Nick

October is my favorite month of the year. There’s the start of hockey season. Halloween candy and pumpkin spice lattes. The weather.

Like tonight’s weather.

Fifty degrees.

Overcast.

And dark early so I can pop a movie into the projector behind my parents’ place, stretch out on a pool lounger, and watch Miracle outside.

Okay, fine.

I don’t give two shits about the weather. I don’t want to be hiding by a pool that’s too cold to swim in, watching a movie by myself. I want to have a woman’s feet tucked under my legs.

I want to hear her laugh when I crack a terrible joke and her moans when I talk her out of her pants and bury my cock deep inside her.

I want to kiss her again like I did when I left her house earlier today.

I could hit the bars, but I don’t want some bunny offering to kiss my booboos over the game last night.

I want—

Fuck. I just want. And I want to not think about what I want, but since Lavoie brought it up, all I can think about is want.

And I don’t want to want what I want, but I can’t help myself.

So I’m hiding. From all of it. Including my sister’s attempts to murder me with her eyeballs, because she doesn’t want me to want what I don’t want to want either.

Fuck, I’m a complicated mess.

The one thing I’m not complicated about?

This date Kami’s on tonight.

She shouldn’t be dating random dickheads. They’re not good enough for her. They’ll probably only tolerate her dogs so they can get a shot at her pussy, and that pisses me off.

At least I was honest with her about only wanting her pussy.

And to be friends.

I like being friends with Kami. She’s easy to talk to. She bakes brownies. And she’s the only person who laughs with me at the same inappropriate places in The Mighty Ducks.

Fuck, I’m thinking about her again.

This isn’t good.

I’ve had plenty of friends-with-benefits relationships before. Usually they end when she finds a guy who’ll give her something I won’t—I’m not commitment material, which is something I accepted about myself a long time ago—and we’re all cool with that.

But Kami—she doesn’t have anybody else.

She just got sick of me.

It’s unsettling. Is it age? Is it that I got a little fluffy in the off-season? Am I—

Fuck.

Am I losing my ability to make her come?

I look at my crotch. “We’re thirty-one, dude. Swear to god, if you go soft on me—”

“There you are, you shithead,” Felicity says in her happy puppet voice, which is about the hugest warning she can give me, because that happy puppet voice is about as likely to call me names as Kami is. “Ares, tie him up while I go get a lighter for his shoelaces.”

I jump up, wishing I had that cow with me, because I know Ares wouldn’t lay a hand on me if I were holding a cow. And while I’m dodging him, Felicity hits me with a sneak attack.

She grabs my ear and twists, and I go down like I’ve been hit with a triple-strength stun gun. “Ow! Let go.”

“You know the rules,” she says. “You don’t sleep with my friends. Now you have to pay.”

“Felicity. It’s hockey season. You can’t beat me up. Think of the team. Ares, man, tell her.”

Ares doesn’t tell her. Instead, he grips me by the arms and lifts me, holding me in front of him so she can rack me in the family jewels if she wants.

I don’t thrash and fight it, because I’ve seen Ares squish a small sedan the way a normal man crushes beer cans. Fighting only makes it worse.

I do cover the family jewels though. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I tell Felicity, who’s had to climb up onto the stone patio table to be at eye-level with me because of how high Ares is holding me. “And you should get down off that table before you fall and hurt the baby.”

“You. Know. The. Rules.”

“She was helping me with charm school, and things just…happened.” I hold up my hands, realize I’m wide open for a racking, and cover my dick again. “I didn’t sleep with anybody else while I was with Kami.”

“That’s level one of human decency, Nick. Level. One.”

“I—”

“She called her cousin Muffy for matchmaking because of you. Do you know Muffy?”

I shake my head, do my best not to snicker at the name, and make a mental note to look up Kami’s cousin Muffy.

“She’s the worst matchmaker in the entire country. There’s a dog with a matchmaker website who has a better success ratio than Muffy does. And do you know what the worst part is? The worst part is that she’s determined to let Muffy set her up because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants.”

Please note that I don’t tell Felicity that Kami never complained about my dick. But I do angle a look back at Ares. “Can you put me down?”

“No.”

If anything, he holds me closer to Felicity.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she snaps.

Ah.

So that’s the problem.

Felicity never doesn’t know something.

“I apologized,” I mutter. “For forgetting her birthday.”

“You talked to her again?”

“I fucked up, so I apologized. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?” Naturally, I don’t mention the kissing part.

“No.”

“Women,” I mutter.

Ares flips me upside down and dangles me by my ankles. I flail like a Muppet and he heads for the pool. I can’t even try to rack him in the jewels to get out of this, because he’s holding me facing away from his body.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I yelp, because that pool will be wicked cold this time of year, and if anyone can lift the cover with his mind, it’s Ares. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Do you have any idea how long Kami’s had a crush on you?” Felicity says behind us. “Years, Nick. Years. She would do anything for you.”

I twist, trying to see my sister while all my blood rushes to my head. We’re getting close to the pool, and I actually don’t know that the cover’s rated for the Berger twins either. “What? No, she hasn’t. She’s just nice to everyone.”

“No one is as nice to everyone as Kami is to you.”

Ares grunts in agreement.

And now I’m even more confused. And I apparently owe her another apology.

I know I probably shouldn’t have kissed her today, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

That I could kiss Kami and not end up naked with her.

Because if I can kiss her and then not talk her out of her pants, it clearly means she’s something more than my normal brand of friends with benefits.

Although I’m still not ready to face the implication that it might mean Lavoie’s right.

That Kami might actually mean something more to me, and that her being mad at me is affecting my game.

Like maybe she’s a special friend with benefits.

And that’s as far as I’m willing to commit to, except I’m definitely down with committing to testing this theory that she could be my good luck charm.

“Do you remember the dick cookie incident?” Felicity demands.

I nod, upside down, because everyone remembers the dick cookie incident.

How many other older brothers could pull off having a thousand dick cookies delivered to his sister’s ex-boyfriend’s place? But for the record, I don’t smirk with pride. Even though I want to.

“Kami was the only person who said you couldn’t have been behind that.”

“She clearly doesn’t know me very well.” Thank god. Because I was getting worried for a minute there that she was right.

That Kami might actually like me as more than a special friend with benefits.

Which is way different than a girlfriend.

And yes, I’m going to keep telling myself that.

“Dunk him?” Ares asks.

“That would be lovely,” she replies.

Zeus comes flying from the side of the house, and I mutter a curse word my sister’s unborn baby probably shouldn’t hear.

Zeus must be done having phone sex with his wife, which we could all tell he was eager to get to throughout dinner. Since he’s here alone, and since he’s Ares’s twin, Mom and Dad invite him over as one of the family anytime we get together.

“I got the pool cover!” he yells.

“I can’t undo it,” I yelp at my sister. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to leave my friends alone.”

That’s a challenge if I ever heard one. “But your friends love me. That’s not fair to—erp! Okay! Okay! I’ll leave her alone!” For tonight.

But I still owe her an apology for her birthday, because saying I’m sorry clearly didn’t cut it.

Zeus is hopping around the pool, flipping the cover off.

“Give me your phone,” Felicity orders. She’s stalking around the stamped concrete patio, fingers held out.

“No fucking way.”

“I’m deleting Kami so you can’t bug her. Not for vet calls, and not for booty calls.”

“I don’t need a vet anymore.”

And that’s the last thing I say before Ares releases me head-first into a fifty-degree swimming pool.