Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85157 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85157 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“You know that was my play, don’t you?” I teased.
“Ours,” he countered, and he was right. We’d come up with the play together.
“What’s blue bird?” Kenny patted Beau over and over on the shoulder, like a young child wanting attention.
“Your brother and I worked hard on that. It was our specialty. Beau always got free to make the catch. It always worked.” Nostalgia burned through me, fired me up in a strange way.
“Nah, that’s just because you could always find me no matter what. No one had an eye like you.”
It was him. It had always been easy for me to find Beau. We’d worked well together. It was another reminder of how much I missed playing with him. “Nah, just got lucky. Couldn’t have done it with anyone else. No one was as good as you at getting free.”
I was pretty sure Beau’s cheeks pinked, and my pulse shot up. There was something different about him today. He was more open, friendly, like he wasn’t keeping a wall between us…and yeah, like he didn’t hate me with a passion, but I didn’t think Beau ever really hated me…maybe… Okay, he might have sometimes, and I’d probably deserved it, but it wasn’t real hate. I thought he wanted to hate me more than he did. Mostly I just annoyed him.
None of that was evident now, though.
He pulled into a parking spot, and I watched his arms move as he did, as he reached and turned off the key. I noticed the happy face on his biceps and smiled myself. Don’t ask me what was so damn exciting about Beau turning off his truck that I had to watch him, but I sure as hell was doing it.
He glanced my way, turned, then looked again. His jaw tightened, but I didn’t think it was in anger.
This time when his eyes found mine, Beau didn’t glance away. He cocked a brow, stared, and asked, “What?”
“What what?” I replied when obviously, I knew he wanted to know why my eyes were glued to him. I still hadn’t figured out exactly why, though. He wasn’t doing anything interesting.
Beau chuckled this rich, earthy sound, and yes, I was aware that calling a voice earthy didn’t make sense, but that was the only way I could think to explain it. “What?” I asked.
“What what?” he replied with a grin, the bastard.
“Beau, hurry, can we go? We’re gonna be late,” Kenny rushed out before his words tangled together toward the end, making it so I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what else he’d said.
“Slow down, buddy. We’re good. We’re going in now.” Beau smiled at his brother, and it did something to me, twisted me up and sort of made me dizzy in this strange way. He was so damn good with Kenny. The love he had for his brother shone in every word he said to him.
We all climbed out of the truck, and I helped them with some of the equipment bags. Kenny jogged ahead of us, toward the building, and Beau said, “He gets a little excited sometimes and his words jumble together more. He loves playing.”
“Like someone else I know?” I cocked a brow at Beau.
“Yeah, you always did love ball.”
“I wasn’t talking about myself,” I replied.
“I know.” Beau shrugged. There was a story there, but then, I had my own too. He was right; I’d always lived and breathed football, but I hadn’t in years. A wave of melancholy rode down my spine.
When we got to the building’s double door, Beau unlocked it. “Fancy,” I teased, and he rolled his eyes but smiled too.
“Wow…this is a great,” I said when we stepped inside. The inside looked as though it was either new or had recently been remodeled with state-of-the-art flooring, which was painted as though it was a football field.
“Yeah, we raised a lot of money to make this happen. It belongs to We Can Play, and they host all sorts of sporting events. I’m hoping to get the land on the other side as well. Then we can have an outdoor field for football, plus track-and-field events. We just didn’t have the money for it all.”
There was so much want in Beau’s voice, it twisted up my insides. He was doing something important there, something he was passionate about, that despite my time in the pros, I thought was more important than anything I’d ever done. I opened my mouth to tell him so when Kenny cut me off from where he stood in the doorway, “Some of the team is here, Beau!”
On reflex, I grabbed my cap and twisted it around frontward, low on my eyes.
“Go watch from over there.” Beau pointed to a corner, back on the side of the bleachers, that afforded a little privacy. “I’ll bring you a chair.”