1. Olivia ‘Libby’ Irwin

CHAPTER 1

OLIVIA ‘LIBBY' IRWIN

The longer I stared at the schedule, the deeper I frowned. I couldn't help it. It didn't make sense. None of what had happened in the last six weeks made sense. I chewed on my bottom lip. He was working with me again.

Not just a shift or two, but every single night I was on the schedule.

I was torn between crushing the paper in my hands and wanting to frame it because again, I was working with him.

Was I excited? Nervous? Worried? Exhilarated?

All of the above.

I'd known Hector, or as everyone on campus knew him as Crank, since I was in middle school. His sister Blanca and I were best friends. I still remembered the first time I walked into her house and there he was! Coming out of the kitchen with a bottle of water in his hand. When I looked up at him, I'd thought that's the guy I would want to marry . Me and my na?ve little thirteen-year-old heart. To me, he had been like some young prince from a fairy tale. He'd been playing football since he was six and had the body to show for it.

Especially now. My eyes moved toward him and roamed up and down his body. Hector was more than fit.

I remember feeling so excited and sad all at the same time when he graduated and went off to school. The next four years passed in a blur. I practically lived at the Dominguez house. My mom had fallen off the sobriety wagon after my dad remarried the summer before my freshman year. It didn't matter that they had been divorced since I was four; the woman had somehow thought they would get back together one day. But my mom always had her own kinds of demons. She had always been mean and battled her addictions. But after Dad remarried, they got worse and worse.

Coming from where we came from, growing up where we did and seeing the people around us make nothing but the same mistakes as their parents, I'd always found Hector and the way he worked toward a goal motivational. He'd worked hard in high school to get the scholarships he did and then play ball all while maintaining straight A's. It had been encouraging. He made the impossible seem possible. Within reach. Without knowing it, seeing how hard he worked and how his efforts paid off had given me something to reach for.

I took every possible class I could, as well as college courses online. When I'd graduated, not only had I received my high school diploma and accidentally became my class valedictorian, but I graduated with my AA and over ninety transferable units, making me a little over a junior by the time I started school.

When I was accepted to U of D, I'd been excited. You would think your mom would be, too? Mine was not. When she found out I got accepted to my dream school, she'd looked at me and left. When she returned, the fight we had was like nothing I'd ever experienced. I was used to her words and put-downs, but she never got physical. Not until that day. When I ran out and over to Blanca's to ask if I could stay over until my mom cooled down, Mrs. Dominguez took one look at me and told me to go to sleep and that she would be back.

An hour later, she returned home with all my things packed into her small SUV. She was the best. I never asked what happened or what my mom had said, but she had reassured me that I never had to go back or talk to her if I didn't want to. My mom never reached out. The funny thing was, I didn't miss her. I still talked to my dad, who lived in Arizona with his new wife and kids, but we never talked about my mom or the fact that I wasn't living with her anymore.

The Dominguez' had made me an honorary member. Including their Grandpa Mike. It had been heartbreaking to see him get sick and slowly pass. I tried to be there as much as possible and made myself scarce when Hector came home for visits. I didn't want to be in the way or interrupt their family time.

I had won some scholarships and financial aid. Most of my tuition, room, and board were covered, but there were a lot of unexpected expenses that popped up I hadn't calculated in. But I'd been managing. Working night shifts at Stacked, a local little diner, and at the college library. Doing random side hustles for some extra fun money even though I didn't necessarily ever have the time to have fun.

I started to fold the schedule and could feel Hector watching me.

Hector, or Crank like everyone at school liked to call him, was incredible, and it only reminded me of how incredibly out of my league he was. The schoolgirl crush I had on him as a budding teenager, that I thought had gone away, was back in full swing. Especially now that he was working here for the summer. I glanced over my shoulder.

Standing by the water cooler, Crank filled his water bottle, his biceps flexing and relaxing.

Not staring at me. Me and my stupid imagination! I was crazy. Seriously certifiable.

Crank Dominguez staring at me? Who did I think I was? The Queen of England?

Our paths hadn't crossed once my first year here. When I spoke to Blanca and her mom, they always asked if I had seen him, but I never did. That didn't mean I didn't hear everything about him. Not just from his family but from people in my classes. Especially during the football season. Crank had a reputation. He liked to work hard on and off the field. And from what I had overheard from a group of sorority girls, he liked to play just as hard.

Six weeks ago, he'd stopped by Stacked looking for me, and I'd felt like maybe he'd seen something in me. Something he liked. But it was wishful thinking. I was pretty sure Blanca or her mom had put him up to it, but he never confirmed it. We'd talked, or rather stared at one another in a weird silence I still wasn't sure had been good or bad, and then I'd had to go back to work.

I'd been positive I wouldn't see him again.

I'd felt like I had stepped into the Twilight Zone when I walked out of the diner at five in the morning only to find him standing by his car with a bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He'd hurried right over to me with an easy smile and handed me said coffee and a bagel breakfast sandwich so loaded up I was pretty sure it could have fed me and my two roommates. He'd insisted on giving me a ride since he was going back to campus.

And after working a double, a ride didn't sound so bad.

When I'd gone into work two days later, there he'd been. Wearing the same uniform polo as I did. I had no idea why Crank was working there. He didn't need the money. Or at least I didn't think he did. The guy was pre-med now, though, according to his sister. Maybe he was trying to save up for medical school?

But with his grades, I was almost positive he'd get a scholarship. Maybe that's what he was doing? I glanced up at him through my lashes and licked my lips. He looked like the kind of man who would always have a plan. And another ready to go in case that didn't work out. I heard him move around the small break room and blinked. I was working every night shift with Crank.

Again.

"You get the new schedule?" His deep voice cut through my thoughts. I blinked and felt my face start to warm up under his gaze. He had caught me staring at him.

Hector ‘Crank' Dominguez had always been a good-looking guy.

He was so much more now.

He was everything.

Rugged and handsome. Intelligent and quick witted. Strong and brave. As nervous as I got about working our shifts together, he was the only one I ever felt safe doing the overnight ones with. Crank was larger than life, like Batman or Superman, so much so, it felt like nothing could ever go wrong around him. Even during an overnight shift in a part of the city that left some to be desired.

We didn't work in the middle of the downtown area, where tourists and the more than well-off students liked to frequent. Not that it was super dangerous or anything; it wasn't. But working those shifts with Crank after working them with Greg let my mind be a little more at ease.

Especially since no matter what, Crank always insisted on driving me home and walking me to my dorm, even though he lived across campus in the athletic dorms.

"Libby?"

"What? I'm sorry." I shook my head and laughed at myself. I was nineteen and a virgin, but it didn't mean I had to act like a blushing schoolgirl around him! "I got distracted."

"That chem class kicking your butt?" he asked with genuine concern in his dark gaze.

"No. I mean, a little, but it's nothing I can't handle. So, umm, what were you saying?"

"You got your schedule." He pointed at the folded paper in my hands.

"Yes." I nodded.

"I noticed you have tomorrow off," he said off the cuff, and I frowned.

"I do?" I never had a Friday night off, not since I started working here a week after classes started last fall.

I quickly unfolded the sheet and looked at it again. I had been so focused on who was working that I didn't pay attention to the days I'd be on. I was just so used to having the ones no one ever wanted. Which included the weekend. I chewed on my bottom lip as I studied the dates. I am off the entire weekend!

"Looks like I don't," I murmured. "I have the weekend off." I glanced back up, and this time, Hector's complete attention was on me. Whenever I caught him staring like this, it was jarring. The intensity in his gaze, the way it felt like he didn't miss a thing. And today was no different.

"Wanna hang out tomorrow?" he asked, and I blinked.

This was another thing I couldn't believe was happening. Not only did we work each and every shift together, he kept asking me to hang out. I had no idea why. Maybe his mom or Blanca kept bugging him? I knew they worried I wasn't having any fun, but I didn't mind focusing on my classes and two jobs.

Hector had asked me to a party when he'd stopped by that first time, and a part of me had wished I had said yes. I mean, at the time, I had figured that invitation would be once in a lifetime.

Boy, was I wrong!

After our second shift together, he'd asked if I wanted to go to a different party. And like the first time, I turned him down. Nerves and anxiety about not having anything cute to wear or what it meant to go to a party with the school's star linebacker got the better of me.

But he didn't seem to get the hint.

Then, three weeks ago, he stopped asking. I would have been bummed out if it hadn't been for the fact that he seemed to always pop up of nowhere during the day.

Where we hadn't bumped into each other before, our paths now crossed constantly during the week.

Like yesterday, for example. I'd been walking from my dorms toward the dining hall, trying to calculate if I had enough on my meal plan to get something more than my usual oatmeal, when boom! Like magic, there he'd been. Walking next to me, he had led the way toward the special dining hall where athletes usually ate.

Nerves got the best of me then, too.

It wasn't that I didn't have cash on hand to cover my meal; I just hated spending extra if I didn't need to. My tuition wasn't fully covered, and I knew that in a couple of weeks, I'd be trying to come up with the rest.

I'd worried for nothing.

He'd filled a tray of breakfast foods and insisted on paying before leading us to a table and forcing me to hang with him for the rest of the day until my shift at the library.

Even there, he'd hung out and read while I worked, and then he'd disappeared for a while, only to reemerge when I clocked out. I had no idea how his timing was so on point, but it was.

"Lib?" His deep velvety voice snapped me out of my Crank haze and I tried to smile, but by the way he looked at me, I was almost positive I looked a little unhinged. "You sure you're okay today?" He stepped a little closer, and my breath hitched in my throat.

No matter how much time we spent together, he always kept his distance from me. It was why I wondered if his sister had somehow forced him into hanging out with me. Not to mention he always smelled good.

"Yeah, I'm good." I quickly folded my schedule and slipped into my back pocket.

"So, about hanging out?"

"Umm—" I licked my lips trying to figure out a way to gently turn him down.

"Hey, you guys!" Greg, our manager, popped his head into the breakroom. I watched his eyes bounce between us. Irritation flashed but quickly disappeared when our eyes connected. "It's getting busy out there."

"Right," I quickly chimed. "Sorry." Using the interruption to my advantage, I slipped past Hector, accidentally brushing my body against his. The man was visually hot, but his body felt like a radiator of heat. I heard him curse under his breath, and when I glanced at him for a split second, I thought he almost looked pissed.

Why would he want to keep hanging out if he can't stand me being close to him? The question bounced around my head throughout my shift.

For being a Thursday, the diner was busier than usual. Thankfully, it helped the shift pass quickly until about two in the morning. The people who had been out drinking usually stopped by because they weren't ready for their nights to end. Not only that, but for food and coffee to soak up the alcohol and help soften the blow of their impending hangovers.

When the diner was finally empty, I started to do the little things I knew would help the girls in the morning, like refilling the ketchup bottles and the saltshakers. I usually loved doing those small mindless jobs because it gave my mind a moment to wander. Before Crank had started to work here, I usually thought about the books I read for fun or a movie I'd watched or what my future apartment would look like. But since Hector had showed up at Stacked, thoughts about the huge linebacker filled my head.

Stupid, hope-inducing thoughts.

He kept asking me out.

Kept insisting on hanging out.

I tried to tell myself it was because of his sister or mom or possibly both. They had it stuck in their head that I wasn't having fun. But why would he get a job where I worked just to hang out with me as a favor to his mom?

"Penny for your thoughts?" His deep voice cut through, and I jumped.

"Shit!" I squeaked, dropping a saltshaker and quickly bending to retrieve it. Though I didn't need to; he had it in his hands before me.

"Crap! I mean shit! I mean, I didn't mean to scare you." He sounded almost as discombobulated as I felt. And somehow, that was endearing.

"Oh!" My brows felt like they were in my hairline. "You didn't," I lied.

"I thought you saw me coming." Saw him coming? Nope. Not even close. Never in a million years would I have thought a friendship, or whatever this was, would happen. But I didn't think that was what he was talking about. "What were you thinking about?" he pressed, and I shrugged.

"Oh, umm, just about this weekend."

"And how you're going to finally hang out with me?" he asked with a cocky gleam in his gaze. On any other guy, I would find it gross or skeezy. But why was everything so different with Hector? Crank! I needed to think of him as Crank!

"Oh, umm…" I stammered. I had stepped right into that. I looked around even though I knew it was just him and me and the cook in the back. "Can we talk?" It was time to lay things out.

"Uh-oh." He laughed easily, crossing his arms in front of his broad chest. My eyes bounced from his pecs to his biceps to his forearms. I had no idea how a man's body could be built the way his was. Muscle over muscle. I doubted he had an ounce of fat. I wouldn't have believed the guy ate carbs if I hadn't seen it firsthand.

"Mi vida, my eyes are up here."

"Shit," I muttered under my breath, ignoring the sweet term of endearment. Mi vida. My life. I wish! He probably called every girl that.

"I just wanted to say…" He stepped closer, and his hand cupped my elbow. The pad of his thumb stroked my skin, and I wanted to melt right into him.

"Sweetness, you're killing me here. What do you wanna talk about?"

"You sound worried," I murmured. Did I sway in closer? We were so close I could feel his body heat radiating onto me.

"Honey, when someone tells you we need to talk, it's not usually a good thing." He wasn't wrong there. "What's going on?"

"What are you doing?" I blurted, and his eyes widened slightly.

"What?"

"I mean here. Us." I pointed back and forth between us, accidently poking his hard chest. "I mean—" I shook my head. Us? There is no us. "I mean, I get you having to work, sorta, but you know you don't have to hang out with me."

"Lib—"

"And if it's your mom or Blanca making you hang out with me or whatever, I will talk to them."

"First off—" His hand moved from my elbow down my forearm and didn't stop until my hand was in his. For a moment, my heart stalled in my chest. I had no idea how our hands fit so perfectly together, but they did. A soft jolt of electricity went through me like it did anytime he touched me.

He didn't do it often, but every time felt like a first. Like a gift. A gift? Maybe I am seriously touch-depraved? His eyes dipped to our tangled fingers, and there was something about him that intensified. "First off," he repeated. Is it just me or is his voice even deeper? Huskier? His dark eyes connected with mine. "I don't do anything I don't want to do, Libby. Ever."

"That doesn't mean they aren't bugging you about—" I started to argue, but he didn't let me finish.

"They're not." The intensity in his eyes and the confidence in his voice woke something up inside of me. "They have no idea I have seen you since that first day I stopped by." Suddenly, my mouth felt bone dry. I licked my lips and felt his gaze drop to my mouth. Why is he looking at me that way, and why does that make my lips feel all tingly?

"Oh," I muttered, still confused.

He was a star football player. One of the best linebackers to hit the field, not just at U of D but for college football. He had a life. One filled with practices and team events. We were both taking summer courses. It just didn't add up.

Why was he trying to spend time with me?

"I don't like whatever you're thinking," he murmured, and I licked my lips.

"You don't know what I'm thinking." His thumb stroked the top of my hand. The caress sent a shiver down my spine, and my nipples tightened under my oversized uniform shirt.

"I can tell by that look on your face, if I knew, I wouldn't like it." His free hand rose between us, then Crank tipped my head up so our eyes would connect. Locked in, I stared into the dark depths of his gaze. "Hang out with me."

"Is that a request or a demand?" I asked. His lips twitched.

"Whatever one has you hanging out with me works."

"Fine." I sighed. My eyes widened when I realized what I had just agreed to.

"Uh-uh." He shook his head, and his hand tightened around mine. "No take-backs."

"No take-backs?" I repeated. "I didn't say anything," I half-heartedly argued, but what I didn't do was step back. If anything, it felt like I swayed closer. My eyes dropped between us, and I noticed my free hand was on his chest. When did I start touching him?

"You didn't have to." There was a scratchy thickness to his tone.

"Crank," I started to say, but he shook his head and dipped down lower. Suddenly, I didn't need to crane my neck to see him.

It felt like we were at eye level.

His chest brushed against mine as I took deep breaths. His scent filled my lungs with every inhale.

"Hector," he corrected, and I blinked. My eyes dropped to his lips. Hector had a great mouth. Not only that, but his jaw was scruffy. Like he hadn't shaved in a day, maybe two. What would it feel like to kiss him? I wondered, and my face heated up. I could only imagine how I blushed.

I opened my mouth to say something, what I wasn't sure, when the bell over the door sounded, and I jumped back from his touch. His hand let go of mine.

"Hi," I squeaked. What just happened? Had I really been about to kiss him?

I shook the thought away and glanced at the familiar man who walked in. Rodger was one of our regulars. A long-haul truck driver I had befriended a couple of months ago.

"Hey, hun! Long time no see." He smiled and waved.

"Hey! Grab whatever seat you would like, and I'll be right with you." He nodded, and I glanced over my shoulder.

Hector's attention was laser-focused on me, like I was the only person in the diner. An energy I couldn't exactly name bounced between us. Warmth pooled between my legs. I had a feeling he knew the effect he had on my body. I wasn't sure what had just happened or how the hell I was going to get out of going out with him, or which way was up for that matter.

He was off limits.

I couldn't date him or see him or hook up with him no matter how much I wanted to. He was my best friend's older brother. The prodigal son of the family who had taken me in. The only family I had.

Yet every step I took away from Hector felt wrong. I had a feeling I wasn't going to cancel anything. I was going to live a little. I just had to make sure not to mess up.

I could do that. Right?