“You all right?” Quinn asked from his spot beside me at the bar, and I couldn’t miss the way his eyes scrutinized me.
We were supposed to be out celebrating our big postseason win against Baltimore.
One more game and we’d be a shoo-in for the championship game.
This was the furthest we’d even gotten in the play-offs, and it should’ve been a fantastic fucking night.
But Quinn was obviously trying to put a damper on my fun. And, most likely, put an end to one of the biggest reasons for my fun. Alcohol.
“Of course I’m good,” I muttered and took a long swig of beer. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
“Because you almost never drink during the season, and for the past few weeks, you’ve done just that.”
Bingo.
I sighed. “Just calm down, Mom. I’m just having a little fun. No need to get your panties in a fucking bunch.”
He stood up from his barstool and looked down at me with a firm jaw. “Listen,” he said, his voice a near whisper. “I can tell you’re going through some shit and I know it has everything to do with a certain little vlogger, but for now, I’m going to let you be.”
“And what about later?” I questioned, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “What are you going to do later, Mom?”
Internally, I grimaced. I knew I shouldn’t have been taking my anger out on him. He was one of my best friends. And he never failed to be someone I could count on.
But, fuck, I couldn’t stop myself.
He stared at me for a long moment, concern embedded within his steely gaze, but eventually, he just decided I wasn’t worth the time.
“Don’t fucking worry about it,” he muttered, and just like that, he walked away, leaving me sitting at the bar by myself.
We’d just arrived back home in New Jersey a few hours ago, and now, most of our team was partying inside our regular hole-in-the-wall of an establishment, Doolan’s. We came here a lot, but it wasn’t without purpose. It was one of the only places we could go without being overly hounded by fans. Apparently hungry for our business, the owner saw to it personally. Hell, half the time, if it got too busy or if too many people started showing up to get autographs, he would just shut the place down and let us hang out in peace.
It was a good thirty-minute drive from the stadium but one hundred percent worth the time and distance.
Tonight, we blended in to the crowd.
And the only people who really even noticed us were the women who tended to follow the team around.
The groupies.
The fangirls.
The chicks who did everything in their power to fuck a Maverick.
Somehow, they were well-versed in our whereabouts and always made it so fucking easy for any one of us to take them home.
Maybe that’s what I need, I thought to myself. Maybe I just needed a random night of fucking to cleanse myself of her.
Fucking Six.
She was in my thoughts. In my dreams. Hell, sometimes, when I woke up in the middle of the night, I swore I could smell her perfume on my fucking pillow.
I missed her. And I hated that the most.
I hated that I missed the woman who’d so easily walked away from me, who didn’t even want to try to give us a shot.
But it’s not like you told her you wanted to give it a shot, my mind taunted, but I fucking ignored it. With my lips to the bottle, I chugged the rest of my beer and gestured toward the bartender to bring me another.
Before I knew it, I was six beers deep and making eyes at some blond chick across the bar.
I raised my beer toward her and winked.
She took that as the opening I intended and slid off her barstool, sashaying her ass directly toward me and not once breaking eye contact.
“Is this seat open?” she asked, and I shrugged.
“Looks that way.”
“Mind if I join you?”
I raised my beer toward the bartender and gestured for him to bring two more. One for me and one for my new friend with the generous rack. Which, with the way her tits were nearly shoved to her chin, she obviously wanted me to be aware of. I silently wondered if it was a push-up bra or an actual boob job.
It was hard to tell, and I hated that I started thinking about Six’s body.
God, I loved her body. Subtle curves that fit so perfectly into my hands. I loved every inch of her curvy, petite, fucking mind-blowing little frame.
Fuck, get it together, I coached myself. Stop thinking about her and focus on the blond chick who keeps rubbing her hand up and down your thigh.
It was all pretty fucking sad, really.
The fact that I was thinking about Six while another woman was all but shoving her hand into my pants and getting my dick out.
I couldn’t keep living like this, though. I needed to move on.
Eyes focused…well, focused enough, I looked directly at the blonde sitting beside me. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” I asked, and her scarlet red lips crested into a smile.
Her lips were all wrong, but I fought past the turn-off.
“Kimberly.”
“Kimberly, I’m Sean,” I introduced myself, and she just giggled.
“I know who you are.”
“Is that right?” I questioned, grinning, and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “You a big Mavericks fan?”
“I’m a big Sean Phillips fan,” she whispered and punctuated that statement by sliding her hand up my thigh until it sat just centimeters below my dick.
She was pretty in an overdone kind of way, but at this point, I didn’t really care.
All I wanted to do was fuck Six out of my system.
And Kimberly seemed like the perfect option. Hell, she was already trying her damnedest to seduce me.
No patience for talking and no desire to actually get to know her, I decided then and there to put my plan into action.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked her, and she nodded.
“I’d love to.”
I threw a handful of cash onto the bar and waved goodbye toward the bartender.
With my arm wrapped around Kimberly’s shoulders, I led us toward the front of the bar and out the doors.
The cold New Jersey air hit me straight in the face, so fucking frigid it nearly sobered me up completely.
But I kept my focus and tried to stick with the plan.
I led us toward an outside awning, and the blond chick on my arm nibbled at my earlobe and kissed along my neck while we waited for a cab.
It took all of thirty seconds for me to grow tired of the fake little fucking moans she kept forcing past her lips.
I tried to ignore it. I tried not to be annoyed with her. I tried to focus on the task at hand—fucking Six Malone out of my goddamn system.
But when Quinn strode out of the bar and met my eyes, his own shining cold, defiant, and judgmental, I felt like he’d managed to dump a bucket of cold water over my head, even though he was standing like fifty feet away.
Fuck. What am I doing?
I looked down at the overzealous woman, and instead of being aroused, all I felt was fucking nauseated. And disappointed. Not in her, but in myself.
I wanted to go back to the way I’d been before Six had walked into my life, but I couldn’t. As much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, she’d changed me. She’d opened my eyes. And most importantly, she’d shown me that I wanted more than just a random fuck.
I wanted more than that.
I wanted her.
“You need a ride?” Quinn asked loudly, and I nodded.
“We going with him?” the blonde asked me, eyes excited.
I shook my head and started to guide her back toward the bar entrance. “Listen, honey, I’m going to have to take a rain check.”
“What?” she questioned and stopped just before I could get her back inside. “But I thought—”
I cut her off. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t,” I answered honestly. “I wanted to, but I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“No. I can’t.” I shook my head. “Why don’t you go back inside, have a few more drinks, and tell the bartender to put your drinks on my tab?”
Her smoky eyes stared up at me in confusion. “You’re not staying?”
“No,” I stated firmly. “I’m going home.”
Eventually, she shrugged, and without a second thought, walked back inside the bar.
And I did the walk of shame toward Quinn’s truck.
He didn’t say a word, though, and we both climbed inside, only silence, the click of the engine, and the soft hum of the radio filling up the space between us.
Once he pulled out of the parking lot and drove for a good five minutes on the main road, he couldn’t hold it back any longer.
He smirked at me and shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. “So, I was right, huh?”
“Right about what?”
“The reason you’ve been in a shit mood the past few weeks,” he said, and I looked over at him just as he said the one name that hit me right in the fucking chest every time I heard it. “Six.”
He had a small idea that something had happened between Six and me, but I’d never opened up and told him the real details.
I sighed, but instead of lying or brushing it off, I decided to tell him the truth. Hell, maybe telling him what had really gone down between Six and me would make me fucking feel better.
“Yeah,” I finally responded. “You were right.”
“I fucking knew it!” he exclaimed with a soft chuckle.
“Well,” I said through a sigh. “There really isn’t much to know besides the fact that I was starting to fall for her and she pretty much wrote us off as fuck buddies.”
Quinn grimaced. “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, dude.”
“Me too, man,” I responded. “Me fucking too.”
The open road stretched long and far in front of us, and I settled into my seat and let my misery consume me.
There was no use avoiding it.
No use trying to fight it or trying to find ways to get past it.
Obviously, Six Malone had done a real fucking number on my heart.