

“If you have any words of wisdom, now is the time to start laying them on me. I’ve touched her and teased her and smiled at her and she has no clue that I’ve had my dick inside of her.”

“You have to tell her,” Layla says adamantly. “I mean, maybe add a bit of polish instead of saying, hey, I’ve had my dick inside of you.” She makes a noise in the back of her throat. “God, why are guys so freaking crass?”

“Right?” Aurelia chimes in.

“Sorry,” I grumble. “It’s just how we think, and I didn’t mean it disrespectfully or misogynistically.”

“Fine. Whatever,” Layla continues. “But bad sex notwithstanding, she should hear it from you before she figures it out.”

“Agreed,” both Aurelia and Fallon say in unison.

“The women are right,” Lenox comments, and damn him, he knows we all listen when he speaks because he does so infrequently.

“Thank you for hitting the final nail in my coffin, silent warrior, but how do I do that without her hating me more?” I sit up and then decide eating a slider might be a better way to occupy myself while my friends help me work this out. Evidently, booze and junk food are my things tonight.

Lenox gives me a fuck if I know shrug.

“Thanks, brother. Always so helpful. Ladies, you’re back on the clock.” I suck a dollop of ketchup off my thumb and then take a bite of the burger, talking through a mouthful. “Seriously, though, it was an awful night, and I don’t think telling her who I am will turn the tide of her liking me in my favor.”

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