Page 83 of The Game Plan

Leaving me with FOMO. Only, as I get back to my business plan for my nonexistent business, I don’t fear missing out on anything other than time with Jax.

My phone starts to buzz at my side – Mom. Yup, I’m still avoiding lengthy conversations with my parents until I’m divorced, basically, and don’t have to confess to my sham marriage. I thought I was the grown-up in my marriage. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately.

As the call rings off, I quickly fire a message to my parents, telling them I’m working but I love them.

Then I sigh, staring at my laptop. Screw it.

I close the lid and head to the shower.

* * *

I didn’t expect to be coming out tonight when I packed my luggage for the road, so I’ve had to team a pair of jeans with high heels I’d wear for work and a button-down shirt I’d brought to laze around in, dressing it up with jewelry. Actually, though, as I step into the somewhat cloak and dagger dive bar the teams are hanging out in, I feel overdressed for the place.

The vibe is expectedly dingy – lighting dark, juke box playing “Tiny Dancer” in the corner, crowd comprised of hockey players, old men who could care less, and a bunch of girls wearing hockey sweaters who must have caught wind of where the teams hang out after a game in Ohio.

Raucous cheering and laughter drag my attention from the long bar through an archway to a pool table and since I scour the first room for Jax but come up empty, I follow the sound, all the while wondering whether I should have come here. This isn’t my scene. Carl and I always did extortionately priced cocktails and overpriced food that doesn’t fill you up, and my work events couldn’t be further from this bar. More than that, what waits for me through the arch? Will Jax be surrounded by girls? Will he be lip-locked with one of them? Would it wreck me to see that? That question I do know the answer to.

Which makes me realize that this is a shockingly bad idea. I turn to leave, spinning smack into the chest of⁠—

“TJ, hi!”

“I thought you were working?” he says, looking a lot like his brother tonight – younger, not quite so angular, not quite so dark, but the resemblance is clear.

“I was. I am. I’m actually heading back to work right now.”

“Not before a celebratory beer, you’re not. Come on,” he says, leaving me little choice but to follow him into the pool room.

Where, sure enough, Jax is being watched by a group of girls adorned in hockey apparel, as he leans over the felt-topped table, cue in hand, to take a shot.

I’m not even cross with those girls because my fake husband is wholly hot, but I can’t help the pathetic swell of possessiveness I feel as I notice the wedding band on his finger, where his left hand rests on the green velvet tabletop.

He draws the cue back, bracing, once, twice. Before he plays the shot, his eyes meet mine and his disgustingly tempting smile draws slowly on his lips. He knocks in a yellow ball, then hands off his cue to someone else, inclining his head for me to come to him.

I’m crazily giddy with anticipation as I close the space between us, and when he tugs me to him, I already know I’m going to kiss him. Not to keep up appearances but because I want to.

As my hand meets his chest, his cups my jaw, and he presses his mouth to mine. Long, slow, lingering. I hear some huffed whispers of the girls behind us and in a way that is shockingly unlike me, I mark my territory. That’s right, girls, for the next five weeks, he’s mine.

Even if the way he hangs a lazy arm around my shoulders and presses a kiss to my temple makes me ache for so much more.

“Did you get tired of being the flawless Vice President?” he asks, speaking into my ear. I’m certain I hear him inhale my scent as he nuzzles my neck and my eyes close around the thought. “I’ll always be here when you feel like being more than just perfect, Si.”

Funny, my idea of what perfection is feels like it’s morphing around him. As if perfectionism, obsessively people pleasing and micro-managing everything might not be it. As if my professional life isn’t the sun I orbit, and nor is Jax, but my own happiness is. When have I ever considered my own happiness first? And why does that feel like the same thing as being wrapped under Jax’s arm, with his face buried in my neck, as if I’m truly his girl?

TJ plants a bottle of beer in my hand and I’m thrust back to college days – loud music, banter flying back and forth across the table, beer, pool, kicking the ass of all my male peers who expected I’d be rubbish at the game.

“What’s the game?” I ask, enjoying the way our sides fit together and the heat of him through my shirt.

“Cutthroat,” Jax says, smirking as he does, as if to tell me that’s my personality type. “Can you play?”

I shrug with one shoulder. “A little,” I tell him, swigging from my bottle.

He chuckles gently. “A little? That means yes.”

“How’s that?” I ask.

“Because my wife, it would seem, is great at everything she turns her hand to.” I look up to him – that’s how he sees me?

“It’s a work ethic my dad instilled in me,” I say. “If something is worth doing, do it properly.”