Page 58 of The Fantasy League
She reared her head back and smiled again, studying my face. Fuck, every time our faces were only a few inches apart —which seemed to be often these days—tension rippled throughout my veins, and now was no exception.
I had to physically stop myself from kissing her.
From forgetting that this wasn’t real.
Thatshethought this wasn’t real.
“Miss me?“ She beamed up at me, breaking up my thoughts.
If only she knew how much.
I brushed my lips against her ear and decided there was no point in hiding the truth. “More than you know,” I mumbled, squeezing her once more before sliding her down my body and placing her feet back on solid ground.
Picking up her bright-pink duffel bag off the ground, I threw it over my shoulder. There were a few paparazzi posted outside the airport doors when I came in, but I couldn’t have cared less whether I got photographed with hot-pink luggage.
I was doubtful that a journalist could come up with a headline worthy of clickbait from the image anyway.
I scanned my eyes over her, taking her in, but my vision zeroed in on four white squares that were stuck to the bottom of her tennis shoes.
“Did you go to the bathroom on the plane?” I sneered at her, trying to hold back a laugh.
Scarlett looked at me quizzically with a raised brow. “I know it was a private plane and all, but I didn’t take a solo trip to the mile-high club. If that’s what you’re asking…”
A laugh barreled out of my chest as I lowered my eyes down at the squares of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe again.
I thought this kind of thing only happened in movies, butdamn,it was funny in real life.
Her eyes followed along with mine down to her feet. “Oh god.” A current of breath carried her words and a bright shade of red I’d never seen before washed over her face.
My laugh turned into a full-on chuckle as I watched her waddle around like a madwoman trying to scrub off the last of the toilet paper remains from the bottom of her sneakers.
Once she’d successfully removed all of the toilet paper, I slung my arm across her shoulder. Tugging her closer against me, I led us toward the exit. She tilted her head upward at me and gave me a shy look before she spoke. “Speaking of toilet paper…” She trailed off.
“You’re finally ready to come clean about toilet papering my house, huh?” The smug smile I’d been holding back broke from my lips with ease.
A few months back, when I was woken in the middle of the night by a security system notification, my immediate fear was that someone was trying to rob me.
Maybe I was a bit paranoid from watching too many Mafia documentaries before bed. I knew my buddy Carlo was a distant cousin to some prominent Chicago Outfit members, but I found it unlikely that the Santini brothers would want to target me, of all people.
Much to my surprise,I opened my security app to find Scarlett and her sister drunk off their asses, vandalizing my front yard instead.
Scarlett stopped in her tracks just before we reached the automatic sliding doors. “Wh— how did you know that was us?”
“Security cameras, Red.”
“But it’s a gated neighborhood! And there’s neighborhood patrol!”
“The neighborhood also happens to be home to the richest people in the city. Even with security patrol in place, one can never be too safe.” A warm breeze hit my skin as we picked up our pace again. “And you’re not helping my point either… all it took was twenty minutes of Lea distracting the patrol guard for you all to commit your crime.”
“Wait, how did you know it was Lea who distracted him?” Her mouth dropped open.
“After watching you all on the security cameras in real time…”—that shade of red on her face? Yeah, it got darker—“I downloaded a copy of the footage with the time stamp onto a flash drive and walked down to the security office in nothing but boxers to show the guard the tape. Took him one look at my house to realize that he was fucked.”
“So, the next day, you knew theentire time,and you didn’t even question me about it?”
Kind of hard to question her about it when I was already planning to ask her out that day. Might’ve made things weird.
And as much as I hated to admit it, I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that she didn’t like working for me. I knew damn well she was about to quit that morning,
