Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)(37)

I smirked at the joke, biting back the niggling question in my mind.

Where is he now?

“He’s upstairs in his room,” Leo said, like he could read my mind, and the smirk he wore mirrored the knowing one Mary had given me when I left the house. “If you want to take him a muffin, see if it’ll get him out of his grumpy mood.”

“Grumpy?” I frowned. “He was cleared to practice today. I figured he’d be ecstatic.”

Leo shrugged. “Must have something else going on. But hey, nothing these won’t fix,” he said, holding out one of the muffins. He nodded toward the stairs, and though I narrowed my gaze at the suspicious grin he was giving me, he only pushed the muffin toward me more.

I carefully took it from him, still giving him a look as I conceded.

Leo smiled a little too proudly as he all but skipped back into the living room, and he flopped down onto the couch just like Mary had, putting on his headset and tuning back into the game I’d interrupted. I idly wondered if he and Mary played any of the same games but didn’t muse on it too much before I was climbing the stairs up to the dark hallway of rooms.

Holden’s was on the end, the one that overlooked the side of the garden. I knocked softly but got no response.

“Holden?” I asked, testing the knob. I pushed it open just a crack, peering in to make sure I wasn’t going to storm in on him naked or anything. Music played from a small Bluetooth speaker, something melancholy and beautiful that I didn’t recognize. When I didn’t see anything, I pushed the door open a little wider. “You in here?”

It was humid in his room, warm and wet with the intoxicating smell of a man’s body wash. I heard his bare feet on the floor first, and then Holden rounded the corner out of his en-suite bathroom.

In nothing but a navy-blue towel that was wrapped low around his waist.

I swallowed, standing there in the doorway with a fucking muffin in my hand as my eyes raked over him. I didn’t have a choice, couldn’t have stopped them even if I tried. It was like an irresistible magnet, the way the water dripped from his hair, sluicing over his swollen pectoral muscles, his defined abs, trickling all the way down to where a deep V disappeared under the towel at its apex. With only his bedroom lamp on, he seemed to glow like a Roman god, and I marveled at his chiseled body, at what years and years of being an athlete had sculpted him into.

He was cleaning one ear with a Q-tip, watching me as I watched him, and when I met his gaze, it wasn’t warm or flirty or even the least bit playful. I waited for him to call me out for my blatant scan of him, to make some smartass comment, but instead, he turned back toward the bathroom.

“What’s up?” he asked over his shoulder, disappearing behind the wall.

I frowned at the unusual coldness but stepped tentatively more into his room. “I, uh… I baked muffins,” I said.

Like an idiot.

“A lot of them,” I added. “So, I brought some to share.”

Holden padded out of the bathroom again, one hand running a small towel over his head as his eyes fell to the muffin in my hand. I offered it to him, and he glanced up at me before taking the muffin, turning it over in his hand, and setting it on his desk.

“Thanks,” he said, and then he drooped the towel he’d been drying his hair with over one shoulder and opened up his top dresser drawer. He pulled out a t-shirt and basketball shorts, dropping them to his bed. His hands found the top of his towel, the muscles in his back flexing with that light sheen of water on them as he did.

He glanced over his shoulder at me, and I flushed, turning to give him some privacy.

I heard him drop the towel to the floor once my back was to him.

I swallowed.

“I thought we should celebrate,” I said, picking at dirt under one of my nails to give myself something to focus on other than the fact that Holden was naked behind me. I heard the distinct sound of him shrugging on his shorts and then his t-shirt as I continued. “You getting cleared for practice, I mean.”

Holden brushed past me, dressed now, and hung his towels in the steamy bathroom as I followed and leaned a hip against the door frame.

“It’s just practice,” he said, indifferent and far too moody for my taste.

“Yeah, but it’s one step closer to playing again,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

He walked past me, squeezing as close as he could to the opposite side of the door frame where I leaned, almost like he was afraid of touching me.

I blinked, face screwed up in confusion and maybe a bit of annoyance as I turned just in time to watch him sink into his desk chair. He pulled out a textbook from his bag and splayed it open like I wasn’t even there.

I noticed the CDs he’d grabbed at the yard sale laying on the corner of his desk, and I smiled a little, picking one of them up and turning it to read the song list on the back.

“Have you listened to any of these yet?”

“Nope.”

He answered without looking up, the word a pop on his lips.

I ignored his shortness, persisting. “Still running to Green Day?” I probed, reaching for his Discman, but before I could pry it open, he snagged it out of my hands and shoved it in his top desk drawer, slamming it shut.

“Can you stop touching things?”

“Can you stop being such a grumpy jerk?” I shot back, crossing my arms. “You haven’t even looked at me since I walked in this room.”