Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)(19)

But Lu hadn’t let me off the hook when I’d mentioned that spending time with Boone had been the only upside to my Wednesday.

She’d reiterated her “bone Boone and bail” stance and then she’d gone to bed. Leaving me to wrestle with figuring out what he wanted to talk about.

Why couldn’t Boone just say, “Hey McKay, let’s have a beer after you get off work, swap stories about what we’ve been doing the last seven years and I’ll tell you what’s on my mind?” I might’ve said what the hell. But the way he kept saying, “We have to talk,” I heard the dun dun dun of ominous music in my head and wanted to run the opposite direction.

After this week’s sensitivity sessions, an even worse scenario tormented me: that somehow, Brooding Boone had become “in touch” with his emotions like that f*cker Peterson. That Boone might expect me to finally “vocalize” my hurt and disappointment to him about his decision to go off in pursuit of his life goals and dreams.

Screw that. Maybe we oughta discuss how much of a dickhead move it’d been when you’d given me, oh, half an hour notice before you skipped Wyoming for good.

Because how I felt about it now? Immaterial. How I’d felt back then? Brokenhearted and pissed off. But that wasn’t news to either of us. So what purpose did talking about it now serve? None for me. Guilt was his issue; he could deal with it.

Right now I didn’t want to think about anything but tracking down the keg. If I got slam-a-lammered, my cousins would let me crash with them. Apparently I amused them in that state, which was pretty rare for me.

I parked down the street from the house my cousins lived in. They’d had a rough freshman year living in the dorms. Over the summer I’d debated on asking them to live with me; I had enough room and we all got along well. Then Ky’s cousin Mase Morrison had relocated to Phoenix to play hockey professionally for the Scorpions and he’d bought a McMansion with his signing bonus. So the pro hockey player, the football player, the rodeoer and the chess clubber all coexisted happily in McJock Central. And seeing the clusters of people filling up the driveway and spilling out the front door…I couldn’t imagine living with this mess. I might love parties but it’d drive me batshit crazy to face the after party destruction the following day. I was about two steps away from having OCD because I couldn’t function without orderliness in my personal space.

A few of the freshman chickies gave me the stink eye when I passed by. Especially when Tug Breckenridge shouted my name from across the yard and made a beeline toward me.

The brute picked me up, tossed me over his shoulder and sprinted with me hanging upside down like a chunk of meat. Tug shouted, “Lookit I found.”

I smacked Tug on the ass—not that he felt it. At six foot six and three hundred odd pounds the center for the ASU Sun Devils defined massive. Tug had a thing for me, which I didn’t exactly discourage. We flirted constantly but if I ever took him up on any of his outrageous suggestions, the man would blush as red as his uniform.

With my hair tangled in my face, I couldn’t see, so I smacked Tug again harder. “Put me down, brute.”

“Stop tickling me, Nevada.”

Nevada. Since Ky lived with two other McKays and was considered “the” McKay with his teammates, the rest of us had nicknames. Hayden was “Vader”, Anton “Cowboy” and I’d been saddled with “Nevada.” At least a few guys on the football team knew what the Sierra Nevada Mountains were.

Kyler said, “Put her down, Tug.”

“Man. Do I have to? She’s warm and soft and smells good.” Tug sighed and lowered me to my feet. He even brushed my hair out of my face; those gigantic mitts of his were surprisingly gentle. He grinned at me. “There’s the gorgeous face I was missing. Girl, where you been?”

“Out of town, sick, and trying to catch up.”

Hearing the word sick, Tug jumped back. “Whoa. Sick? Contagious kind of sick?”

“Not anymore.” I slowly sauntered forward. “Unless you wanna swap spit or exchange other bodily fluids.”

Just as I suspected, big, tough Tug…stammered and took off.

Behind me, a deep, sexy voice said, “I’ll test the bodily fluid exchange theory any time you want…Nevada.”

I whirled around and was face-to-face with Boone.

My heart leapt and my pulse rate quadrupled.

What was he doing at a college party?

What are you doing here? You’ve been out of college for two years.

Goddammit.

Boone had his sexy brooding face on. “Where’d your boyfriend lumber off to?”

The he’s not my boyfriend denial died on my lips. Instead I tossed out, “Probably to get me a beer.”

More of his dark-eyed stare.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Wish I could say the same.” He frowned at whatever he saw happening behind me. “This reminds me of that party we were at in high school. You remember.”

“I try not to think about that party, for so many reasons.”

Boone’s focus returned to my face. “I see it still doesn’t bug you to have hair stuck to your mouth.” He swept his thumb across the corner of my lips, loosening a few strands.

My lungs seized up. Boone used to do that all the time, usually while complaining that my spit had glue-like properties. That simple touch had seemed so intimate back then. It still did.