Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66200 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66200 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 331(@200wpm)___ 265(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
“Happy birthday, champ,” I chuckled. “You look awfully familiar.”
He beamed at me and turned around, and there it was in gold letters. “Kidd 4.” Same on the helmet.
“I’m you!” he replied excitedly. “And, look!” He pointed to the eye-black stickers on his cheeks. Or maybe—hot damn—maybe it was the scar Soph had painted on his cheekbone. I’d gotten my scar after an accident. Soph had been…nine or ten years old. She’d fallen off a haybale, and I’d made a run for it, managing to dive right before she hit the ground so she’d landed on top of me. In the process, I’d hit my face on a rock.
I’d been the hero of the entire ranch that year, and I’d returned to school with a cool scar.
“You look fantastic, buddy.” I grinned and touched the captain’s patch on his arm. “I’mma need a picture of you later.”
“Momma took a thousand!” Teddy laughed and promptly announced he had to show Sebastian his costume too. The man in question was waiting in the kitchen doorway, watching with an indulgent smile.
“Look, Bastian, I’m Uncle Blake! He was a quarterback when he was little.”
I zeroed in on Soph and Dylan instead, and they passed the other two in the hallway and joined me in the living room.
“Talk about attention to detail, sis.” I hugged her to me and kissed the top of her head.
“I did good, huh? It took me two weeks to get the art on the helmet right.” She smiled proudly.
“I’m impressed.” I assumed she’d looked through all the pictures she could find from back then. “How’s my li’l Bella?” My niece was strapped to Dylan’s chest in some snug-as-a-bug carrier that looked more like a stretchy sheet wrapped around his torso.
“She’s a daddy’s girl, that’s how she is,” Soph grumbled. “I swear, all she does around me is scream, but the second he swoops her up, she’s smiling and cooing.”
“She’s exaggerating,” Dylan told me with a wry smirk. “Isabella does prefer it when I’m the one changing her diaper, though. But that feels more like a punishment.”
I laughed.
Soph did too. “Actually, I don’t mind that part.”
I bet.
A minute or so later, Dylan said he was gonna heat up a bottle for the little one, so he excused himself to go to the kitchen. And it was probably for the best, because I wanted to talk football with my sister, and the Washington folk just didn’t seem to appreciate that. So far, I hadn’t met a single Seahawk fan in Camassia, nor had I spotted any caps or other gear with college team logos. No, wait, there’d been one. I’d seen someone wearing a Huskies scarf in town.
“You lookin’ forward to the game on Saturday?” I asked.
Soph frowned immediately. “No, because I have to freaking work. It sucks. But I made reservations at that sports bar I told you about. One for the game against Auburn, and the other for Georgia Tech.”
Those were the two most important games, so that was good. It was gonna be a great football month with several big games. “Are reservations really necessary?” I figured with the time zones and all, the bar should be empty that early.
“It is if we wanna get in on the dining,” Soph replied. “The lunch games are decent, but the breakfast games—I swear to you, I haven’t had food that awesome outside of the South. The game against Georgia Tech is early—around nine, I think—so I reserved breakfast baskets. They’re to die for.”
Food served in baskets was my favorite. “Nothing can go wrong when food comes in a basket.”
“Right?!” She slapped my arm. “You get it. I gotta tell you, Blake, it’s really good to have you back here. Someone who finally wants to catch games with me.”
I chuckled but felt bad for her. Once we’d gotten older, she and I had kinda hung out in the same group of friends back home, and we’d had a solid squad for games and tailgate parties.
“By the way, I’m totally not getting involved, but did you spend the night here?” she asked curiously.
I smirked. “The man can’t be in the same room with me for five minutes without hurling an insult, but he’d let me sleep in his house?”
“Ouch.” She winced. “I didn’t know it was still that bad. I thought y’all were making progress.”
I wasn’t sure screwing in the parking lot was considered progress. If anything, it felt like the opposite, because Sebastian grew angrier, and I’d lost my resolve to stay away from the man. All the warnings, the red flags, the promises I’d made to myself—fucking gone.
“It’s difficult to make progress when he refuses to listen to me,” I said.
Soph quirked a brow at me. “Since when did that stop you? Make him listen. You gotta understand that, in his eyes, you had no excuse or explanation. You up and left just because it was easy. He sees the deceit—you spent so much time with him and didn’t mention a word about the program for Teddy in Georgia, and you know how Sebastian feels about Teddy. They’re so close, Blake.” She paused and offered a fond little grin. “In a way, they became best friends before Sebastian and I did.”