Crush

Turning off a burner, Thomas grabbed LJ and tossed him over his shoulder before galloping around the room in circles. The poor neighbors below us.

“So that’s your dance partner?” Holly said, watching the two of them charging and squealing around the room.

“That’s him.”

“I can see why Jude went ape shit when he found him undressing you,” she said, heading back toward her suitcase.

“That’s not exactly a revelation, Holly. Jude does, would, and will go ape shit on anything that remotely resembles a man who tries to help me undress.” I followed her and plopped down on the sofa.

“Yeah, but Thomas is cute,” she said, stealing a glance at him.

My brows came together. Thomas was good-looking in a beautiful kind of way. Dark, long hair, eyes almost as dark, and flawless alabaster skin. He was easy on the eyes and had caught the attention of more than the majority of female dancers at school, but their cute and Holly’s cute didn’t seem like they would have aligned. Holly was more on the same page as me: she liked the rough, rugged, raw, handsome, all-male type.

“You think Thomas is cute?” I asked.

“Don’t you?”

I shrugged, watching Thomas and LJ where they now wrestled on the ground. “Yeah. But—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Holly interrupted. “He plays for the other team. That’s obvious. Look how thoughtful he is, how well he dresses, and how his eyes never wander below my neck.”

I was about to clarify Thomas’s sexual orientation when LJ went off like a fire alarm. I made a mental note to pick up some Excedrin next time I was at the store.

“Aunt Luce, is this for me?” he asked. Well, he yelled.

“LJ. Were you going through Aunt Lucy’s things?” Holly said as he sprinted toward us with a present in hand. Jude had even had it wrapped in yellow-and-blue paper.

“It was in her bedroom,” he said, turning the present over in his hands.

“What were you doing in her bedroom? I told you Lucy’s bedroom is off-limits.”

“I forgot to tell you,” I said, grabbing LJ and tossing him into my lap. “You guys are going to take my room and I’m going to be out here.”

“What?” Holly said, like she’d heard me wrong. “No. No way, Lucy Larson. We came on the understanding we’d inconvenience you, not straight-up displace you.”

Thomas crashed down beside me. His hair looked like it had been whirled around in a blender a few times.

“Will you listen to me for once, you stubborn brat? You and LJ are taking my room. He needs a quiet spot where he can sleep, and there are two of you. I already ordered a twin mattress and a couple room dividers to set up out here for me, so it’s done.” I arched a brow and waited. Holly liked to argue with me almost as much as Jude did.

What she did next, though, I wasn’t expecting. I’d been braced and ready for another five rounds of back-and-forth. Instead she threw herself down beside me and pulled me into a hug that was so tight it almost cut my airway off.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you and Jude.” She sniffed into my hair. I’d never seen her cry. In fact, I’d come to the conclusion she couldn’t cry.

“You’d be fine, Holly,” I assured her, just like either Jude or I did when she tried to give us more credit than we were due. Holly had crossed the proverbial Nile all on her own. Jude and I had just been there to provide a little help along the way. Patting her back a few times, I winked at LJ. “Well. Are you going to keep staring at that thing all night or are you going to tear into it?”

His face lit up right before a hurricane of wrapping paper flew into the air.

“A football!” he said, jumping up and down. “A real football. Not a baby one.” Arching his arm back, he launched it straight into Thomas’s stomach.

Thomas grunted, fumbling with the ball like he didn’t know whether to throw it or pirouette with it.

“Holy snickies,” Holly said, examining the ball in Thomas’s hands. “Are those signatures on that thing?”

“Snickies, yeah,” I replied, realizing I’d have to really watch my mouth now that an innocent set of ears was around. That, more than anything else, seemed like it would be the hardest part of this situation.

“As in the signatures of a certain Jude Ryder and the rest of his teammates?” Holly was gaping at the ball now.

I shot her a smirk. “No. Jude Ryder and the rest of the members of the Bad Boys Club.”

“In that case,” she said with a slow smile, “where are the phone numbers?”

Thomas handed the ball back to LJ before popping up from the couch. Zeroing in on the door, he shifted. “I’d better get back,” he said. “I’ve got an hour’s drive ahead of me.”

Holly and I exchanged a look. Thomas had seemed ready to spend the night on the couch, and now he couldn’t get out of here fast enough.

Hopping up, I followed after him. “Thanks again, Thomas,” I said, opening the door for him. “I owe you a solid.”

He paused in the doorway and looked back to where LJ was tossing his ball to Holly. “No, you don’t. I haven’t had this much fun since karaoke night, when you sang a drunken version of ‘Hey Jude’ before falling off the stage.”

I scowled at him. That was a night I didn’t like to remember. Jude had been in town that weekend, and the bartender had been a bit heavy-handed with my drinks that night. The result wasn’t pretty.