Page 7 of The Game Plan

He laughs, heartily, every bit as boyish as I’ve known him, even if I’m having a flashback to a moment last night that felt as if he was mature enough to hold a conversation with me. Now I know I’m still under the influence.

He points a digit at me as he smirks. “Nope, not joking. Let me prove it to you. Does your mouth feel as if someone burnt the roof off it?”

I run my tongue over it, not for the first time in the last half hour. “What did you do, give me an STI?”

“Flaming sambuca,” he tells me, taking a fresh plate and setting two new rolls on it, grinning as he does. “I told you it was a bad idea. You told me you knew best and something about defying the patriarchy.” He offers the plate and shrugs as he takes a giant bite out of one roll.

“You’re a man-child with a really big stick, who chases a rubber disk around frozen water, thriving on all the hockey romance girlies on BookTok shouting your name and banging on the glass of the boy aquarium – of course I know best.”

I drop a hand to my hip for added effect, still not entirely straight about what’s going on here.

“I’m your man-child now, sweetheart,” he says, winking. Winking.

I try to shake some sense into my mushy brain. “Did we get married? For real? I wouldn’t do that. I’m sensible. Rational. I’m controlled. I’m a damn control freak.”

His lips curve up in a way that’s momentarily distracting. So Jax Harris is hot, that’s not new news. “I wouldn’t marry you, Jax. Days ago I was engaged to⁠—”

“The loser who screwed your secretary. I know. You told me last night, over and over and over again.”

I cover my face with my palm. “Jax, did we—” I lean in closer to him, I guess unsteady because he holds my hips and I do feel kind of wobbly when I look back to him, forgetting the question for a beat. “Did we have sex?” I whisper.

He leans into my ear and I find my hands on his chest, eyes closing as I’m engulfed by sandalwood. “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t have sex with women who are comatose.” He speaks directly to my… ear.

And when he breaks our contact, I snap out of my dopey reverie, seeing him for what he is. Smug and really damn annoying. I never lose my temper. Or rarely. But now, I see red.

“I was too drunk to fuck but not too drunk to marry?” I scream, tossing a cinnamon roll at him and making him laugh, which pisses me off even more.

Meanwhile, it feels as if every other person in this restaurant has fallen silent, eyes on us.

Jax holds out the roll he caught, both hands in the air. “You cried. I didn’t know what to do,” he protests.

“So instead of handing me a tissue you fucking married me?”

“When you put it like that…” He chuckles.

Chuckles. Like this is a joke.

Clinging to the carbs I need more than ever, I point at the boy in front of me – admittedly twenty-six to my almost thirty but in girl-guy terms, that’s decades. “You need to get this annulled. Pronto.”

“Pronto? Who even says pronto?” There’s a switch in him, probably because I told him what to do, but he isn’t making light of this anymore.

“This is my life, Jax. Yours, too, and you’re hardly the marrying type.”

He rolls that perfect jaw of his in a way that I’ve only seen him do when his emotions get the better of him – often on the ice – and he winds up in the penalty box. “I did you a favor. I agree, I’m not the marrying type, so there’s nothing spoiling. Go get your visa, Sienna. That’s what you want from me, isn’t it? A visa so that you can stay in New York without working for your scumbag ex? You’re welcome, by the way.”

He turns his back on me, as if he’s considering what food to add to his plate from the buffet, and I feel bad. But not bad enough to stay married to him.

“Get it annulled, Jax.”

Keeping his focus on the food, head shaking, he says, “I’ll get right on it, honey.”

I let out a puff fitting of a Dragon’s WAG. “Thank you. And stop calling me pet names.” Even if it was pass-agg.

I start walking away, unsure if I’m going to face the group, run to the restroom to throw up, or get coffee.

“Sure. And honey…” I turn to face him. “You’d know if you had sex with me because it would be the best of your life.”

I hate that the stern look on his face and the way his taut pecs beneath his fitted white shirt combine with his words to rouse something between my thighs.