Okay, fine.
I’m borderline terrified of what this prank-gone-wrong might’ve just incited, and I am not immune to that many feet of muscled baseball perfection, despite the number of times he’s rolled his eyes or grimaced at me when I’ve flirted with him the past four years, and despite exactly how furious I was with him over what he did the day we met.
And who’s furious now?
Max.
Max is currently furious.
He’s a massive, glittering, growly bear of if this crap isn’t the kind that comes off easily, you better not be planning on sleeping again for the next three months, Matilda Jean Rock.
Prank industry secret: There’s no glitter that comes off easily.
I might’ve misread the universe’s instructions when it came to how to get Cooper back.
“He shoved his dirty gym socks under the seat of my car when he was home on the all-star break and it took me three weeks to figure out what the smell was, and before he left for Florida last year, he hid rum cakes all over my house and Grady’s goat kept breaking in to find them and ended up staggering all over downtown wearing one of my bras on his head while bleating this weird monologue that sounded like a Garth Brooks song after pooping on my kitchen table. He taught Grady’s goat to poop on kitchen tables. I thought you were Cooper. This is Cooper’s house. You were supposed to be him. That glitter was meant for my butthead brother. I swear.”
He still doesn’t say a word.
I gulp and try a new tactic.
At this point, it’s habit, so why not go with it?
I smile and wink. “So how was morning workout? Did you flex all your studly muscles and show the rest of them how to do a squat?”
He bends forward, runs a hand through his dark hair, shaking his head and making bright pink glitter rain down onto Cooper’s wide plank wood floor, and making me wonder if that’s how he rinses his hair in the shower.
When he’s naked.
And wet.
It would be lovely if my body would cooperate and not get hot flashes when my brain goes rogue and pictures Max Cole in the buff.
It would also be lovely if my brain wouldn’t go rogue every time I saw him.
It would also have been lovely if Max wasn’t the guy on the team who’d end up renting the house next door to me for the entire off-season. And you’d think that seeing him in long baggy workout pants and T-shirts and light jackets wouldn’t inspire all the fantasies—it’s not like he’s walking around shirtless in November—but I cannot help the way I’m wired, and I’m wired to think that Max Cole is hotter than a bacon grease fire.
Even despite the way we met.
His personality sucks, brain. Stop fantasizing about him.
Yeah, but have you ever seen him joke with his teammates, Tillie Jean? He’s a sexy, fun man-beast until you walk in the door, my brain replies.
Stupid brain.
The vacuum. I should get the vacuum and help clean the floor so he can—
“Erp,” I croak as my cerebral functions scramble again.
He’s still bent over, but now he’s pulling his warm-up jacket and everything underneath it over his head in one smooth motion, revealing bulging muscles and taut skin and that phoenix tattoo on his left shoulder, and my mouth is dry.
Desert dry. Like, so dry I think my tongue just saw a mirage.
He straightens, tosses his clothes on top of the glitter, and uses it as a stepping stone to reach the first stair.
Max Cole is shirtless and stalking up the stairs to kill me.
Move! Run! my feet yell.
If we have to die, the scenery will be good while he’s choking us, my vagina replies.
I’m still flat on the floor, which means by the time he’s halfway up the stairs, I’m having to lift my eyeballs to track his movements. When he hits the landing, my brain cramps because my eyes aren’t supposed to go this high.
“Are you gonna kill me?” I whisper.
He pauses and looks down at me, and when he speaks, his chocolate silk voice reminds me—again—of exactly how attractive Max Cole is no matter what he’s doing. “Oh, Tillie Jean. You have no idea.”
2
Max Cole, aka a guy who’s not really the glittering type. Or the painting type. Or the Tillie Jean Rock type. For the record.
There are seven thousand things I hate about Tillie Jean Rock, and I’m not talking about the seven thousand bits of neon pink glitter that are still in my hair hours after my glitter shower and will likely still be in my hair on the day I die, even if I live to be a hundred and twenty.
That’s just one reason I hate Tillie Jean Rock.
Right behind flirts with me to annoy me.
And joined the Lady Fireballs even though she’s not dating anyone on the team.
And then there’s is always perfect, no matter what.
Always. Fucking. Perfect.
“Oh my gosh, Dita, look at her baby belly! She’s so adorable. Mom, seriously, you nailed the ears. LaShonda! For shame. You did not put lipstick on that baby dragon.” All the women in the bar’s back room break into titters and giggles while Tillie Jean, the object of my abhoration—no, not adoration, I really do mean abhoration, and if that word’s not in the dictionary, it should be—circles the party room that I’m trapped in, complimenting everyone’s paintings here at this god-awful paint the new mascot party while she sips from a glittery gold travel coffee mug that Luca Rossi’s girlfriend gave her for saving her life at a party a couple months back.
Which I only know because Luca couldn’t shut the hell up about it.
Not because I pay that close of attention to what happens in Tillie Jean’s life.
If I had my say in it tonight, I’d know nothing at all about what Tillie Jean was up to right now either.
Also, reason number four thousand, six hundred twelve: Tillie Jean effortlessly saves other people’s lives.
Shouldn’t be a reason I hate her, but it is.
So. Fucking. Perfect. All. The. Fucking. Time.
And I’m the moron who chose—who chose—to move to her hometown for the off-season, which is how I’ve ended up here tonight, sitting between her brother Cooper and Trevor Stafford, relief pitcher for the team, drinking iced tea in the party room of The Grog, a local bar which feels like the inside of a ship after a night of pirate debauchery, while Tillie Jean instructs us on how to paint our own Ashes.
Yes, I said Ashes. Not asses.
Ash is the newly-hatched next-generation dragon mascot of the Copper Valley Fireballs, who’s adorable as hell with her pudgy baby arms and little ear sprouts.
Usually.
She’s not nearly as cute when I’m being coerced into painting her with Tillie Jean Rock’s instructions. My version looks like an angry green blob with a face and a diaper, and not because I hope management ages her up to breathe fire and be a scary mascot so our reputation doesn’t get soft after all the work we put in over the last year to go from zeroes to heroes.
“Dude, check out your Ash eyes.” Cooper leans into my painting and grins. He’s two beers deep, which means he’s fully relaxed and in his happy place. Not that Cooper’s ever not in his happy place. Does that mean he’s in his happier place? “She looks like she wants to murder someone.”