“You know what I mean. Also, I’ve been thinking. Know what Lila has that we don’t?”
I can think of a thing or two. Starting with her shampoo. The way her eyes go smoky when she’s turned on. The way her entire face lights up when she sees me breathing fire after reading her last email. How soft her skin is on her lower back.
The way she moans when I slip my hand into her pants and suck on her tits.
Fuck.
Davis smirks like he knows what I’m thinking. “The debt.”
Debt. Right. That’ll kill a boner. “We planned for that.”
“Yeah, but—” He stops, shakes his head, and gives me a funny look that I can’t interpret. With Davis, that could mean anything from I have gas and you’re lucky we’re not stuck on a bus to I have an idea I’m working on, but I don’t want to talk about it yet. “We don’t have a sugar daddy who can just pay it off for us.”
And now I’m thinking about Lila banging a seventy-year-old guy with bushy ear hair who wears Ray-Bans inside, and there goes my blood pressure.
The smirk is back.
He pulls his beer out of reach before I can grab it and pour it over his head, because the fucker did that on purpose.
“Chill, old man, and hear me out. We can’t hit the salary cap on our own without a significant line of credit, and that’s before we talk about coaching staff. Get the fucking best and let her pay for it however she’s paying for it. And when she gets bored with everything, or when the team doesn’t improve enough for Pakorski to justify not forcing her out, the team’s in better shape, but still affordable, because who’s out the money? Not you. Not me. And not her.”
“What makes you so sure she’s getting funding from Wellington?”
This time, his look says I’m an idiot to pretend she could get it anywhere else.
“Maybe she has a trust fund,” I mutter. “My kids have trust funds.”
“Because you’re you. Word around town is that Beversdorf was flat broke. House was mortgaged. No life insurance. Lila lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Midtown Manhattan. The only thing she’s ever made the gossip pages for was spending a hundred grand at a bachelor auction. That was all Wellington’s money, and they hired the dude she bid on to help open the publishing house she’s getting in the company liquidation. Wellington gave her a fucking company when he retired with more money than god. He’s payrolling the Fireballs.”
The Rivers’ dogs suddenly start barking next door, and we all turn as four shadows stroll into the back yard. One’s familiar—Wyatt Morgan, Beck’s best friend who grew up in his grandma’s house two doors down and is now married to Beck’s sister—and the other three are new.
“That guy,” Davis murmurs. “That’s the guy she hired to run her publishing company. Also, I didn’t forget everything I heard when I was spying on her for you the other day. Somebody liiiiikes you.”
My pulse leaps and my mouth threatens to go dry. “Don’t be fourteen.”
“So, no singing about the two of you sitting in a tree?”
“Only if you want me to shave you bald in your sleep.”
We both rise as Wyatt leads Lila and her two friends onto the patio. “You made it,” I say.
“Seeing as you’ll probably have me murdered by Monday, I couldn’t deny Parker a chance at meeting her favorite stars before you’re all in jail for homicide.”
“Lila,” the strawberry blonde hisses.
The dark-haired guy with them squeezes her shoulder. “She was joking.”
Lila smiles, and the sun reverses course to get closer to her glowing face. “I was joking. But I’m still leery of accidentally ending up with a broken leg tonight.”
“You’re safe,” Wyatt tells her.
“Military?” she guesses.
He nods. Between the buzz cut and the posture, it’s nearly impossible to miss. “And I’d like to keep my best friends out of jail.”
“Thank you.”
Pretty sure she’s missing the gleam in his eyes that says she’ll still have to answer to his ten-year-old son, who’s pretty upset about Fiery. He glances my way, and we silently agree to save that until dessert.
Ambushes are best served over banana pudding.
And yes, we’ve had our share of ambushes over banana pudding in all our years together.
Lila introduces us to her friends, Parker and Knox. I pretend I’m not noticing that she’s in jeans for the first time all week, and that they fit her like a glove. Nor am I noticing that the fitted T-shirt under her black sweater is a vintage gray Fireballs shirt from back in the day when Fiery looked more like a lumpy kangaroo with baby wings. Or that she’s four inches shorter in sneakers, and that her copper-red ponytail looks soft as Emma’s cheeks.
“Take all the pictures you want, but the kids are off-limits,” Davis tells Parker as he shakes her hand.
He doesn’t have kids of his own, but around here, it’s just like when we were growing up.
Family.
Regardless of blood relation.
Cash arrives to a ton of fanfare, since he’s home least of all of us. The mothers all smother him with hugs and kisses. So do the sisters. Emma screams. She’s going through a phase where she’s terrified of his nose, and even Grandma can’t calm her down, so I end up walking the back of the yard with her while she searches under the orange fairy lights for frogs for James, who wanders back here with us to fly his trucks while he has the run of the place, since the grown-ups who would normally be playing catch or tag or wrestling in the grass have headed inside to load up plates.
My kids have already had dinner, because they’d be complete and total hellions if they hadn’t. And this is one place I’m not worried about germs.
It’s the great outdoors. Not trampled by shoes and touched by a million fingers. Frogs and chipmunks aren’t going to give my kids the flu.
So I’m relaxed tonight. Lost in thought, contemplating Davis’s suggestion that we let Lila do the heavy lifting with paying for making the Fireballs a better team, when that scent tickles my nose.
I straighten from my perch against the fence as she stops beside me. “You’re not eating?” Lila asks.
I was avoiding you. “Waiting for the line to die down. Plus, if Wyatt’s wife sees Davis sticking a finger in the banana pudding in the fridge, she’ll dump coleslaw on his head, and then whoever’s in the vicinity will have to help clean up.”
“When you said the whole gang, we assumed you meant you and your former bandmates. Not…all of this.”
“Bro Code extends beyond the five of us. It’s all of us who grew up together. Sisters included. All of them answer to bro. We indoctrinated Sarah this year too.”
“And Mackenzie?”
I don’t try to hide a smile. “Oh, is Mackenzie here?” Sarah’s best friend is the biggest Fireballs fan in the universe. She and I have spent many hours over the last year and a half discussing ways to turn the team around.
“Is Mackenzie here?” Lila mocks. “No, Lila, I didn’t set you up to get cornered in the bathroom by the Fireballs’ most rabid fan.”
She’s fucking adorable.