Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“What about me?”
He dips his face toward me. “Are you too delicate for my double entendres and extra inches?”
I pretend to think. “Well, I’m going to have to think about that. On one hand, I am a lady, but on the other, I’m also very well aware of your pre-season rituals, so I don’t know, Mr. Thorne. It’s a tough choice.”
I laugh then.
Because until I said it, I had completely forgotten about that.
About his pre-season ritual.
Or more like start of the season ritual.
Something he’d told me about the same night we’d met. While dancing together, we started exchanging crazy things we’d done in our lives. Mine was streaking through a party on a dare—I was drunk and in a playful mood. And his was the twins story. So for the lack of a better way to explain it: every start of the season—ever since his high school soccer career—he somehow finds two girls who are identical twins and has a threesome with them.
Yup.
A threesome.
With identical twins.
First of all, it’s so hard to find identical twins, or at least I imagine it would be. And second of all, if he did find them and if they’re age-appropriate, so many things have to align: they have to be willing to have a threesome with him. They have to be willing to get naked in front of their sibling. Not to mention, they have to be willing to be a one-night stand. And when I raised all those questions to him, and I did at the time, he told me it just happened for him. That he never had to put in a lot of effort in finding these girls; they just showed up and everybody banged and then everybody left.
The girls for his last season came all the way from Chicago.
But anyway.
The important thing is that I’m laughing. That all the heaviness from earlier, all the awkwardness I’d built up in my head, my encounter with my mother is gone and it’s all because of him.
Is it any wonder that I love him?
As a friend, I mean.
Which puts an instant damper on my mirth.
And I realize that the heaviness is still there, after all. Because he isn’t laughing.
He doesn’t think anything is funny.
“Yeah, you know about that, don’t you?” he murmurs.
“I don’t…” I shake my head. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I—”
“Just for the record, I didn’t this year.” He shrugs, kinda sheepishly. “Not that it makes me a prince or anything. I—”
“It does,” I interrupt him, trying to put his mind at ease. “I-I mean, you already were. A prince. With or without it. And, Shep, I don’t care if you sleep with other girls. You’re my friend and I know you, and it doesn’t matter to me that—”
“I’m your friend, huh?”
I realize that heaviness that was lingering in the air has now reached his frame. His expression.
His eyes.
And my heart squeezes.
It squeezes and squeezes, and I just… I want to turn back time.
I want to go back to the moment when we first met, and when he’d said that thing about pissing off my dad, I want to tell him the truth this time. I want to tell him exactly who I was trying to piss off.
I want a do-over.
Please.
Or actually just let me go back to any of the other moments that came after, when I started to get the feeling that he thought of me as more than a friend.
“Shepard,” I begin. “I—”
“It was a big surprise for all of us when my brother got hooked up,” he begins.
And I stumble a little.
At the mention of his brother.
At the mention of… him.
That’s who Shepard is talking about, isn’t it?
He is… Oh God, is it?
Is it him?
Did he hook up with someone? Who did he hook up with?
Who is she?
I’ve been watching him for the past year.
Obsessively. Sickly. Madly.
How did I not notice that he’s with someone? That—
“Conrad,” he clarifies and my frantic thoughts break.
I’m able to take a breath that was caught up somewhere in my chest, tangled up with the veins in my lungs, the chambers of my heart.
Okay, so Conrad.
Right.
I mean, it’s not as if Shepard has one brother only. He has three.
Conrad Thorne, the oldest Thorne sibling and the head coach. Ledger Thorne, the youngest Thorne brother—not the youngest sibling, though; they also have a sister and she’s the youngest of all.
And well, him, his twin.
“Especially when we all heard that it was with a student of his,” he continues, his eyes now settled on something over my shoulder. “A student who’s fourteen years younger and also happens to be Callie’s best friend.”
Callie, their baby sister.
That I am a year younger than.
Calliope Thorne, or, well, Jackson now. Because she’s married to Tempest Thorne’s—formerly Jackson—brother, Reed. They were supposed to be here too, but Callie’s pregnant with their second baby; they have an adorable little girl, Halo. I’ve only met Callie once, so I don’t know her that well, but I’ve heard good things about her. She also belongs to the girl gang with Tempest and Wyn that I was talking about earlier.