Page 114 of First Shift

Mikey bent down and kissed the top of my head. “I mean it, Cal.” He straightened up and stretched his arms high over his head, his shirt riding up to reveal a flash of skin and the soft tuft of hair disappearing into the waistband of his sweatpants, the carved lines of his Adonis belt peeking out.

“I don’t even think he’s home,” I said after a beat, distracted by how fucking gorgeous he was. “He usually spends Thanksgiving morning fucking around on one of their golf simulators.”

“Okay,” he said, ruffling my hair. “Either way, if you’re not off the phone in twenty minutes, I’m coming back out here, and I will be pulling out your dick. Got it?”

I looked up at him, feeling my cheeks get hot. I shouldn’t like the idea of that, and yet …

Which must have shown on my face, because Mikey shook his head and chuckled. “You’re such a pervert,” he said, turning to head to his room for that shower.

“Takes one to know one,” I called out after him, hitting the green call button.

In the end, my mom hadn’t answered her phone, and I’d been able to join Mikey after all.

Now, we were pulling into Bell and Ethan’s long, winding driveway, inching carefully around my teammates’ vehicles until I eventually found a spot between Koffee’s neon green Lamborghini and Morrison’s vintage Corvette.

“We can bounce right after the turkey,” Mikey told me, removing his sunglasses and folding them with care, making sure not to tweak the wonky right arm that was held together by a stripped screw and a prayer.

He’d gotten slightly better about spending money on himself, but he was still far and away the most frugal guy on the team. His grandma’s doctor had put her on another new medication, and last week, I’d overheard him talking to his mom about their house needing a new roof.

“No, it’s fine,” I said, sliding my own sunglasses off and depositing them in the drop-down compartment above the rearview mirror. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?” he asked, raising a skeptical brow. “’Because if you’re not, I can pretend to be sick or something.”

“I love that you’d do that for me,” I said, killing the engine and popping the door latch. “But it’s not necessary. I’m a grown-ass man. I can get through a holiday dinner party.”

Mikey’s head turned this way and that—presumably to check our surroundings through the tinted windows—then he leaned across the console and dropped a kiss on my shoulder. “And I love it when you refer to yourself as a grown-ass man,” he said with a smirk.

I chuckled and pushed my door open, cold autumn air blasting me in the face. “Never let it be said I don’t have a way with words.”

Halfway up the drive, Mikey turned, walking backward in front of me. “It just occurred to me—we weren’t supposed to bring anything, were we?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Bell said he had all the food covered, and Morrison’s friend is bringing a case of wine.”

Mikey stopped walking abruptly, and I barreled right into him, nearly knocking us both over. I grabbed hold of his biceps to steady myself.

“Hey, you don’t think …” He trailed off, looking at me like I should know how that sentence was supposed to end.

“I don’t think what?”

“Morrison and his friend.” His eyes bulged, and he tilted his head fractionally to the side in what I’d come to think of as his “I need you to pick up what I’m putting down” look.

My brows dipped as I struggled to parse his meaning. Without any context, my brain wasn’t braining. “What about them?”

He dropped his head back and let out a quiet groan, then brought it forward again, stepping closer and saying under his breath, “Do you think they’re friends like we’re friends?” One of his eyebrows ticked upward, then his eyes fell to my lips providing all the context I needed.

“No way. Morrison’s not—” I started to say, then stopped, rocking back on my heels.

I didn’t have the first clue how he identified, but now that Mikey had mentioned it, there were clues indicating Morrison was more like us than I’d previously assumed.

For starters, he never hooked up with any of the women who swarmed the team whenever we were out in public. Though that was hardly proof of his sexuality. But if you paired it with the look of abject horror on his face on the flight back from Nashville when Bell had asked if “his friend” could pick up some wine for Thanksgiving and the way he’d stuttered out a non-answer … well. If someone had brought up my secret boyfriend I was trying to pass off as my long-lost best friend, my reaction wouldn’t have been dissimilar.

“Okay, he might be,” I relented.

Mikey fell into step next to me as we resumed our long walk up the gravel driveway, until we approached a wide front porch lined with several rocking chairs, each one with a colorful plaid blanket draped over its back.

A loud whoop sounded from somewhere around the back of the house, followed immediately by a voice I thought belonged to Monroe hollering, “Go long!” A chorus of collective groans erupted a few seconds later, quickly cut off by Nielson shouting, “I’m good! The bush broke my fall!”

“Idiots,” I muttered with a shake of my head.