Page 139 of Play With Me

“You look like a psycho when you smile, you know.”

Griff smiles harder, only it’s kind of a grimace.

“Just stop.”

He chuckles.

“Get up.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.” I say it in his general voice.

Griff frowns, but stands.

I wrap him in a bear hug. “You really should give pep talks more often,” I mumble, before letting him go.

Then I’m sprinting out of the dugout, back to Dad’s, not even waiting to see if he’s coming with.

I burst back into Dad’s place a few minutes later, heading straight for the living room where I stand directly in front of the TV.

“Hey!” everyone shouts. I turn around and pause it.

“Jude, you’re getting my carpet wet!” Dad admonishes.

“Sorry for the interruption. I have to talk to Cap, and then you guys.”

Cap stands up from where he was sitting on the floor playing with his little cousin. “Yeah, Dad?”

His look of importance at being called on is so fucking cute I can’t stand it.

“Hey, buddy,” I say, pulling him away from the crowd. I whisper in his ear, and he meets my eye, then nods, grinning. “I don’t mind,” he says to my next question.

“Okay,” I announce. “Cap is going to need to spend a week with one of his aunts or uncles or Grandpa’s over New Year’s. Who volunteers?”

Everyone in the room puts their hand up. All five of my siblings, even Griffin coming in the door, breathing hard.

I grin at him, and he does that little lip curl back.

Cap beams. “Dad, I can’t choose! I think we’re going to have to do rock paper scissors!”

CHAPTER35

Nora

“So that’s when I told them, ‘You can call me that when I’m an OBE!’”

The man across from me at The White Cloth chortles at his own joke. He just told this long-winded story about how his father is anOBE—Order of the British Empire, which apparently is a low-rent kind of knighthood—and how it’s his primary life goal to not only become one himself, but apparently tell everyone he knows all about it for the rest of his life.

“Did you know you can sign your name ‘Richard Hatfield,OBE’once you have the designation? It’s a silly thing, I know, but I rather like it.”

This date was the worst idea in the history of dates. Not only is Richard a pompous ass, but he’s taken me to the stuffiest restaurant in the city, where everyone scans each person walking through the door as if to assess their value, before turning their noses up and picking delicately at their food.

The only exception is the little boy and his parents on the other side of the restaurant. They seem to be laughing and having a good time, even though their neighboring tables keep giving them withering glances for daring to have a child in the restaurant.

I’m going to personally throttle Sasha when she gets back home, for hooking me up with him. Christian, too, whenever I see him again. My brother was the one who suggested I go on some dates to cleanse my palate of Jude. Sasha, meanwhile, sent me this guy’s info. She’d apologized that she didn’t know him, but as the friend of a friend, could vouch for him not being a creep at least.

“Are you not enjoying the food?” Richard Hatfield, future-OBE, asks, seeming to notice me for the first time in the past ten minutes. He glances left and right as if worried other people might notice.

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