“Golfing? Whose idea was it to go fucking golfing?” Sean asked as we barreled down the highway in Cat’s rental car. None of the guys had anything to drive here in Dallas, but apparently, Quinn was a real forward-thinker when Cat attended. If the hotel bar wasn’t an option, or they came up with something to do, he knew they would be needing wheels.
And he’d rented her a Suburban.
He drove cautiously and calmly, the radio thumping quietly with nineties rap in the background, but the rest of the guys acted like lunatics. It was really no wonder they put Quinn in charge in group situations.
Sean glanced to Quinn and narrowed his eyes. “No doubt, this is all your doing.”
“What? Why?” Quinn asked innocently as he steered us off an exit and reached out to capture Cat’s hand. I watched with rapt attention, completely unable to look away while he planted his lips on the skin there and lingered.
God, they are so sweet.
“Southern money,” Sean offered vaguely, and we all turned to look at him. It wasn’t like him to be so vague, so obviously, he expected Quinn to know what he was talking about.
Turns out, Quinn was just as clueless as the rest of us.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Cat spun her upper body, her hand still in Quinn’s grasp but now relegated to the top of his thigh. She made no moves to pull away, but she did roll her eyes at me—and never even hesitated as she ratted her boyfriend right out. “It was him.”
I admired her ruthlessness.
“He’s been wanting to go the Topgolf back home but had been struggling to find a captive audience, what with you all having your own lives,” she explained further.
I thought back to the beginning of my time with the Mavericks, to my unplanned trip to the locker room and thoughts of a particular golf handicap—ten inches, to be exact—and blushed. Thank God my thoughts were private.
“Oh!” Cam yelled from his seat on the other side of Sean. “She sold you down the river, QB.”
We were a threesome in the middle row, cramped with the size of their shoulders, even with the lack of mine. I’d offered magnanimously, as the smallest person in the car, to take the dreaded middle seat, but Sean had cut that off immediately and taken it himself. It was almost like he didn’t want me to be that close to Cam.
Weird.
“What if I’ve never golfed?” I asked, eager to do my sisterly duty and take some of the heat off Cat. Not that she seemed all that concerned.
Quinn laughed, more than willing to focus on me rather than the ragging of his girlfriend, even if the person she’d sold out had been him. “That’s actually more fun. I’ll be sure to stand as far away as possible when you’re up, though.”
I pushed an elbow into Sean’s ribs and lowered my voice to a whisper.
“What about you? Have you golfed?”
“Once,” he admitted, a hard swallow making his throat bob. His eyes were manic as he glanced at me and then forward again. The eye contact was there but fleeting, and nowhere near consistent with the level of Sean’s normal confidence.
My eyes narrowed as I asked, “Why was that word so filled with trauma?”
Sam Sheffield leaned forward from the seat behind us and surprised me. “He went with his brother-in-law and his friends, and he was awful. Thatch still hasn’t let him live it down to this day.”
The name Thatch stuck in my throat. I’d had firsthand experience with the guy now, and he was seriously irresistible. I wasn’t about to tell Sam that, though.
I could only imagine the ragging he gave Sean on a daily basis. From what I’d witnessed of the guy, he didn’t exactly seem like the quitting type. No, he seemed like he’d make you live in a hell of your own making until the day you died, just for his enjoyment.
I pulled my lips in on themselves and tried to say something positive. “Practice is good, then, right?”
Sam laughed. “It would be if he weren’t banned from the course.”
My eyes widened, and I coughed a startled laugh before I could stop it. “Banned?”
“It’s a long story,” Sean mumbled.
He couldn’t be thinking this was the kind of thing he could leave at that, could he? I mean, I lived for these kinds of stories. Hell, I’d built most of my career as a YouCam blogger with similar ones of my own. “One you’re going to tell me, right?”
“If he doesn’t, I will,” Cam offered, obviously listening in as well. I laughed at how cutthroat they were for being teammates and mused about doing a segment about it at some point. There had to be something to it.
Teammates on the field. Enemies at the after party.
Pretty sure that would land me a pretty healthy lawsuit from Wes Lancaster.
“I told you. We should have gone out ourselves,” Sean insisted quietly. Not quietly enough. The quarters were close, and my, oh my, Grandma, the ears were large in this car.
Sam laughed. “Oh, come on, Sean. Six is smarter than that.”
Sean’s smile faded immediately, and a twinge of disquiet turned in my chest.
Sam’s words were among the scariest I’d ever heard.
Because all I could do from that point on was study the planes of Sean’s disappointed face. The heavy line of his brow. The sharp downturn of his eyes. The ragged misshape of his mouth.
A sadness clung to him and made me want to reach inside to find the root. Would it be deep and endlessly seated, or was it new growth?
And was there a way I could fix it?
Realizing how quickly my thoughts had fallen victim to the death nail in every woman’s coffin—the fantasy of a man who needed her—I frowned.
I feared the truth with acute terror—I wasn’t smart. When it came to Sean Phillips, I’d proven I wasn’t smart at all.