Something blonde fell onto my cock, and while I don’t hate it, I don’t exactly remember it, either.

She’s no longer in my bed, and the salty smell of bacon reaching my nostrils has me believing she’s cooking us breakfast in my kitchen.

That makes it tough. I can’t kick a girl out who makes me bacon.

I sit up, rubbing my face, scratching my scalp, and grimacing at the achey sway of my brain when I move. There was a lot of drinking last night, thanks to Ash. He found me after my team lost the playoffs, knowing full well I was in freakout mode, since it was also the moment my contract was up and I became a free agent this spring.

In true Ash fashion, he figured finding the answers in a bottle of brown liquor was better than any talk session, and he’s right. My mind ain’t talking right now. It’s screaming.

I groan as I throw my legs over the side of the bed, fresh bruises mottling my hips. Last game of our season, and I’m tackled like nobody’s business, rolling around on the field, losing my helmet somewhere along the way, and bucking against the grass like someone’s trying to perform an exorcism on Giants number 9—me.

What a way to go. Benched in the second quarter of our playoff game because of the NFL’s new, touchy stance about the risk of concussions and removing players who’ve hit their head one too many during a particularly enraging tackle.

Maybe I should be thankful I’m even around to smack my noggin on other dudes’ padded chests. There was a time it was questionable I could even go on as Ben Donahue, MVP of the Gators and third draft pick of the Giants. I would’ve had to leave all the thumps, grunts, and jockstraps behind and figure out a new career, and fuck knows what that could’ve been. Since I was five years old, I’ve been obsessed with football. Playing it, watching it, studying it. When it became clear to my dad I possessed actual talent—in that while other kids smacked into each other because it was fun, I did it because they were in my way as I charged to the Gatorade stand—he hired me a personal coach that showed me where the real end zone was, and that was the start of my predestined future.

What was it, six years ago? Less than a decade since everything I strived for, the past I worked to forget, was nearly toppled by a scrawny, drug addicted idiot named Dodge Hennessy.

I got lucky, then. A few days after the morning that shall not be named, Dodge was found dead of a drug overdose. A bad packet of meth, or maybe meth so good and pure, he took way too much. I didn’t concern myself with the details.

All I cared about was that my secret died with him.

The memorial plaque the team placed for him, the moments of silence we gave him on the field, gave enough thanks for the life he threw away.

Did it make me a dick to think that? When, hand over my heart, music playing, the announcer asked for three minutes of silence in memoriam to Daniel “Dodge” Hennessy before the national anthem? Possibly. But Dodge held my destiny in his hands, and he was willing to scrunch it up and rip it to pieces because he felt left out. And out of some sort of psychopathic, horny mission, he ruined any relationship I could’ve had with—

Nope. Not doing it. Not thinking about her.

“Ben? That you?” a light, musical voice asks down the hall.

“Yep,” I call back, and stand and do a few stretches. I hop a few times, too, in an attempt to dislodge my brain from glueing to one side of my skull.

Fuckin’ Ash.

Throwing on a pair of athletic shorts I find tangled at the end of the bed with some…hmm…particularly lacey dental floss, I clomp out of the bedroom toward the tantalizing smell of breakfast after sex.

“Hey there,” the blonde says as she hears my approach. “Sit down. Food’s ready.”

My stomach rumbles its approval. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well,” she purrs. “Since you showed me such a good time last night, I wanted to show you the same kind of appreciation. I’m a great cook.”

“Are you now?”

I attempt to peer around her to the frying pan, but frankly, if I move again I’m at risk of passing out like a fucking damsel in front of this lady.

“Why don’t you tell me?” she says with a smile while she turns and raises a wooden spoon to my mouth.

It’s cheesy, creamy, and just the right amount of mushy to make me want to hurl.

“It’s—it’s good,” I choke out. I find a glass of orange juice beside me and down it.

“You don’t like eggs?”

“I do. Love ‘em.”

I hate eggs. Despise them with the ultimate death stare. They should be eradicated from this world along with mosquitos. But I can’t insult this girl before I ask her to leave. I ain’t that much of a jerk.

“How’s your head?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Your head,” she repeats, lightly tapping my temple. “You were saying last night how you took a really bad fall.”

“I told you that?”

“Uh-huh. But you assured me your other head was just fine.”

Okay, yeah, I believe that.

“I smelled bacon,” I say.

“Here.” She puts the entire plate of crispy, still sizzling bacon in front of me, and I’m a happy clam. When I crunch down on one I think, damn, now I’m really going to feel shitty for kicking her out when she makes the best crispy bacon this side of Manhattan.

I wonder if she works in a restaurant, or is some kind of chef, especially considering I met her with Ash. It’s then my mind fires up its backup battery, reminding me she better not work with Ash or be any sort of semi-permanent fixture in my inner circle. That would’ve been an incredibly amateur move on my part last night.

Damn, I truly wish I remembered what went on.

But she has to go. To be real, there’s only one blonde I have room for in my life, and she’s in the form of a one-and-a-half-year-old.

Speaking of…

I check my watch and curse when I realize I only have about forty-five minutes before I’m meeting Locke, Lily and Carter in Brooklyn.

“I’m sorry to do this, but I really have to roll,” I say to the blonde.

She shrugs and takes the pan off the heat. “Okay.”

My chin jerks back. Could it be this easy? It’s never this easy.

“I put my number in your phone,” she says with a wink, and fuck-damn, she peels off my shirt she’s wearing and stands in front of me bare-ass naked. “You should call me.”

Or fuck you on the kitchen table right now.

Priorities, Benny-boy. You’re seeing your honorary niece today, and nothing, not even a great pair of tits and an excellent ass, could keep me from it.

“Will do,” I say, honestly impressed. “I’ll for sure remember you.”

She smiles and pats my head affectionately. “You can’t even recall my name, but that’s okay. Hot Piece worked for you last night, and it works for you now.”

“Hot Piece? That’s what I called you?”

“Often.”

She sashays away, her plump ass-cheeks molding firm with each step. “Where did you come from?”

“Daddy’s Girls, down the road.”

“I…hang on a second.” I stand and follow her to the bedroom. “You work at the local strip joint?”

“Sure do, B-Daddy.”

I fucked a stripper? Holy hell, what did Ash give me last night? And why did I want to be called B-Daddy?

“It’s Penny, by the way. My name,” she says as she steps into her thong and shimmies it up her hips, making her tits bounce.

There we go. That’s why I fucked a stripper.

“Uh, nice to meet you.”

“Uh-huh. Finish those eggs of mine, and the bacon. Too good to waste.” She pulls on a hot pink, velvet dress. “Oh, and you should also call back that guy who keeps calling you.”

“Guy? What guy?” I round the bed, lifting the covers so I can find my phone.

I feel a pat on my ass and see Penny holding it.

“Thanks,” I say, but I’m already focused on scrolling through my missed calls. I don’t enjoy receiving unknown phone calls, even less so from men, since everyone I need to speak to doesn’t usually call me incessantly in the dead of night or early mornings. Text messages are more my jam.

“You spoke to him a little in the car back to your place. Aiden, I think his name was?”

A cold chill rushes down my spine. “Aiden? You’re sure that’s the name you heard?”

She shrugs. “Pretty sure. Anyway, be seeing you around, B-Daddy. Always a good time.”

Penny rises up on her toes and pecks me on the cheek, likely leaving a bright pink mark, but I’m not considering the stain, or the fact that always a good time means we’ve fucked more than one night, because the name she flicked off her tongue like it was nothing…means everything.

“See you round,” I mutter, my phone already to my ear.

He picks up the moment Penny saunters out of my apartment.

“Ben? Jesus, took you long enough.”

“Yeah, I was…busy. What’s up?”

“I don’t think I should tell you over the phone. We should meet.”

“It’d be more dangerous if we meet, Aiden. You’re not even supposed to have this number.”

“I know, I know. But this is…urgent.”

“Then spit it out.”

“I really think we should—”

“Aiden. Fucking. Tell. Me.”

My heart’s pounding louder than my words, and I’ve been told when I become angry, I go guttural. And I’m getting angry.

He sighs. “It’s about your parents.”

He’s not talking about my adoptive mom and dad. “You found something?”

“More than something, Ben. Just know I would’ve appreciated giving this news to you face-to-face. The killers have been found.”

I want to sit down, but I can’t. If I sit on my bed, I’ll just fall back, splaying out, and it won’t be like it is on the field. No one will yell at me to get up. Crowds won’t heckle from the sidelines. So I’ll simply stay there, reverting to the four-year-old me, unable to move, covered in blood and stench and ash.

My next words come out as an illicit, low-toned growl. “What did you just say?”

“Your parents’ murders have been solved.”