2. Ollie

Ollie

Chapter two

My eyes felt glued shut, and my throat was dry as fuck.

Slowly I blinked and blinked again. I wasn’t in my house, but I’d apparently made it to a bed. However, before I sat up, the memories of everything that had happened yesterday slammed into me, keeping my head firmly on the pillow.

Josie’s solemn face. The casual way she’d dropped the word divorce like a bomb and how my body disintegrated in the aftermath.

Tearing out of my house like it had caught on fire to escape the reality that everything was about to change.

Showing up at Liam’s and drinking my face off.

A rendition of Fat Bottomed Girls that Liam had tweaked to Fat Bottomed Guys.

I pressed my palm to my forehead and let out a groan, shocked I didn’t have more of a hangover. The empty glass of water and empty Tylenol wrapper on the nightstand explained why. Someone had been smart last night, and I didn’t think it happened to be me.

A slight snore penetrated my foggy brain, and a heavy arm rested around my waist, a body plastered behind mine. I peered over my shoulder. Liam was curled up behind me, strands of his dirty blond hair askew and his eyelashes looking impossibly long. His chest moved up and down with his steady breaths in slumber, and I gripped on to the sense of peace that brought—mostly because I knew it would get shattered the moment I got up to face the day.

We hadn’t slept in the same bed in ages, so this vaulted me right back to high school when that had been the norm. Ever since Liam had returned to the area after college, I’d crashed at his place countless times, but I always slept on the couch or the floor, depending on how shitfaced I’d gotten or tired I was.

I shifted to a seated position, which caused his arm to drift back onto the bed. The loss of contact sucked, though. When I was hurting, I turned into a fucking puppy, constantly needing physical touch. Or to fuck, but considering my divorce, I wouldn’t be getting laid anytime soon. I wrinkled my nose as I looked down at my chest—my bare chest.

Had I stripped down last night? I tossed the sheets off, accidentally dragging them off Liam. I was wearing boxer briefs still, so I hadn’t hopped into bed buck naked with my best friend. Not like Liam would’ve judged.

My gaze snagged on Liam next to me and held.

He must’ve also ditched the clothes last night, but he wasn’t wearing boxer briefs.

Purple panties.

My mouth dried, and I couldn’t look away, even though I should. With the way he sprawled on his side, his legs slightly spread, the satin front barely cupped his prominent erection and the lace back that offered minimal coverage for his ass cheeks. Holy hell. I knew Liam had a pretty nice ass, but goddamn. His ass cheeks were two perfect round globes accentuated by the purple lace, the color contrasting his pale skin all too well.

My morning wood strained my boxer briefs, but the zing of lust was undeniable.

Well, damn. That was a new one.

Liam shifted with a few snuffles and a low groan that went straight to my balls. Apparently, getting divorced had sent me to new levels of horny. Not like I didn’t know Liam was an attractive guy, with his soulful blue eyes, dirty blond hair that always seemed slightly tousled, and a slim, muscular body from years of running. I just wasn’t used to getting an instant reaction over him.

Granted, in our seventeen years of friendship, I’d also never seen him stripped down to purple panties either.

Fucking eye-opener that was.

I pressed at my cock, willing it to calm down. Instead, the needy fucker took the touch as a sign I was about to get frisky, and a bit of pre-cum oozed from the head, imprinting on my boxer briefs.

“Nghrf,” Liam mumbled as he flopped onto his stomach, placing his ass on clear display. I’d gotten an eyeful earlier, but this view—fuuuuuck.

I licked my lips but then tore my gaze away from my best friend, who I shouldn’t be ogling while he was asleep. Clearly, the divorce with Josie was messing with my head—both of them.

“Wait, why are you in my bed?” Liam asked as he pushed up beside me.

“The better question is how much did we drink last night?” I gestured at my bare chest.

Liam’s cheeks pinked as he looked down—to those skimpy purple panties that honestly were fucking criminal. His whole body locked up, and panic flashed in his bright blue eyes. Oh, hell no. No awkwardness was allowed between us.

I tugged at the waistband of his panties. “When the hell did you start wearing sexy underwear?” I complained, stampeding on through the elephant in the room. “I feel like that’s something your best friend should know.”

Liam peered up at me, his gaze intense as hell, the pupils blown out. I pretty much leaned half over him, my finger hooked into the waistband of his panties. We both froze.. How could I backtrack from this situation without making it more awkward? My cock was definitely paying attention, testing the fabric of my boxer briefs, which was a weird-as-fuck experience, considering I’d been married as of yesterday.

Granted, the past year had been…well, Sahara-dry in the sex department.

And Liam’s heavy breaths were distracting as fuck. His skin was hot to the touch, and I’d become a bit too aware of our proximity.

“Best friends don’t need to share underwear preferences,” he said, his voice coming out hoarse and low.

“Well, maybe we should. Look, I’m just wearing plain old boxer briefs to this party. An embarrassment.”

Maybe mentioning my underwear had been a mistake. Liam raked his gaze down over my body slow, slow, slower, and the heat flaring in his eyes was unmistakable. He’d complimented my muscles before, and he didn’t think I was ugly or anything, but a look that scorching? How the hell had I gone from finding out Josie was divorcing me yesterday to lying half-naked in my best friend’s bed today?

The bigger question was why didn’t I feel more broken up about losing Josie?

Unfortunately, the answer to that percolated in my gut, one I wasn’t ready to face yet.

“Okay, we can stop comparing underwear,” Liam said. I thought I’d seen every variant of Liam Kelly over the years, but this husky voice was new. Before I could think about it further, he knocked my hand away from his waistband. I responded on reflex, giving his chest a playful shove.

“Seriously, Ollie?” Liam exclaimed, thwacking me back in the chest. Something light and bubbly burst inside me.

“You want to do this?” I bumped him in the side with my shoulder. Except with my height and weight, I knocked him flat on his back.

“You fucker.” Liam threw his whole body into me. The thump echoed around the room, and a bright grin spread on my face.

“Guess we’re doing this,” I said, launching full force at him, dropping my weight onto him like we were still teenagers and not thirty.

“Hey!” Liam knocked into me, sending me off balance and onto my side, but I dove in to try and reclaim the high ground. For a few moments, it was just thumps, heavy breaths, and scrambling for purchase as I tried to tug Liam back under me while he struggled to do the same. I fucking loved losing my head into something as simple and ridiculous as this, the years and complications melting away. Finally, I swung around on top, my legs on either side of his, and pinned his arms into the mattress.

Except he was writhing beneath me in nothing but those stupidly hot purple panties.

All of a sudden, our wrestling felt a lot different.

Liam and I were barely wearing anything, and I pinned him down with my weight, skin to skin. Hell, he emanated so much heat, the spice and coriander scent of his cologne addictive. It had always been a comfort, but with the way our bodies pressed together, me holding his arms over his head—oh, fuck.

The lust roaring through me was enough to make my head spin.

My erection was undeniable, and I didn’t dare look to see what state he was in. When I glanced down at Liam’s eyes, the bright blue was almost swallowed up by the black of his pupils. I licked my lips. My throat had turned dry as dust, and I didn’t miss how Liam stared at me. Which should’ve been a lot weirder, but nothing with Liam ever felt weird.

Clearly, my cock had decided to take the helm in the wake of this divorce.

The flood of memories from yesterday rushed through me like an arctic shower, and my erection deflated. Whatever tension had spread between us shattered, and I pulled away despite the itch to plaster myself to him. The past year, I’d been lacking physical comfort. Not that Josie had ever been huge on PDA. If I could have someone attached to my body at all hours of the day, I’d be as happy as could be.

“Okay,” I said, needing to keep this from getting awkward. “Do you think Maeve is going to kill us if we commandeer the kitchen to make pancakes?”

Liam lifted his brow. “Only if we head out there like this.”

I slid off the bed, even though I wanted to hop in and see if my best friend would cuddle with me a little longer. The idea of returning to an empty house from here on out launched panic signals to my system, and maybe that made me a little demanding, but I was going to get even less of the touch I needed than I already did.

I snatched my wrinkled pants from the floor and tugged them on, though part of me wanted to rewind to when I’d been in bed with Liam. My confused cock stiffened again, and I needed it to calm the hell down. The mixed signals weren’t good for my overtaxed brain. I fished my phone out of the pocket of my jeans, but there weren’t any messages.

Why would there be? The only people I’d told about the divorce had been at the party last night, and Josie hadn’t been super communicative with me when we’d been married, so why would she be now?

A hand settled on my shoulder, and I glanced back. Liam had gotten dressed in pajama pants and his “I have no egrets” shirt I’d gotten him last year. We’d started bird-watching a few years ago, which probably made us old or some shit, but I liked walking through nature with him and catching some cool-ass birds in the meantime.

“Hey,” Liam said, his voice deep and serious. “You’re going to get through this, okay?”

I swallowed hard. Those were the exact words I needed to hear. “You’re not planning on jetting off across the country, are you?” I tried to inject a teasing note into my tone, but it came across plain scared. The divorce would be a hard enough adjustment, but Josie had been part of my life forever. The idea she wouldn’t even be around? Hell, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

“Nah,” Liam said, his expression earnest, like he always was with me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Fuck, that lobbed relief straight to my sternum. I leaned toward him, his hand still on my shoulder, but I restrained myself because I’d manhandled him enough this morning. I’d barely begun to process my divorce, and I wasn’t at the point of picking apart my libido’s reaction to Liam this morning.

“Pancakes,” I said before my brain wandered again without my permission. “Let’s go ransack your kitchen.”

“All right.” He stepped past me to lead the way to the kitchen.

I followed him, and my gaze zeroed in on the prominent curve of his ass.

My cock throbbed.

Somehow, I didn’t think pancakes would make this attraction disappear.