Page 138 of Game Night: Truth or Dare

Tonight was the first game of the season, and our football team got annihilated. That means our captain threatened to bench us when our season starts if we didn’t come out. Half of us are already on our way to getting drunk and living it up with the other team’s bruised egos.

The other half are trying to make sure their drunk asses don’t literally drown.

A groan to my left as someone plops down beside me at the edge of the pool isn’t surprising. What’s surprising is that he crawled his ass out of bed in the first place.

“Thanks for joining us, Sunshine.”

He whacks my thigh with little force, and I shove his shoulder an equal amount.

“Some of us actually want to be awake for class in the morning,” he grumbles and rubs his eye with the heel of his hand hidden by his hoodie sleeve.

“Some of us are nuts.” I lean back on my palms and kick my feet in the water.

Teddy Kingsley, AKA TK, has been an enigma since I moved to Hollow Ridge two years ago. He’s Kai’s go-to left winger, and I’ve seen him be a social butterfly at the games, but when the after party comes around or he’s back to the dorms? He’s like this:

Dressed in a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and a hoodie that’s a good two sizes too big with his blond hair tousled like he got in a fight with his pillow and lost. Quiet as he sits with his legs crossed and his chin resting on his knuckles looking out at the rambunctiousness around us.

This man has laid my ass out on the soccer field with the world’s widest smile and then became a lump of grunts and undignified noises the moment he’s back in our room.

It drives me insane.

“It’s not my fault they suck,” TK says, waving his oversized sleeves in the air and flopping onto his back. “I don’t even like football.”

“And I’m sure they don’t like soccer, but they show up for us. So, we show up for them.”

He throws an arm over his face and stretches his legs out. The loser even has his socks on. At a pool party.

“Absolutely not,” I mutter and lean over to pluck the fuckers off and toss them somewhere behind us.

TK jolts and kicks his now bare feet at me, but I just grab them and pull them into my lap, forcing him to readjust or become a human pretzel. Once he accepts he won’t be winning this round, he settles down with an impatient sigh.

“You’re ridiculous.” I push up on the hem of his hoodie, mildly relieved to find cool, pale skin instead of another layer of clothing. “How are you not sweating? It’s hot as shit in here.”

The skin under my fingers pebbles, and TK shoves the material back down and bats my hand away. There are no overhead lights on when we commandeer the pool, just the moonlight overhead of the glass casing and some handheld lamps, but I can see the flush on his cheeks just the same.

“Why’d you come down here?”

He raises a brow and folds his arms behind his head. “Because I don’t want to be benched.”

I scoff, dropping my hand to his thigh and squeezing. “Kai won’t bench you. He’s like your Team Husband or whatever.”

TK’s harsh laugh would be jarring if it wasn’t the only kind I ever brought out of him. I’ve heard what most would call his attractive laugh on the field and in the locker room with the rest of the team around, but when it’s just the two of us this is another part of him that I get.

“Kai and I have been friends since middle school. His brother is in a band with mine. We’re practically siblings.”

“My point stands. So why are you here?”

That earns me a little bit of the TK everyone else gets to see. The wide smirk-like grin that makes his eyes crinkle. Blue as the chlorine-filled water beside us.

“And let you witness the chaos alone? What kind of friend would I be then?”

“Oh, we’re friends now, are we? I thought you were just that annoying ass winger who can’t kick the ball into my net.”

The heel of his foot connects with my rib, and I grapple to regain my hold on his legs as that ugly cackle of his echoes through the room.

“You only got the goaltender position because you could block my shots, dick face. I’m the blueprint.”

When he yanks at his feet again, I wrap one arm around his knees and grip the waistband of his sweats with my other hand, yanking them down his thighs in one quick motion.

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