Getting Played

Dean’s voice pants against my ear.

“Christ, you’re making me crazy. The things I want to do to you . . . you have no idea.”

I meet his eyes, and touch his jaw—my palm tingling with the feel of that sexy, scraping stubble. “I don’t know about that. I have some pretty interesting ideas of my own.”

Hello, sending signals . . . meet mixed.

But I want him. Good or bad, smart or stupid—it just is. I’ve wanted him against me, inside me, over me and all around me since the second I laid my eyes on him, and nothing has changed that. I’m starting to suspect nothing ever will.

“Hey now—this is a family event—keep your tongues to yourselves,” a deep, joking voice says from behind Dean’s back.

He turns, revealing a tall, handsome, dark-haired man in a police uniform with a petite, smiling woman beside him with black curly hair and the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen. At her side is a wide-eyed girl, about nine years old with braces, who’s the spitting image of her mother.

Dean holds out his hand begrudgingly. “Ryan. Good to see you.”

Ryan shakes Dean’s hand warmly. “Dean making out with a girl in the corner—this feels familiar.”

The curly haired woman smacks him on the chest and speaks in a thick, Brooklyn accent. “Stop it, Ry, don’t embarrass her—they’re together now.” Then she waves at me. “Hi.”

“Lainey, this is Ryan Daniels, Garrett’s brother,” Dean introduces us, “and his wife, Angela—we all grew up together.” Dean winks at the little girl. “And that’s their daughter, Frankie.”

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Lainey,” Angela says excitedly. “My gawd, you’re so cute! It sure took you long enough to pick one, Dean, but when you did, you got a good one. I’m Italian, I can tell.”

“It’s like they were eating each other’s faces!” Frankie exclaims, and heat rushes to my cheeks. Maybe the basement of a church during a holiday festival wasn’t the best place to jump Dean’s bones . . . and yet I have no regrets. It was a great kiss.

“I’m never gonna let a boy chew on my face like that.”

Ryan fist-bumps his daughter.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

~ ~ ~

A while later, Callie is in the ladies’ room, and Dean lets Will drag him up onto the empty stage to the drum set that sits, unused, in the corner.

“You’re good for him, you know.”

I turn my head at the sound of Garrett’s voice, looking up at him as he watches his little boy sit on his best friend’s lap as he puts the sticks in his hands and shows him how to play the drums.

“You think so?”

Garrett nods. “Dean’s the kind of guy who was always on the move. He could never sit still, couldn’t just . . . be. Even when we were kids, especially when we were kids, he was always the one pushing for more—a bigger party, a bigger play, louder music, girls, drinking—like he was rushing around trying to find something. Trying to fill a void. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. But since he’s met you, found out about the baby, these last few weeks, he’s been settled. Content. Happy. As his friend, it’s really good to see him like that.”

I think about the last few weeks—about Dean throwing the football around with Jason out beside the lake. It’s not my son’s forte, but he had fun. And I think about how nice it’s been to have someone to talk to and laugh with, and how I look forward to dusk now, because that’s when Dean comes to the house every day.

I remember my doctor’s appointment last week, when he came with me and we listened to the swish of our baby’s heartbeat, which is just the best sound in the whole world. And it felt different than when I was pregnant with Jason—even more joyful—because I had someone there to share it with.

No, not just someone . . . him.

“He’s good for us too.”

I meet Dean’s eyes across the room, as little Will Daniels sits on his lap, smacking the sticks against the drums. Dean smiles at me and winks, and a deep tender warmth suffuses my chest that’s bigger than attraction and more intense than lust. It’s scary and exhilarating at the same time. It’s a piercing, intimate, cherishing kind of emotion—that doesn’t feel even a little bit fake.

Chapter Twelve

Dean

The week before Christmas break, a thick, invisible haze settles over a high school that saps motivation and slows down time. Everyone feels it—I embrace it—and assign my students therapeutic coloring assignments at the end of every class. During my free period, on the way back from making copies in the office, I pass the open doors of the auditorium and see Callie working with Rockstetter—the football player who needed hardcore tutoring and an easy theater-A.

Garrett said she’s been working overtime with him, one-on-one, to get him prepped for his theater debut in the February musical.

This year, it’s The Little Mermaid.

I walk down the aisle to where Callie is standing, directing the big lug of a kid onstage in his red, meaty clawed costume.

A few music students in the pit begin to play, and the tinkling notes of a Jamaican steel drum, strings, and flutes, swirl together and float through the air.

I cross my arms. “How’s it going?”

Callie rests her hands on her baby-bulging stomach, tilting her head. “Well . . . there’s no way for it to get any worse. So there’s that.”

“Good job looking on the bright side.”

“The glass is always half-full.”

I cup my hands around my mouth, and give the wide receiver the same direction I give him on the field.

“Dig, Rockstetter, dig deep! You can do it!”

He waves to me with one claw-covered hand.

“Let go of your embarrassment,” Callie calls. “Feel the water around you—move with it. Think like a crab, be the crab.”

“Wait a second.” Rockstetter shakes his head. “I thought I was a lobster.”

“No, you’re a crab, it’s in the script. It’s in the name—Sebastian the Crab,” Callie replies.

“Ah, shit!” Rockstetter throws his claws up in the air. “I’m so screwed.”

Callie hangs her head. And I verbalize what every teacher will experience at some point in their career. “Yeah, you’re gonna earn your money with this one.”

~ ~ ~

The next day—a Saturday—a mid-morning blizzard blows in and parks itself over the tri-state area, dumping about three inches of snow an hour on us. After I clear Gram’s driveway and make sure she’s good to stay put for the rest of the day, listening to an audiobook with Lucifer curled on her lap, I make my way over to Lainey’s.

She’s in the kitchen, in a tank top and lacey pajama shorts, shaking her irresistible ass and ever widening stomach to Adele while mixing a bowl of dough with a wooden spoon. There are cookies cooling on metal racks all over the counter, and the air smells delicious and sweet.

Not as delicious as Lainey Burrows—but a close second.

“Let me guess,” I say, “Boston Market is out—chocolate chip cookies are in on the craving front?”

She giggles, and just like most everything she does—it goes straight to my dick.

“Snowstorms make me bakey.”

“Bakey?”

Too fucking cute. So fucking fuckable.

“Yep—try one.” She takes a bite of the cookie and pops the other half in my mouth. And—yes—the fact that it touched her lips before mine actually does make it taste better.

How pathetic am I?

“The roads look pretty bad on the news,” Lainey says. “What are you doing here?”

“The roads suck,” I confirm. “I was sliding all over the place—thanks, New Jersey. They said it’s supposed to keep snowing all day.”

I press up behind her, my chest to her back, my crotch nice and snug against her ass, because I just can’t frigging help myself.

“I’m here to shovel your drive, baby. Feel free to take that as the pun it’s inten

ded to be.”

She laughs, leaning back against me—comfortable, warm. That’s where our relationship is now. It’s a sexually frustrating—but good—place to be. I take a deep, quick sniff of her hair, like a coke addict needing a fast fix to get him through the day.

“Jason still sleeping?” I ask.

“Ah, no. He’s actually at my parents’ house. He needed a haircut and wanted to go to his regular barber in Bayonne. My dad picked him up early this morning before the snow started.”

My reaction to this news is an instant, raging hard-on.

Pretty sick, I know.

But the idea that this is now a kid-free space, that it’s just me and Lainey in this big house all alone, that we could do anything—everything—in any room we want, is almost more than I can take.

I swallow hard and breathe deep—and throw myself at the door.