“She’s the best damn sexy baton twirler I’ve ever seen,” Colin goes on. “Really had a knack for it. Had all the guys begging for her to twirl their baton.”
I shake my head. “He’s joking. As I recall, you were the one, Colin, who had such moves on the football field that you wanted to see how they would do off the field. You were always trying to see how fast you could score.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. I always believed in quality over quantity.”
Faith furrows her brow and glances between the two of us. “Are y’all talking about touchdowns, or something else? I’m so confused.”
“We’re just kidding around,” Colin says, redirecting the conversation. “Silly townie jokes. So, tell me where are you all from?”
He gets a drink and joins up with our circle, and the guys are totally enamored with him.
I have to hand it to Colin, he can be a dick, but he is often equally as charming as well.
“Wow, DJ, you’ve been with Alex since freshman year! That’s impressive. Tell me more about that,” he says.
As DJ talks our ear off about one of his favorite subjects—how much he loves Alex—Colin subtly brushes my hair behind my ear and whispers to me, “So funny to run into you here. I was just thinking about how your naked body felt when it was pressed up against mine that time we did it in the locker room on the last day of high school.”
A shudder rolls down my spine as his words resonate inside me. Colin’s such a smooth operator that somehow no one even noticed him bend down to drop that line in my ear.
I breathe fire back at him. “Yeah, so funny, what a coincidence. You’ve been dreaming about that ever since it happened. I bet you’d like to do that again. Too bad that’s never going to happen.”
His smirk is even as he pretends to listen to the conversation between my friends.
“You’re right. I guess I must have imagined how streaked pink your chest got with how turned on you were when I went down on you in the locker room.”
I try to stop the heat my body is feeling again, remembering that ridiculously hot moment, when another student, Jessabelle, taps Colin on the shoulder.
“Hey! My friends were wondering if you wanted to hang out with us?” she says. “We know you’re the new student and we’d love to buy you a drink.”
“Oh hi there, Jessabelle.” Colin smiles. “Well, y’all, I’d better be a good sport and chat with this nice young lady and her friends. But it’s lovely to meet you all.”
He winks at me and bites his lower lip as he walks away.
“What was going on there between you two?” Faith asks under her breath. “I could hear flirty mumbles but I couldn’t make out what you two were saying.”
I sigh. I might as well break it to them.
“Colin and I might have shared a little kiss in high school,” I admit. “It was nothing serious. He probably did it with all the girls. No, he did do it with all the girls. But he was my first.”
Nothing like honesty to silence the crowd.
Well, honesty with some omission.
It was a fair bit more than just a kiss.
“So…shall we do another shot?” I say nervously.
Chapter 4
Colin
When I wake up on game day, my mind is always on one thing: football.
But this Saturday morning as I toss in bed, after running into her at the bar, now she’s invaded my thoughts and I can’t get Charlotte freaking Hiller off my mind.
Who would have thought that the pretty, docile girl from my AP history class, who I had that summer fling with, would end up being my housemate.
Her brown hair, her green eyes, and that birthmark on her cheek look even cuter than when I last saw her. Not to mention her flowery scent, which seemed to have a line straight to my arousal.
And she basically told me to screw off last night. Well, not in as many words. But that’s what she meant.
I’m not surprised. I’ve been told, many a time, by many a woman, that I have a heart of stone.
This usually comes after a few dates when whoever I’m dating tells me that they want to push for something more serious, and I have to burst their bubble and let them know that I’m definitely not on the serious train.
But even for a guy who has a heart of stone like me, there’s always that one girl who sticks around in your mind.
Call it the old cliché of the one who got away. Call it whatever you want. No man is an island, and the ability not to get emotionally drawn in eludes even the most emotionally distant of us men.
It’s not lost on me that the one who got away is sleeping not more than twenty feet from me in her own room.
With my hands behind my head and still lying in bed, I listen to the birds chirp outside. I stare up at my ceiling fan and think about Charlotte.
I wonder what she’s wearing right now, in bed. Is she a naked sleeper? Or does she wear pajamas? She’d look good sleeping in just my football jersey, I bet.
No, no, no.
I’m not going to let myself go down this road with Charlotte. I mean, she’s my roommate now for the next year, so I need to avoid that end zone at all costs.
But I’m not going to lie: she’s a tempting prospect. Especially when I already know how her moans sound.
I stretch, then head to the bathroom to brush my teeth and shave. I linger in front of Charlotte’s door for a moment on my way there, and I hear the tiniest of sighs coming from her room.
Shit. I’ve got half a mind to barge into her room and give her a nice big wakeup welcome to the house.
She wants me, even if she refuses to admit it. I could tell that much by the way her eyes caught mine when I walked into the bar last night. She might have tried to look away, but I know she hasn’t forgotten about the way her body trembled under my kiss, and the connection we shared.
I know I sure haven’t.
I head downstairs to eat some breakfast, and I find Baker and Greg eating bowls of cereal at our dining table.
“Party tonight here,” Greg says. “I’m totally making my move on Charlotte.”
“Oh, are you?” I smirk, getting out a bowl and pouring myself some milk and cereal. “What’s your plan?”
“I can’t tell you that, it’s top secret.” Greg winks.
“Fellas, come on,” Baker says. “Can we just leave Charlotte alone? She just got out of a relationship. The last thing she needs is one of us trying to swoop in on her.”
“Which is exactly why she needs the Gregster to swoop in and make her forget all of her troubles,” Greg says, and makes a motion with his hand. He puts his palm face down and pretends like it’s a plane landing. “Wounded birds are my specialty. I bring them back to life.”
Baker sighs, obviously annoyed. “No, Greg. We’re not going to be hooking up with our roommate, okay? As soon as you breach the romantic threshold with her, it’s going to get awkward—for all of us—and head downhill fast. Remember how weird it was sophomore year when you had a one-night stand with Whitney Demke?”
“That was different.”
“How was it different? She lived in our suite, and you two spent the rest of the year avoiding each other. We all lived in constant awkwardness.”