Chapter 4

Hunter

Her hand was moving under the blanket…

I lay on the weight bench, pumping the bar high.

And then I bring it back down.

Up.

And then down.

Her hand…

She was touching herself. I should’ve spoken up. Cleared my throat or something. When that phone rang and stopped her, I was simultaneously relieved and pissed.

Jesus.

Farrow stands over me, spotting as I bench press, but he’s staring down at me, and I can’t look at his goddamn face right now. I raise the weights, drop it on the barbell rack, and sit up quickly, subtly pressing down my fucking hard-on.

She’s still so much trouble. I could hear it over the phone with her last night. Devious, mischievous, destructive—still addictive.

Her body in those sheets. Under them…

“What are you doing?” Farrow asks. “You’ve only done six reps.”

I grab my towel, rise to my feet, and head to the lat tower. Calvin works on the machine next to me, Luca, Anders, T.C., and Constin milling around the cage.

“Didn’t get much sleep last night?” he taunts.

I adjust the pin to one-forty and sit, reaching up to grab the bar with both hands.

“If you’re so worried about her in that house,” he says, leaning on the machine next to me, “why didn’t you just tell me to bring her home to stay with us last night? Ciaran would demand it, if he knew she was in Weston.”

I pull the bar, pinching my shoulder blades together through each rep.

“I’m not worried.” I breathe out. “I just had your fucking lab to type up. I stayed up late.”

My grandfather would absolutely demand that I bring my cousin to his house next door. He knows how unsafe Knock Hill is, even when he is in town. Which he’s not. He stays at his home near Chicago almost entirely now.

The house in Weston is one of many hideouts he had back when he made his money in really bad ways.

“I expected you to be more protective of her,” Farrow says.

“Well, I’m not.”

My muscles start to burn already, and I feel a trickle of sweat glide down my chest.

“Not even if I give her a bike?” he asks.

“She knows what she’s doing.”

He lowers his voice to sound silky smooth. “Not even if I keep her out late?”

I shrug. “I come and go as I like.”

I breathe in.

And then out.

In.

Out.

Then, he leans in. “Not even if the whole team keeps her out late?”

I cock my eyebrow, throwing him a look. He’s fucking determined to piss me off.

That’s why he has a place in my grandfather’s heart and lives in his house—with me—rent-free. My grandpa thinks I need people around who piss me off once in a while.

“You’re her family,” he points out.

“Yeah, not her boyfriend.” I let the bar fly and stand up, grabbing my towel and wiping off the sweat. “I want my cousin to do exactly what she wants.”

She always did anyway. I’ve never held influence over her.

I grab some chalk powder, rub it between my hands, and leap up to the bar, pulling my chin over it again and again.

“She’s pretty,” Farrow says behind me. “Not really sexy, but—”

“I disagree,” Calvin pipes up. “Those tomboys are attractive as hell. When you got one underneath you, it’s like you’re discovering something completely new that’s just for you. Something you weren’t really seeing before.”

I grip the bar tightly, the memory of the blanket moving with her hand running through my head.

“Her hair stuck to her wet skin,” he coos. “The smoothness of every inch, that hot tongue…

I pull my chin up once, twice, three more times, my jaw hard.

“Everything goes soft,” he tells us.

I heard a little moan escape her this morning.

“And then you flip her over,” T.C. shouts. “Yank her up onto her knees, and show her what the hell she was really built for.”

A round of laughter goes off, and I release the bar, falling back to the floor. I jerk my head side to side, cracking my neck.

“Are we sure she’s a virgin?” Calvin asks.

I don’t know if he’s asking me, but T.C. replies instead. “I hope she is.”

“I hope she’s not,” Calvin retorts. “They’re easier to get into bed if they’ve done it before.”

I twist around, whipping my towel off the rack where I tossed it. Farrow watches me.

Constin passes by, taking a seat at the rower. “I don’t like things easy.”

I swipe my phone off the weight bench where I left it and head toward the treadmill. I leap up, starting to press buttons.

“She hangs around a lot of guys,” Calvin adds. “At that track, her dad’s shop… I mean, Noah Van der Berg lives in her fucking house, for Christ’s sake, and the girls love him. I bet they’d love to see him in a towel as much as she probably has.”

What the fuck? I turn my head, glaring at Calvin.

His face falls. “Sorry, Hunter.”

They get back to work, and I kick up the speed, starting to jog.

I can’t be thinking about this now. I can’t be worrying about the guys around her. We should be concentrating on the upcoming game.

She’s going to distract us, and I’ve waited for this. I’ve waited a year to meet my brother on the field and win. Our game against the Pirates is a week from Friday. That’s what we should be concentrating on.

I blink long and hard.

I just need her to go home.

My phone lights up, and I look down, seeing Kade’s name on the screen. My heart skips a beat, and I step off the belt, stopping the machine.

I avoid most calls from home. Simply because I don’t want to be reminded of how much I miss them. My parents, my uncles and aunts, my sister…

I lose nothing if I avoid this one, too, but yeah, this is what I waited for, isn’t it? It’s Rivalry Week.

I swipe and hold the cell to my ear, hearing silence for a few moments.

“You never answer,” he says finally.

“You never try very hard.”

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” he asks.

Amusement curls my lips. So that’s why he called now? Because he thought I wouldn’t be able to answer and then I’d have to call him back?

“Team workout first period,” I say. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“Probably.”

I smile a little, despite myself. Kade always did whatever he wanted. I hated him for that.

But he never pretended to be sorry for it, either, and for that, I envied him.

“So, I had a fun idea,” he tells me.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I was thinking you should get a haircut.”

I stand there, listening. My hair isn’t long, but it was never coiffed like his. Maybe I would’ve liked to comb it as a kid. Style it, even. But once he started getting on my case when we were eleven if I didn’t look like an exact replica of him, I decided I’d never style it again. I comb it with my fingers.

“Get some decent friends, smile once in a while…” he taunts. “Borrow one of my T-shirts that smells like me... Maybe then she’ll look at you.”

I squeeze the phone, hearing him laugh under his breath.

Dylan doesn’t matter. She’s not a factor in what goes on between him and me. I should tell him that.

But he wants me to argue because it puts me on the defensive.

I spot Farrow out of the corner of my eye, watching me, and now I’m aware of the tightness in my muscles. My rigid spine. My flexed jaw.

I turn my head away, itching to say something back to Kade, but the seconds stretch. The moment becomes longer and further away until it’s gone, and now he knows he won.

I yank the phone away from my ear and end the call.

I shake my head. Fuck.

I wrap my fist around the phone, hearing it crack in my hand. All I had to say was something. Some dumb, fucking quip that would’ve been fine if I’d just said it with confidence.

But no. I was brain dead, as usual, when it comes to him.

A shadow of him.

I disappear around him.

Turns out, after a year, he’s still better.

Farrow is at my side. “Was that your brother?”

I jump off the treadmill. “Forget it.”

I start to walk away, but he grabs my arm. “Did you fucking hang up on him?”

I push him off, but he clenches the back of my neck, and I growl as he pushes me to the ground. He comes down on my back, pressing me into the mat. I grit my teeth, breathing hard.

“Did he get the last fucking word?” Farrow yells at me.

I flip over, grabbing his head and attempt to lock it under my arm, but he throws himself over my shoulders and wraps an arm around my neck.

“Did he?” he growls as everyone stops their workout to watch us.

Twisting around, I rise, and so does he, but I pin him to the mat before he has a chance to get his feet under him. I straddle his back, growling in his ear. “Back off. We’ll have the last word…when we win.”

“And her?” he inquires. “You’re mad at her, too?”

Screw this. I climb off him and stand up. He follows, brushing invisible dust from his chest.

Walking over to the barbell rack, he retrieves a cigarette and lights it.

“You’re pissed at her too,” Farrow points out. “Why?”

I just stare at him, breathing hard. I’m not pissed at her, other than that she’s a distraction I don’t need right now. She’s preoccupying this team’s attention.

Farrow moves toward me. “Does he love her?”

“Of course, he does,” I say through my teeth. “She’s his family.”

“Does he want her?” he says like he’s spelling it out for me.

They all know Dylan doesn’t share any blood with Kade and me. We’re family through marriage only.

“Does she want him?” he asks next.

I narrow my eyes.

He comes in, grabbing the back of my neck and bringing me in. “We’ll see him at the game,” he says. “You’ll win, have the best fucking year of your life, and then go off to the University of Chicago and leave him and his circle of influence behind for good.”

Fucking yes.

“But we have her now,” he points out. “She can be first.”

“I don’t give a shit about her—”

“Because if we beat them on the field,” he continues, “and he still gets to go home and have her at his beck and call, are you still going to feel like you won anything?”

I look at him, but my gaze falters.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” He rears back a little, eyes gleaming with realization. “I can’t believe I actually called that shit.” He has the decency to keep his voice low. “She’s the reason for the rift between you and Kade,” he says. “She’s the reason for all of this.”

No. My problems with Kade aren’t Dylan’s fault.

I never cared about her beyond the fact that she was a friend.

It never hurt when she wanted to be around him instead.

“Fuck,” I murmur.

Farrow squeezes the back of my neck. “She needs to pay too,” he tells me. “Your fun…starts now.”