The Tight End (Red's Tavern 6)

She also knew how bad things had been for me back in high school. Since college, I’d been able to keep to myself pretty easily, but back in high school I’d been mocked and teased endlessly by the popular guys. Mostly athletes. That was part of the reason I would have greatly preferred to share this apartment with Dani instead of some football player this year.

But then she had to go and get a boyfriend.

And decide to live with him instead of me.

I wanted to see her happy, don’t get me wrong. But now I was stuck with some random guy for my senior year. A random football player. In one of his “getting to know you” emails, he’d told me he was a tight end for the KMU Wolves.

“Can’t wait to meet you, bro!” he’d ended the message.

He even sounded like a jock in his emails.

I had no idea what a tight end was, and I had about as much interest in football as I did watching paint dry. All I hoped was that I could be civil and distant from him, and we could get through our senior year of college peacefully and quickly.

I jumped as I heard a crashing sound coming from the kitchen. It was followed by more laughter, and then someone giving someone else a very stern shhh. I heard the sound of a door closing again, from further inside the house. Our apartment was actually the second floor of an old Colonial-style house, just blocks away from campus, that had been turned into a few separate student apartments years ago. It had old hardwood floors and not much in the way of soundproofing.

I slipped a bookmark into History of the Kingdom and set it down on the table.

>>Logan: I’ll be fine. But I gotta go make sure my kitchen is still in one piece. Talk to you later, Dani.

>>Danielle: Good luck. And I better see you tomorrow!

I put on my glasses before heading out of the room. My vision wasn’t bad enough that I always needed my glasses, but right now, I wanted to be as sharp as possible. I walked out into the hall, glancing over into the living room. Everything looked normal—the couch was empty, the TV was off, and the bookshelves were all in place. There was nobody in the kitchen, but I immediately noticed what had caused the crash. One of the big metal pots that was hanging above the stove was now resting on the table, the handle completely detached from the base.

There was a little post-it note nearby that said “sorry! I’ll replace it tomorrow,” written in a disheveled scrawl.

I bit my lip, grabbing a pen from the little mug at the edge of the shelving unit nearby.

“It’s ok!” I wrote below his words.

More laughter came from the second bedroom. Clearly, my new roomie was having a drunken hookup. Exactly the kind of thing a popular football player and senior in college should have been doing on a Friday night.

But as I was walking back to my room, I heard the second bedroom door swing open again.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” a voice came from down the hall.

I froze in place in the living room, suddenly feeling like an intruder in my own apartment.

“That’s not why you brought me home?” the voice came again. I realized it was a guy’s voice, not a girl’s. Brody’s visitor apparently wasn’t happy.

“I mean, it’s not what I had in mind for tonight—” Brody replied, his voice deep and kind. I could tell he was trying to speak calmly and avoid a fight, but the other guy was already pissed.

“Wow,” the guy said back to him. “You’ll fuck anybody on the planet other than me? Guess the rumors about you aren’t so true, after all.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say I’d fuck anybody on the planet, though I guess it’s true that I enjoy sex. Really, really enjoy it—”

After more muffled sounds, footsteps pounded down the hallway. “All right. Whatever. I’m done with fuckboys. Done with players. Done with you. I’m out of here,” the voice came again. A thin blond guy emerged from the end of the hallway and headed toward the front door. He walked out without seeing me, slamming the door behind him.

I heard a loud, frustrated groan from the second bedroom—Brody’s bedroom, now—and a moment later, he came out, scrubbing his palms over his face as he walked into the living room.

Lumbered out into the living room, more like.

Good lord, the guy was big.

“Oh!” he said, his deep baritone voice full of surprise as he saw me. “You’re here?”

Damn.

You certainly didn’t have to wonder if he was a football player.

The guy was at least six-foot-two worth of muscle and heft, tan skin, and a mop of chestnut brown hair. His biceps looked like they were straining against the white T-shirt he had on, stretching it for all it was worth. Below his shorts were thighs and calves so sculpted that I felt like I was looking at some sort of Olympic athlete.