Page 61 of Call the Shots
JUNE
LIKE-LIKE
My new rolewith the Gladiators was making sure Montoya didn’t have a concussion. In his bedroom, I bundled him up in blankets and we listened to a TV show because he wasn’t supposed to watch the screen. He was given an all-clear from the clinic on campus, but his teammates called him Kid’s Toy for a reason. He was so young. It worried me how easily he could get hurt.
I nudged him. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Eleven.” He grinned. “Two.”
“Eleventy-two sounds like a concussion to me.”
He laughed while I weaseled from our nest to fill up his water bottle. In the kitchen, my phone buzzed.
There was a notification.
Todd Vernon tagged in post:
THE GOOD OLD DAYS!!! LEELEE’S FIRST BIRTHDAY!!!
Huh. Quickly, I screenshot the notification and screwed the lid back on Montoya’s water bottle before I clicked to see what I was working with. Who was Leelee? Why was this the first thing on Vernon’s social media in a while?
It was gone.
I stared and went back to my alerts but that vanished too. Did I imagine that? WasIthe one with the concussion? Nope, the screenshot was in my pictures.
Then…what happened to the post?
“Did he untag himself?” I realized.
Who the hell is Leelee?
A knock on the door stopped me from investigating further. No doubt, the visitor would be for Montoya. Denali, Fridge, Nick, and Sully already stopped by to check on him. Thinking about the mystery of Leelee, I opened the door and held back another sigh.
Bear.
He rested his arm on the wall, a boyish grin on his face. “Hey, killer.”
“What do you want?” I asked suspiciously.
“I didn’t come to fight. I came to see Montoya.”
Oh.I didn’t expect that. When he disregarded Montoya’s safety, that pissed me off, but maybe I jumped to conclusions. I relaxed my stance. “He’s in his room. I think he’s okay, but I don’t know. Montoya’s so…” I dropped my voice. “I don’t want to see him hurt. And I got this weird notification?—”
“I also came to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“I want to stop playing games.”
“Bear…” I warned.
“You want to fuck, I want to fuck. The answer’s obvious. Let’s break the beds.” Bear dipped a little lower, his warm brown eyestrailing down my face. “If you want to do it on the rug, I’ll gladly take the rug burn. Scratch me, bite me, mark me?—”
My heart thudded, but I pushed past that. “Did you come to see if your teammate’s okay or to schedule sex?”
“What kind of man do you think I am?” He frowned. “Both.”
I slammed the door in his face and went for the water bottle, touching the cool granite of the counter to get some normalcy back. Just when I thought Bear was… Ugh. Sex with Bear would be fun, but would the pros outweigh the cons?
