: Chapter 25

Payton

Before, February

Warm lips press to my collarbone, and a smile tugs at my lips. I stretch my neck, allowing him more access, and his mouth curves against my skin, his hair tickling along my ear and making me giggle.

I shift in the bed, spinning, and he takes me in his arms, holding me tightly.

“It’s time to wake up, Payton.”

“Just five more minutes.”

“That would only make you want five more,” he whispers. “Come on, time to get up.” He tugs at my hands, but I just twine my fingers with his, reveling in the warmth.

Finally, my eyes open, locking on to a perfect pair of brown ones. “Good morning, Deaton.”

His eyes slope at the sides, his voice low. “Good morning, Payton.”

“I miss you,” I whisper. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I know.” He nods, his voice fading. “But it’s time to get up now.”

“Wait.” I swallow, reaching out when he begins to blur. “Wait!”

I fly up in bed, blinking around the room when a soft cry reaches me.

I look to the side, smiling down at my son in his bassinet, his big blue eyes wide open, tiny fingers in his mouth.

Warmth spreads through me, and I swallow past the melancholy my dreams always seem to leave behind, yet still, every night, I look forward to them.

To seeing his face and hearing his voice.

“Someone’s awake early,” I murmur, leaning down and lifting him into my arms.

He stretches, his little butt pooching out and tiny arms lifting above his head in the most adorable way.

There’s a soft knock on the door, and my brother’s face appears.

“Hey.” He slips inside to rub his hands over Deaton’s curly hair. “I thought I heard someone.”

I grin, allowing him to take my son in his arms, and I stand, grabbing what I need to get him bathed and laying out an outfit for him to wear today.

“I’m working from home the next couple of days. You can always leave him here with me, you know.”

I nod, frowning at my own wardrobe options—or lack thereof. Literally the only thing that fits that’s not part of my maternity donation pile are sweats and two pairs of leggings that are pretty much stretched thin at this point.

I sigh, digging a pair of fake jeans from the maternity pile and picking from the load of old T-shirts Mason gave me when nothing else would fit over my stomach. My stomach that’s now three months postpartum and still looks as swollen as it did the day Deaton was born. Well, give or take a few inches.

“I know, but the day care center is a perk of the internship.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

“Yeah, but it makes me feel like I’m…I don’t know, doing things on my own, you know?”

Parker nods, making ridiculous faces at his nephew, who tries his best to reach out and grab him but hasn’t quite figured out his hand and eye coordination yet.

My phone buzzes on my nightstand, and I don’t have to look to know who it is.

It’s always the same person, every single morning at nearly the same exact time.

I ignore it for a moment, but Parker clears his throat.

“I take it you know Mason is calling?”

I nod, tossing a pair of socks beside my jeans and top, then reach over to grab my phone. “I do.”

“You gonna answer it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Parker lifts a brow. “’Cause you haven’t yet, and your cheeks turned pink when I mentioned whose name was on the screen.”

A chuckle escapes me, and I raise two brows right back, pressing the Answer and Speaker button all in one.

“Someone was about to get in some serious trouble here, Pretty Little.”

“Don’t you have class or something?” My brother scowls at the black screen.

Mason chuckles, and I quirk my lips to one side. “Don’t you have work or something, old man?”

Parker scoffs, crossing his arms.

“Course I have class,” Mason says. “I’m on my way. This is my pep talk time.”

“She doesn’t need a pep talk.”

“Who said she did? I’m the one about to take a fifty-question exam. Feel bad for me, Parker, ‘cause your sister won’t.”

Parker rolls his eyes, but a smile pulls at his lips as he passes Deaton back to me and walks out.

I drop my phone into the baby shower caddy, heading into the bathroom.

“He’s gone.”

“Good. Let’s start over.” Mason pauses. “Good morning, Pretty Little.”

I shake my head with a smile, turning on the water. “Good morning, Superstar. Test today, huh?”

“Yep. It’s going to be a rough one, and then Coach asked to see me, which is weird since it’s February, and we only really see each other during weight training.”

“Maybe it’s about next season?”

“Maybe. Guess we’ll see. Now, you know what to do.”

I roll my eyes even though he can’t see, but then I give him what he wants. I test the temperature, then situate Deaton in his bath, clicking the button to swap to FaceTime, something we’ve done every day since the gang went back to campus for their spring semester.

His face pops up on the screen, and something knocks in my chest, my cheeks warming at the unexpected sight, but I say nothing as his view isn’t of me. He smiles wide at Deaton and starts talking as if they’re having a full conversation.

As if Deaton has any idea what’s going on at all.

Mason jokes with him about his morning workout, and when Deaton flaps his arms in the water, Mason’s smile grows wide.

“Dang, my man, look at the guns on you.” He chuckles, and a low laugh leaves me.

“He’s getting chubby, isn’t he?” I tickle his belly.

“Nah, he’s getting strong. Tell her, Little D.”

Deaton splashes some more, and for a moment, I wonder if he does know he’s being spoken to.

Mason smiles, and when he looks directly into the screen, as if he’s looking right at me, my cheeks burn for some reason.

I swallow. “Why are you shirtless?”

The smirk that tugs at his lips is deadly, and I almost roll my eyes again, but something forces them to stay locked on the screen.

Man, he’s…ripped.

I clear my throat.

“Had to get an early morning session in. My meeting with Coach is at my normal training time, so here I am.” A whistle blows in the background, and his head jerks left, hand lifting to cover his eyes.

“Johnson, the fuck you doing?”

Mason grins, looking back at the screen. “Oops. I’m caught. Let me see you before I go.”

I shake my head even though he can’t see. “Get back to it, Johnson.”

He laughs. “Yes, ma’am.” Mason looks at the screen a moment longer, then nods. “All right. We’re on for our call tonight? I…uh…” He looks nervous all of a sudden, his gaze straying from the screen, and I bite my nail in response.

Mason swallows, a serious expression now on his face. “I have something to tell you. It’s… I want to look at you when I tell you, though, okay? So tonight, FaceTime, me and you?”

My pulse patters beneath my skin, and I shift anxiously. Trying to tamp down my suddenly rising anxiousness, I tease, “Don’t you have better things to do at college than sit on the phone with me on a Friday night?”

“Ha!” Mason tosses his head back obnoxiously, his smile far too cocky. “Cute. That’s cute.” But that cockiness falls away in an instant, and what’s left is a timid grin that has my blood pressure rising. “Tonight, gorgeous girl.”

He hangs up, and I stare at the blank screen longer than I should.

Mason

“I don’t know about this, Coach. I mean, I know I look good, but are you sure I can’t get in trouble for this kind of thing? Feeling a lot like undercover Playboy but, you know, the one for girls.”

Coach just chuckles, tossing me a second bottle of some shit that’s suspiciously close to lube if you ask me. “Enjoy it, son. Any minute now and a pretty little thing is going to walk through that door. If you ask real nice, maybe she’ll help rub it on your back.”

I scoff. “Yeah, you say that until a dude with big beefy hands and a monster’s build walks in.”

“I’ve never heard them described as beefy, but I guess I don’t hate it.”

My muscles freeze, and oh so fucking slowly, my head turns, attention pointing over my shoulder.

Like in my damn dreams, there she is, standing in my gym and smiling like the Cheshire Cat.

My eyes trail over her, locking on to the fact that she’s wearing my old high school football shirt, the chest stretched mouthwateringly tight over breasts, now even fuller than before. She shifts on her feet, and I notice the camera bag hanging from her shoulder.

My smirk is slow, and I spin to fully face her. “Are you shittin’ me? Am I being punked? Hallucinating? I gotta be imagining this, right? Ain’t no way you’re here right now.”

Coach knocks me on the shoulder, but I don’t break eye contact with the girl. “Beefy fucker, my ass,” he mumbles, then he might as well turn invisible, because I couldn’t tell you if he stays or goes. All I see is her. In. My. Gym.

Well, the athletic department’s gym at Avix, but tomayto fucking tomahto.

She does her best not to smile, squashing her lips to the side and tethering her fist tighter on the strap of her bag with each step I take closer. And I’m moving in on her fast.

I get about two feet from her and raise a brow, and there it is.

She laughs, lowers her bag to the floor, and throws herself in my arms.

Her hands wrap around my neck, mine her waist, and I lift her up, spinning her in circles, her airy laugh echoing around us.

When she pulls back, she smiles, but just as fast, her nose crunches up and she pushes off. “Oh my god, you’re sticky.”

“Yeah, the chick setting up the lights and shit said I had to be shiny.”

“And you, what, used the whole bottle?”

“Bottle and a half.” I frown.

Payton laughs loudly, glancing around the room, her gaze pausing on Jeremy, one of the Sharks star receivers Chase competes against, and Fernando Blanca, a beast of a lineman, the other two from the team Coach asked to be a part of this little project. Her brows raise when Fernando tugs his shirt over his head, and I glare, slipping into her view.

“So. I mean, what the hell?”

Payton grins, gesturing to her bag and the badge I didn’t notice hanging around her neck. “Avix asked Embers Elite to be the official photographer for a new project they’re testing. I don’t know much about it other than it’s for your school newspaper’s social media pages. Today is football, tomorrow baseball, and then basketball.”

Tomorrow… Wait.

“You’re staying here? For three days?” My brain catches up to me, and I look behind her. “Where’s Deaton?”

Her features soften at his name, and she tucks a few loose pieces of hair behind her ear, the rest piled high in a ponytail on her head. “I just met up with Cam at the child development center. I almost turned this down because I wasn’t sure about the situation, but Lolli suggested I call Cam first, and thankfully she was eager to take the weekend to get more of her volunteer hours in. She’ll be there with him each day, and the shoots are only for three hours, so it’s not like he’ll be there too long and⁠—”

“Take a breath,” I tease, my knuckles grazing her jaw before I can stop myself.

Her cheeks grow warm, and she drops her chin to her chest, so I let my hand fall.

“He’s in good hands there. Especially with Cam.”

She nods, sighing and looking past me. “Well, I’d better go meet the crew and get set up.” She pauses when she realizes I’m still staring and narrows her eyes. “What?”

“My mind is blown. I can’t believe you’re standing here right now.” I laugh. “And wearing my shirt, no less.”

“Well, nothing else fits, so…”

“Good. I hope nothing else fits ever again and all you get to wear is my shit.”

She shakes her head in amusement. “Go wipe some of that stuff off. It’s going to dry and be useless by the time I’m ready for you anyway.”

With that, she walks off, and I watch her go, yet another shuffle and shift stirring in my chest, another piece sliding into place.

My puzzle’s got to be nearly complete now, right?

We’re here at Avix. Together. All three of us.

That’s got to be some kind of sign.

Payton steps up to who I thought was the photographer, and within a moment, she’s swarmed, her short little body buried behind half a dozen others from the school paper.

A hand clamps down on my shoulder, and I look to find Coach standing there with a brow raised. “Go on, kid. Get some push-ups in, and get those veins bulging. Wouldn’t want to look like the skinny one in the pictures next to Blanca.”

I glare, and he laughs, shaking his head as he stalks off toward the long table covered in finger foods. Pretty sure it’s intended for the staff, but that doesn’t stop him.

Shaking off my thoughts, I do exactly what Coach suggested, adding in a solid hundred crunches before those big blue eyes find mine in the crowd, calling me over without a word.

Too bad Jeremy and Fernando are called on too. I smirk when I glance at Jeremy, his chest, arms, and overall physique smaller than mine, but a frown digs at my brows when I face Fernando. Fucker’s added a good twenty pounds on since the end of the season, and in all the right places, but she doesn’t like that big, buff look.

She likes trim and tapered, wide shoulders, and a core that looks painted on…if I do say so my damn self. She likes, well, me.

I glance her way, narrowing in on the pink of her cheeks as she looks at the three of us through the lens.

Right?

“Okay, Payton, we want at least a dozen group shots to pick from and then double that for the individuals. We’ll be featuring them come summer, trickling them in to help build excitement for next season. And if there’s one thing the Avix Inquirer readers love, it’s abs, so don’t hold back. Move them where you want them, and let us know when you’re done. Kari and Leddy are working lighting, so just do you, and they’ll follow your lead.”

Payton nods, the slight press of her lips letting me know she’s a bit nervous, but then she blinks, straightens her shoulders, and hot damn. She transforms.

One minute she’s a blushing, shy little thing, and the next she’s bossing a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound man around like no one’s business.

It’s a damn good look on her, but I’m not the only one who thinks so, and when it’s Fernando who goes first for his solos, he’s a smirking bastard, staring her right in the eye the entire time.

I stand to the side, arms crossed and glare intact, listening as she instructs him, praising when he does what he’s told, but when she asks him to twist his torso slightly while keeping his hips facing forward, he pretends like he don’t get it.

“You’ll have to show me, sweetheart. I’m not sure what you mean.” He grins, and the fucker ain’t ugly.

But he is lying.

I’ve seen his Instagram. He’s a thirst trap pro. Loves the mirror.

Payton steps away from the tripod and onto the small rise of the set. Her hands move out, and she directs him without touching him.

Fernando’s eyes are on her face, and he smiles wider. “Like this?” He doesn’t even move.

“No.” Payton chuckles, and this time when her hand goes out, her fingers press to his upper abs. “Twist here. It will define the abs more, and keep facing forward.”

My teeth are grinding together, and I take a step forward when his hand shoots out, wrapping around her wrist as he does what she asked.

Payton’s eyes snap my way instantly, and that is the only reason my feet freeze in place.

She knows I don’t like it, doesn’t she?

Knows I want his hands off her and hers off him.

“Like this?” Fernando smirks.

Anger and jealousy start to boil in my blood, and my foot starts tapping.

This is her job. She’s working.

She’s not touching him because she wants to.

I close my eyes, counting to five, and when I open them, she’s behind the camera again.

Jeremy goes next and listens a hell of a lot better, and then it’s my turn.

I step into the lights, standing tall, and wait for her instructions.

“Uh…um.” She swallows. “Okay, straight on first, and then slow shifts to each side, hips staying in place.”

I’m a good fucking boy, doing exactly what she asked, my eyes locked on hers through the lens the entire time.

“Holy shit.” The lead editor of the Avix Inquirer, as she introduced herself earlier, steps up, staring at the sample screen to the left. Her eyes move from it to me and back. “These are just…yes.”

Payton’s eyes snap up over the lip of the camera, and I wink at her.

I don’t know what those images show, but I know what I was thinking about the entire time she was clicking that little button.

Me and her.

Her and me.

Every which way our bodies could move and how well she’d listen if it were me on the other side of this little situation. How bad I want to get her in front of a camera lens so she can see how I see her.

Literal, utter perfection.

A fucking mirage I want to capture and keep. Spoil. Fucking ravage.

A flush works its way up Payton’s neck, and I chew the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. I’m standing here alone under bright-ass lights in nothing but a pair of navy football pants, undone in the front to show my black briefs.

I lift my left hand, run my thumb knuckle along my lips, and watch as her chest rises, the flash flickering over and over and over. My teeth sink into my lip next, and she drops her gaze to the floor, but only for a split second, and then she’s back, gripping her camera and tugging it from the tripod. She steps right once, twice, and my head follows, my body staying stationary, and I swear she shudders.

“Done,” she calls out suddenly, and then she spins on her heels, her steps carrying her across the room and through a small door in the back of it.

Chuckling to myself, I step down, moving over to my bag in the corner.

I pull my pants off and slip into a pair of track pants, and I no sooner get the shirt pulled over my head than a familiar voice reaches me.

“Hey, stranger.”

Fuck.

I turn to find Allana, a girl I met at one of the football parties when I first got to Avix. “Allana, hey, how are you?”

“Good.” She reaches up, her hands drowning in a baseball hoodie, and tucks her blond hair behind her ear. “I called you a couple of times. You know, after.”

I clear my throat, offering a soft smile. “Yeah, I’m sorry, but I’m…not single anymore.”

Allana nods, opening her mouth, but when my eyes slide away, tracking Payton as she steps back into the room, Allana looks back to me. “Yeah, of course. Well, I just wanted to say hi. See you around.”

I nod, glancing her way briefly. “Yeah, see you around.” I stuff my things in my bag, meeting Payton halfway.

She’s beaming, and the expression makes me laugh.

“Have fun?”

“That was so awesome! They said they love what they’re seeing. I mean, it’s only the sample sheets, and none are edited but⁠—”

“But I’m flawless and don’t need any edits.”

Payton’s lips smack closed, and then she laughs loudly, and when she loops her arm through mine, pride and something else thump behind my ribs. I take her bag and heave it over mine.

“Come on, Superstar.” She drags me along. “Let’s go get Deaton, and you can walk us back to our room.”

“That sounds like the best idea I’ve ever heard.”

She smiles, but of course on our way across campus, Fernando spots us and jogs over.

“Hey, photo girl.”

“Hey.” She smiles.

“Think you could show me some sneak peeks?” He presses closer, and I push her back, glaring harder when he smiles my way.

“Not a chance.” She laughs. “I mean, if I want to get fired, sure…but I don’t.”

“Fine, fine,” he teases, reaching out and flicking her ponytail. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“You won’t,” I snap. “Go the fuck away.”

Payton blushes, but my teammate only laughs, winking before sauntering off like the shithead he is.

I heave a sigh, watching him with a glare. “He’s a jackass.”

We start walking again, and Payton laughs, shaking her head.

“He’s not so bad.” My eyes move her way, and she glances over. “If you think college athletes are bad, you have no idea. The egos only float higher at the next level.”

That’s right.

She’s an intern for hire at Embers Elite, the official photographer of the pros. She’s around men all day.

Older men.

Pro fucking players.

Before I know what I’m doing, my hand is pressed to her ribs, and I’ve spun us, backing her up against the wall of the child development building.

Her head presses softly to the old brick, and I’m on her.

Payton gasps, and my eyes slice to her lips, zoning in on the little part between them, and my tongue suddenly feels too heavy. It wants to slide out and slip between her lips. To taste her.

I need to taste her.

“Mase,” she whispers.

“I don’t like when other men look at you, and I hate when you look at them.” I lean down, lowering my forehead to hers. “I’m a man. A stupid, possessive one who wants you all to himself.”

Another gasp, this one deeper, rawer, and my eyes flick open as I realize what I just said.

I pull back, needing to know what her eyes are saying.

They’re wide and wanting, and once again, I’m locking on her pouty, pink lips. “Pretty Little,” I all but beg.

I lean in, and a door slams at our side, making her jump.

Her head whips away, and it feels like a sharp slap across my cheek.

Fuck.

I swallow, running my hand through my hair when she squeezes away from me.

I open the door for us, unable to meet her eyes fully. “Come on, Pretty Little. Let’s go get Little D.”

Unfortunately, Cameron has him all packed up when we get there. He’s already fast asleep in his carrier, a blanket softly laid over the top, so I don’t get to play with him on the short walk to her room, a small studio-like place in the staff quarters reserved for guest speakers and, well, photographers, I guess.

He doesn’t wake when she transfers him to his playpen, already set up in the corner, and with every passing minute, my limbs grow heavier, so I finally face her and say, “I don’t want to leave.”

Payton smiles up at me, her head tipped to the side. “Why would you leave?”

My brows go up. “You want me to stay?”

“You act like you’d listen if I said no.”

My grin grows quickly, and I face her fully. “But are you saying no?”

Her eyes narrow playfully, and she crosses her arms, but I grip her biceps and give her a little shake.

“Come on, girl. Let me hear it.”

She chews her lower lip, but that smile breaks free, and she laughs. “Hey, Mase?”

I’m full-blown smirking now. “Hey, Pretty Little.”

“Do you want to stay with us tonight?”

Us.

Not just her. Them.

Us three.

I don’t bother answering. I toss my shit in the corner and pull up DoorDash.

I’ll be damned if we leave this room tonight.

I’m not sharing her attention with anyone.

Not even the delivery driver.