Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(52)

“Unfortunately,” I tell Oliver, “when it comes to these pains in my ass, I am a giant, pathetic pushover. Better give them what they want and join them.”

A smile breaks on Oliver’s face. “This is your last chance to kick me out before things become very obnoxious.”

I bite back a smile and settle into my chair, arms folded. “Go on, then. Do your worst.”





16





GAVIN





Playlist: “Fly Me to the Moon,” Imaginary Future





Lou’s Chevy lumbers down the road on a cheery trio of honks, hands waving out the windows.

“Thank God.” I slam the door behind me and scrub my face.

When my hands drop, the view makes my heart trip, then lurch. Oliver, framed in the archway from my living room to the open-concept kitchen and dining area. He shimmies his way around the table while gathering plates, glasses, seltzer cans, and snack bowls. I recognize some of the same absurd moves he pulled at the hotel to try to dispel the awkwardness after the Great Bedsheet Catastrophe, as he circles the table and hums “Fly Me to the Moon.”

I stare at him, fighting a smile as I remember him with Jim, those two serenading each other.

Oliver glances up and sees me, then nearly drops his armful. “Shoot.” He saves it at the last minute.

I push off the door, forcing my expression into its usual blank inscrutability.

“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him, gathering what’s left on the table. “I’ll clean up.”

“I don’t mind.” He turns and sets everything carefully in the sink.

I stare at him as he stands with his back to me, running water, squirting soap onto the sponge. It’s infuriating that it’s such a simple moment that holds the weight of the world inside it.

What I’ve feared and fought since the moment I first saw him is here, in front of me, as real as the heart beating in my chest, beating faster and faster, as I watch him.

This infuriating, aggravating, irksome man matters to me.

He more than “matters” to you, a dangerous, no-good voice whispers in my head. I silence it, bury it.

I can’t let matters become more. Not when a lifetime exists between us, not when soon this team, this game, will be lost to me and it will be his whole world.

Better to keep what I feel to myself. To protect him. To protect us both.

But God, if I could just savor him one more time before I shut away this aching desire once and for all—

No. I shouldn’t. It’s not right to ask him for that, when lust and resentment tangle in my chest as I stare at him. It would be wrong to prey upon the impulsivity of what I’ll concede seems to be a mutual, very intense attraction. It would be wrong to spin him around and pin him against the sink and kiss him slow and deep until we’re both dizzy and desperate, until hands wandered and the bedroom right down the hall lured us like a siren, toward destruction.

“Thanks, by the way,” Oliver says quietly, snapping me from my thoughts.

Stepping next to him, I add the last of the dishes I was holding to the sudsy water. “For what?”

“Asking me to stay.”

I pick up a dish he’s rinsed and dry it, leaning a hip against the counter as I watch him in profile. The long line of his nose. His mouth pursed in concentration. The play of light on the scruff of his closely shaved beard. “Technically, the others asked you to stay. I just indulged them.”

He glances at me, a smirk on his face. “Of course. Well, thank you anyway. Despite you being a karaoke curmudgeon, I had fun.”

My heart twists. I want to yank him by the shirt and kiss that smirk right off his face. I want to make him drop the dish in his hands and hear it crack like his resolve until he’s touching me as frantically as I want to touch him.

But instead, I pick up another dish and dry it. “You really don’t need to do this. You can go home. Get some rest. We’re back at it bright and early tomorrow.”

Oliver shrugs.

I grit my teeth, battling so hard for control, to stop myself from taking what I shouldn’t. Abruptly, I slap my hand down on the faucet, shutting off the water. “You should go home, Oliver.”

He stares down at the bowl in his hands for a beat of thick silence, then glances up at me. “Why?”

I hold his eyes when he peers up, feeling the last of my control slip away. “You know why.”

Slowly, he turns, his hand trailing across the sink’s ledge, stopping just short of my hip. “I want you to tell me.”

My jaw tightens. I can’t speak. If I open my mouth, it’ll be to crash down on his. I can’t. I won’t.

He takes another step closer and says, “We agreed what happened last night would be behind us.”

“Exactly,” I answer tightly.

He smirks. “But we said that would be effective starting tomorrow.”

“Only because I hadn’t factored in Mitchell taking you hostage in your backyard and dragging you to poker in my home tonight.”

Oliver clucks his tongue. “Rookie mistake, Hayes. And you call yourself a veteran player.”

“I don’t call myself anything. I am a veteran player. I’m old and on my last legs, and you’d do well to remember that,” I snap.