Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(19)

I’m unreasonably delighted by this.

“Locked out?” I ask, leaning against the front of my house.

I watch Oliver shut his eyes slowly before opening them, as if summoning calm from a place deep inside himself. “Yes.”

“Lost your keys?”

He groans, scrubbing his face with both hands. “Not exactly. No offense, Hayes, but I really don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”

“Hmm.” Stepping off my porch, I start down the side of my house. I lift my chin toward the lock on his back door. “Too bad you don’t have a code program like mine; you’d be able to simply reset it from your phone.”

Oliver’s nostrils flare. His hands turn to fists as he lowers them from his face. “Yes. So helpful right now. Thank you.”

This is a new fascinating side of Oliver Bergman. Anger crackling off of him like ungrounded electricity. He looks like Thor, evening sun turning his hair liquid gold, his eyes the glowing color of cool morning light lancing across the sky. He’s impossible to look away from.

And now, I realize with a sinking feeling, he’s also going to be impossible to keep away from, too.

So far I’ve dealt with Oliver by avoiding him at all costs. But now that we’re co-captains, with Coach breathing down our necks to mend fences, what am I supposed to do? I can’t make friends with him, but I sure as shit can’t make hell with him either when my captaincy’s on the line.

“C’mon,” I tell him, jerking my head toward my house.

Oliver’s still breathing heavily. He blinks at me, like I’ve stunned him. “C’mon what?” he asks.

“Come inside, until your locksmith shows up, or whoever has a key.”

His jaw twitches. Turning, he searches the grass for his phone, scoops it up, and brushes it off. “I’ll just go…wait at my brother’s place. He’s close.”

I shrug, ignoring the odd sting that throbs through me in the wake of his brush-off. “Suit yourself.”

Opening my back door, I’m about to walk in when he says, “Wait!”

Can you be both relieved and filled with dread? I am.

I turn back, holding open the door as Oliver sweeps up his bag and bounds across the yard up to my porch. Stopping right at the threshold, he hikes the bag higher on his shoulder. Like me, he’s still in practice gear, sweaty, his hair mussed, sunlight sparkling on the scruff of his beard. “Thanks,” he says tightly before stepping inside.

I stare up at the sky, knowing I’m tempting fate. That more than one threshold is being crossed, and none of them are wise.

Oliver walks carefully into my house as I shut the door behind me. I drop my bag and kick off my shoes, watching him take in the place.

“So…” He glances around, toeing off his shoes. “Apparently, you’ve got a thing for grayscale.”

I glance around my house, seeing it from his perspective. Dark wood floors, white walls, cool metallic finishes on the white kitchen cabinetry and modern light fixtures. Black-and-white photographs, charcoal sofa, heather-gray club chairs. A silvery area rug. I shrug. “It’s calming.”

He points to Wilde, my black and white cat, who jumps off the couch and, like a traitor, slinks across the room, curling around Oliver’s legs. “You even got a cat that matches. Would a little color hurt ya? Maybe just a splash of green to match…” He nods toward the cat.

I swallow, watching him crouch and scratch my cat’s chin. “Wilde,” I tell him reluctantly.

He smiles as the cat purrs. “Wilde. How about a little mint green to match Wilde’s eyes? Some rose pink like his nose. What do you think?” he asks Wilde as the cat presses up on his knee and meows as he reaches for a harder scratch of his head. “I don’t know what the color wheel ever did to piss him off either, but clearly, he has not gotten over it.”

Wilde purrs louder. Traitorous bastards, cats.

“Not all of us want our homes to look like the inside of a Fruit Loops cereal box.”

Oliver shakes his head and sighs like I’m hopeless. If it weren’t for his phone, which has started buzzing, he’d probably pet Wilde and flat-out ignore me until his locksmith came. Standing reluctantly, he unearths his phone and mutters something under his breath that sounds distinctly not-English. As I watch him, something awful snags inside my chest.

Cheeks flushed, jaw tight, thumbs dancing across his phone screen, he stands framed in the archway, his bright-yellow practice jersey and gold hair lighting up the space like spilled sunshine.

I stare at him, panicking as everything turns kaleidoscopic—colorful, off-kilter, dizzyingly bright—and I have the frantic urge to throw open my door, then shove him out until my world is once again small and monochromatic and manageable.

He catches me staring. I look away, turning toward my cabinets and banging one open like a scrambled fool.

“I’ll be able to get back into my house in about two hours,” he says. “But I really can go let myself in at my brother’s place. I don’t want to impose—”

“You’re not.” I find a glass, smack on the water to fill it. “You, uh…want a shower, I imagine. We left before we showered—you showered, that is—”

Fuck me.

I drag in a breath. I cannot look at him.

Oliver clears his throat. “I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t mind a shower.”