Chapter Ten

Finn

A s I gingerly dropped my gear onto the floor of my bedroom, I did my damnedest to ignore my body. After the thrashing we'd received at the hands of the Buffaloes in the semifinal game yesterday, I was a walking bruise. No one on the team wanted to spend one more minute than necessary in North Dakota, so by unanimous vote, we'd loaded the buses and headed home directly after our crushing defeat.

Without the benefit of an ice bath and some light stretching after that beat-down, every part of me hurt. Eight hours on a bus had certainly contributed to the soreness, but more of it was in my head. The resounding silence on the ride home said every person on the bus, from the coaches to the players to the managers was struggling with our loss. Bax boarded right ahead of Coach Ellis wearing one of his more obnoxious T-shirts rather than required dress attire, and Ellis didn't even blink. That was how poorly we responded to the biggest loss of our careers.

The drive from the facility to the house in Callahan's pickup wasn't any better. Without a word, my three roommates and I had loaded up and driven home, each of us peeling off to our rooms without even saying good night—or good morning, as it were, since we were closer to Sunday than Saturday. Coach gave us the rest of Christmas break off, telling us we'd watch film when we returned. As if watching that season-ending disaster was any way to start the new semester.

All the silence left me with too much time to think. What I should have been thinking about, of course, was how I could have played harder, made more of an impact in the game. What I was actually thinking about was how I'd totally whiffed it with Chessly—again—when she handed me my big chance with her on the night she returned my hoodie. Until the fucking doorbell rang, I'd managed to do everything right—offer her a snack, have a conversation, take my cues from her—which had landed me in the glorious position of kissing the hell out of her.

Then that pack of jersey chasers had arrived with their cookies and their fawning all over me, and I didn't know how to push them away without being rude. Of course, they didn't have any trouble being rude to Chessly and making themselves at home without an invitation. By the time I'd clued in and got my act together, Chess was leaving without a backward glance. I didn't have to be Einstein to know what she thought.

If she'd stuck around for even five more minutes, she'd have witnessed a master class in sending jersey chasers packing. At the start of the semester, Bax was as enthusiastic about all the attention as I was, but since hooking up with his purple-haired hottie—Chessly's friend no less—he'd run out of patience with girls who followed the football team around like it was their job. Throw in the mess Tory Miller had made for Callahan at the end of the semester, and Bax's patience with them had dropped to less than nonexistent. After the debacle with Chess who I'd been wanting to know better for months, I finally figured it out.

About five minutes too late.

Supposedly, with knowledge came power. One night with her had taught me that despite appearances, Chess was no delicate china doll. The strength and resilience of her limbs as she'd wrapped her arms around me and run her heels up and down my hamstrings and the backs of my calves had turned me on like no other woman. The way she'd rubbed her torso along mine said that rather than intimidating her, my size turned her on. The way she'd kissed me back with those whimpers in the back of her throat as her plush lips pressed urgently to mine drove all rational thought from my head. Discovering how well we fit together, how much we turned each other on with only kissing—I mean shit, I didn't even try to palm her tits or slip a hand between her legs—had left me powerless to think of anything other than Chessly Clarke.

That girl had turned me inside out from the second I laid eyes on her. But after striking out with her twice, I didn't have a clue how to make her see I hadn't initiated any of what happened with Tory Miller and the other jersey chasers. It was just bad timing.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I shook my head. Bad timing seemed to be my thing this year. All by myself I'd given the Buffaloes twenty free yards at critical moments in the game. Their stadium had lived up to its hype as the 12 th man, the noise of the fans drawing me offsides multiple times. By the fourth time the refs called me for it, I thought Bax was going to tackle me to the turf rather than go after their running back. No doubt Coach was planning an earful about it when we watched film after break.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

With far more effort than the situation called for, I dropped my dress pants to the floor and pulled on a pair of sweats. I sucked in air as fire licked across my shoulders and down my arms as I shrugged out of my dress shirt and tugged a hoodie over my head. When I stepped out into the hall to hit the head and maybe scare up a bottle of ibuprofen, I heard soft giggles and sighs coming from behind 'Han's closed door. Guess he had company to ease the pain of the semifinal loss. Jamaica's brand of TLC probably worked better than the kind I sought from pain meds.

I closed my eyes as the phantom touch of Chessly's fingertips digging into my shoulders when I'd pinned her to the couch flitted over me. What I wouldn't give to feel her soft body against mine right about now. Dragging my ass into the can, I found a half-full bottle of pain reliever in the medicine cabinet, thank fuck. After downing three tablets and chasing them with a couple of handfuls of water—apparently, the last guy to clean the bathroom hadn't returned the cup we kept by the sink—I wandered back to my room, closed the door, and flopped down onto my bed.

With the way the past week had ended, I thought sleep would elude me. Then my alarm was blaring from somewhere in the middle of my room. Groggily, I located the offending device in the pocket of my pants in a heap on the floor, shut it off, stood, and took stock. Soreness was the order of the day, but at least I could move with some semblance of ease. Good thing too since I had a four-hour drive home after I dropped Bax at the airport.

My plan for a hot shower to soothe away some of the soreness shot straight to hell when Bax stepped out of the steamy bathroom right as I walked into the hall. With a sigh, I headed downstairs instead. The old Victorian we called home came with some perks—like generously sized bedrooms and a downstairs big enough to throw the kind of rager that had made our house famous on Jock Street—but what it lacked was a hot water heater big enough to accommodate four football players who needed twenty-minute showers after games.

Soft feminine laughter alerted me that Callahan and Jamaica were in the kitchen. Rather loudly clearing the morning cobwebs from my throat, I alerted them to my presence a couple of steps before I walked through the doorway.

Callahan glanced away from mooning over his girlfriend where they sat at the breakfast table. "Morning, Finn. Got a stack of pancakes warming in the oven."

"Thanks," I mumbled as I pulled a mug from the cupboard and filled it with steaming coffee.

"You're kind of quiet today, Finn," Jamaica said.

"Losing that game took all the fun out of Christmas," I said. After a fortifying slug of hot caffeine, I grumped at my roommate. "Doesn't seem to be bothering you much."

Jamaica rolled her eyes. "It's a football game, Finn. Not the end of the world."

Turning my head from side to side and rolling my shoulders, I shot back, "Sure feels like it."

Callahan laughed. "Bax skipped breakfast to beat you to the shower."

My eyebrows went up. "Is that right?"

Without another word, I snagged a plate from the cupboard and loaded it with five pancakes from the stack warming in the oven. I parked my ass at the table and proceeded to slather butter over the steaming stack before dousing it with half a bottle of maple syrup. Two minutes later, I was back at the oven for seconds, mounding my plate with another five pancakes.

Feeling her stare, I glanced up into Jamaica's wide eyes. "What?" I asked around a bite of fluffy buttermilk deliciousness.

With a long blink, she shook her head. "Callahan spent more than a minute making those. Did you even taste them?"

Gifting her a closed-mouth grin, I winked and swallowed. "They're to die for. Too bad Bax is going to miss out."

'Han took a turn shaking his head. "You're a piece of work, Finnegan." He walked his and Jamaica's plates over to the dishwasher. "You coming back by the house after you drop Bax at the airport?"

"Nah. I'll head north after I drop him off. I think Danny's sticking around to close up the house for Christmas." I finished off my second plate of breakfast and was contemplating a third when Bax strolled into the kitchen.

Without a word, he headed to the oven to discover I'd left him three pancakes. Glaring, he said, "Really, Finn? Really? Why don't you help yourself to all the food someone else cooked?"

"Hey, if you hadn't hogged all the hot water, I wouldn't have come downstairs to find breakfast in the oven." I slugged back the dregs of my coffee then walked my plate and cup to the dishwasher. "Sucks to be you."

Growling, "Fuck you!" Bax grabbed a dishtowel off the handle on the oven and snapped it at me. Forgetting how much my back still ached, I arched away from his weapon and covered my wince with a laugh as I raced out of the kitchen.

Once I was out of sight, I clamped my hand over my lower back and caught a breath before walking up the stairs. By now the water heater should have reloaded enough for me to enjoy at least ten minutes of heavenly heat. Right as I reached the landing, I caught Danny sliding into the bathroom and closing the door.

"Fuck," I muttered as I veered across the hallway to my bedroom. A hot shower did not seem to be part of my immediate future.

Resignedly, I dragged my duffel bag onto my bed and started filling it with clothes I'd need for a few days back on the farm with the fam. By the time I'd finished packing, I heard Danny head back to his room. With a long-suffering sigh, I took my turn, lathering quickly in the lukewarm spray and praying the gremlins in the basement didn't turn the water to ice-cold before I could rinse off.

The plus of not enjoying a hot shower was I that couldn't succumb to X-rated thoughts of a certain blonde with endless blue eyes who kissed like an angel and moved like the devil.

Or not.

Jesus. Even with cold water sluicing down my back, my dick perked right up at the memory of Chessly's sighs as I'd trailed kisses along her jaw and down the satiny column of her neck. I loved the beauty and symmetry of a perfect reaction, the fizz and pop or the changing of color or scent that denoted chemistry in action. What happened between that girl and me on the couch the other night had been pure chemistry. The way our bodies had heated, the pink flush on her skin, the way the taste of her mouth had morphed from chocolate-and-marshmallow to dark feminine deliciousness in the space of a kiss. Pure chemistry.

Lusty thoughts of gliding skin on skin with a certain smoke show of a physics major left me hard enough to drill concrete. Bracing one hand on the wall at the back of the shower, I wrapped my other hand around myself and—

"Fuuuck!"

Glacial water poured from the shower head, washing away my hard-on in an instant.

I might have emitted several more yelps as I swatted at the controls, missing a few times before I finally ended the water torture I should have anticipated. Would have anticipated if a certain woman hadn't distracted my thoughts for about the thousandth time since we met. When I stepped out of the shower, I heard Baxter's laughter ringing outside the bathroom door.

"Sucks to be you, Finnegan."

"Asshole."

But I smiled to myself. Hard not to smile when I had Chessly on my mind. In the scheme of things, I'd won. While I might have endured a substandard shower, I'd enjoyed all the breakfast. Doubt Bax had left even a crumb for that other hot water hog, a.k.a. Danny.

A few minutes later, we gathered in the front foyer to say our goodbyes for Christmas break. That was when Callahan and Jamaica dropped the news that they'd be spending the holiday meeting each other's parents. Behind their backs, Baxter shot me a cross-eyed headshake, but it was all for show. I saw how he'd panted after Piper when we were at Stromboli's last week.

I could relate.

"Meeting the parents, huh? That's kinda serious, ain't it?" I asked as I shrugged into my fleece-lined jean jacket.

"When you know, you know," Callahan said, slinging an arm around Jamaica and pulling her close to his side. "Maybe someday when you give up jersey chasers, you'll see for yourself, Finn."

His tone was all Mr.Rogers patient, and I bared my teeth at him. Bax snorted, and I flipped him the bird.

"Touchy, touchy," he said. At 'Han's questioning brow, Bax added, "I'll tell you all about what went down last Monday when we come back from break." He hitched his duffel bag over his shoulder and joined me at the front door. "Behave yourselves, and don't go getting engaged or some other craziness before you come back."

Jamaica sucked in a tiny gasp, and I glanced at Callahan, who remained stoic except for a tiny tug at the corner of his mouth.

Well, fuck me . If someone had said at the beginning of the semester that one of us in the house would be entertaining thoughts of marriage by the end of it, I would have called bullshit. From the looks of things, I would have lost that bet.

"Did not see that one coming," Bax said as I drove him to the airport.

"Yeah. I didn't think any of us would graduate with a lady in tow. It's bad business when your focus is the pros." I wheeled us through the roundabout a block from our neighborhood and headed down the straight shot to the airport.

"Depends on the lady."

Something in his tone snagged my attention, and I slid him a side-eye. Bax stared out the windshield, but I had the distinct impression he wasn't seeing the passing scenery.

"Chessly's friend has you by the balls, does she?" I chortled at my own joke even as my own pair drew up a little at the sound of her name on my lips.

"She's Jamaica's friend too." He aimed a speculative look at me—one I studiously ignored as I focused on the road. "What the hell were you thinking inviting a bunch of jersey chasers to the house the same night you were entertaining a real woman?"

"For the thousandth time, I didn't invite any of those girls—Chessly included. I was home alone, minding my own business when they showed up out of the blue." Gripping the steering wheel, I willed myself not to rise to the bait. "But I get it. Jersey chasers are bad news."

Settling back against the seat, Bax blew out a breath. "We're a pair, Finnegan. 'Han is so much smoother with women than we are. It's a surprise to see him settling down with someone. You and I are lucky if Piper and Chessly even give us the time of day." He shot me a shit-eating grin. "'Course, after last Monday night, you'll be lucky if you ever see Chessly again."

"Fuck you, Bax."

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught his shrug, which only added to the sinking feeling his reminder gave me.

We were silent for the rest of the ride to the airport. After I dropped him off, I pointed my rig north, cranked up some Drake, and tried to focus my mind on what awaited me at home for Christmas: Mom's incredible food, chores with Dad, and razzing the shit out of my sister, Nikki. But every other mile I caught myself wondering how a certain gorgeous physics major with a smart mouth and all my attention would be spending the holidays.