Rookie Move (Playing for Keeps, #1)

by Riley Hart

Because another undeniable thing about him was that he was even hotter in person. Tall, leanly built, with a stubbled square jaw, dark hair, and the kind of blue eyes that could pierce you even from the far end of a hallway. Which they were definitely doing now.

I’d learned two things tonight. One: these were my people. Or at least, I wanted them to be, and I was hell-bent on spending the next four years getting there. And two: I was most definitely bi.

“I just can’t figure out how one human can contain so much genetic lottery winnings. It seems like even nature would say, ‘That’s not fair. Let’s give him a weird eye or ears that stick out.’ Something. Some flaw.”

Garrett McRae was ridiculously fucking hot too. I liked knowing he thought that about me. I’d liked hearing it even more.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, or where I was going, or why I suddenly wanted him so much, it was hard to breathe.

I’d always been attracted to him. He amused the shit out of me. I loved how he never stopped giving me hell, but this craving for him was different.

“Wow…you’re going to marry my baby brother.” “No I’m not.” “And have his babies.” “Ha-ha.” “You’ll adopt a bunch of them, fill that big-ass house of yours, buy a minivan with stick figures on the back windshield.”

I’d been hoping the crush would fade with time and familiarity. Instead, it’d blown up into something dangerously…more. Something dangerously close to love.

He was supposed to be an itch I’d scratched, then moved on, but somehow he had burrowed beneath my skin, sank down, and rooted himself in the marrow of my bones, and yeah, that was some poetic fucking shit, but it was how I felt. He’d somehow become a part of me, this extension of myself that lived inside me.

I wasn’t sure there was anything I wouldn’t do for him. I…Jesus, I needed him, didn’t I? My whole life I’d tried not to need anyone, but I did when it came to Garrett McRae.

“Seeing you get hurt like that…nothing else mattered. I don’t give a shit what the league says or if the media freaks the fuck out. You make me feel…” Happy. Loved. Worthy. Important. All those things and more were true, but I settled on, “Everything. You make me feel everything.”

“I love you, Garrett McRae, and I don’t give a fuck who knows.”