The Risk (Briar U #2)

Chapter 25 Jake

25

JAKE

“F OR FUCK’S SAKE, C ONNELLY!”

At the incredulous exclamation, my head flies up and I swiftly shove Brenna’s sweater down to cover her bare tits. She dives off my lap and into the neighboring chair. But it’s too late. Pedersen’s not an idiot. He saw us, and he knows exactly what we were doing.

“Coach, hey.” I clear my throat. “We were…” I decide against lying. I’m not an idiot, either. “I’m sorry,” I say simply. “This isn’t the place.”

“No shit,” he snaps. “I’d expect this kind of behavior from Weston or Chilton, but not you, Connelly. You don’t usually screw around on the job.”

Coach doesn’t even acknowledge Brenna. He stalks to the front of the room and grabs one of the laptops. From the corner of my eye I see Brenna smoothing out the front of her sweater. She wiggles discreetly, and I realize she’s trying to put her bra cups back in place.

“I’m having a meeting with the assistants and forgot this,” he says tightly. “And here I thought you were being a conscientious player, studying film on your own time. But boys will be boys, won’t they?” There’s a sharp edge to his every word.

Brenna warily tracks his movements as he tucks the laptop under his arm and stalks to the door. “Get your guest out of here, Connelly. This is no place for girlfriends.”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Brenna blurts out, and I know it was completely involuntarily because she briefly closes her eyes, as if mentally scolding herself for speaking.

Pedersen finally spares her a look. A long, intent one. During his scrutiny, his frown gets deeper and deeper until his eyebrows are practically touching. “You’re Chad Jensen’s kid.”

Shit.

Brenna blinks. For once, she doesn’t have a smartass comment locked and loaded.

I want to lie and tell him he’s mistaken, but he clearly recognizes her. He places the computer on a desk near the door and slowly approaches. His cynical gaze takes in Brenna’s rumpled sweater, her disheveled hair.

“We met at a banquet a couple years ago,” he tells her. “Yale alumni dinner. You were still in high school at that point. Chad brought you.”

“Oh.” She visibly swallows. “Yes. I remember that.”

“Brianna, is it?”

“Brenna.”

“Right.” His beefy shoulders lift in a shrug. “Even if we hadn’t met, I’d know you from anywhere. You’re the spitting image of your mother.”

Brenna does a terrible job of hiding her shock. Or maybe she’s not trying to hide it. She openly gawks at my coach. “You knew my mother?”

“We went to college together.” His tone is completely wooden, and his expression lacks any and all emotion. Which isn’t out of the ordinary. Pedersen’s emotional repertoire is limited. His go-to ones are anger and disapproval.

He continues to stare at her. “You really do look like her.” Then he shakes his head, turning to address me. “You didn’t tell me you were seeing Jensen’s daughter.”

Brenna answers for me. “He’s not. This is just…it was nothing. So, please, don’t say anything to my father, okay? ”

Pedersen arches a brow at me as if to ask what I think.

I shrug. “She’s right. It was a one-time thing.”

“The only reason I’m here right now is because it’s pouring outside and Jake didn’t want me waiting in the rain for my Uber. Speaking of which,” she says with false brightness. She holds up her phone. “My car is here. I just got an alert.”

The back of her phone case is facing Coach, while the screen faces me. Which means I can clearly see that there’s no alert.

“I should get going,” she says hastily. “Thanks for letting me wait out the storm, Connelly. Nice to see you again, Mr. Pedersen.”

“Nice to see you, too.”

“I’ll walk you out,” I offer.

Pedersen glances at me. “You might as well take off, too. There’s already been one power outage. I don’t want you sitting here in the dark if the storm knocks out the power again.” With that, he stalks off.

I release the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Shit,” I say.

“Shit,” Brenna echoes. “You think he’ll tell my dad?”

“Doubtful. They’re not best buds.”

“Exactly. What if he snitches out of spite?”

“That’s not really Coach’s style. He prefers to let out all his aggression on the ice.”

We reach the lobby to discover that the apocalypse is in full swing beyond the huge front windows. The sky is nearly black. Gusts of wind smash tree branches against each other, and one branch has already crashed onto the hood of someone’s car. Thankfully it’s not Weston’s Mercedes, which I borrowed again. I might as well start calling it my own, considering how infrequently Brooks drives it.

My gaze shifts from the windows to Brenna, who’s zipping up her leather jacket. “I think you should come back to my place,” I suggest seriously.

“Of course you do. ”

“I’m not kidding, Hottie. That storm looks deadly, and you know the roads are going to be terrible. Bad weather turns drivers into maniacs.” My voice grows firm. “Wait it out at my place. Please.”

Brenna finally relents. “Okay.”

By nine o’clock, the storm hasn’t let up. Power at the condo went out around six, so we lit a bunch of candles and ate cold leftover pizza for dinner. Brooks digs up some board games and the three of us settle in the living room to play one. Brenna and Brooks have been bickering all evening, ragging on each other as if they’ve been best friends for years.

When I first walked into the apartment with Brenna at my side, Weston’s jaw scraped the floor. But the thing about Weston is, he doesn’t care what school she attends, who her father is, or what team she roots for. To him, a hot girl is a hot girl, and he’s immediately on board. At least until we get a moment alone. When Brenna disappears into the hall bathroom, Brooks unfolds the Scrabble board and asks, “Does McCarthy know about this?”

“About what?”

“About you and the bombshell in our bathroom.”

“No,” I grudgingly admit.

“Think maybe you should tell him?”

“I probably should, eh?”

Brooks snickers. “Um. Yeah. You told the poor kid to dump ’er and now you guys are together? Savage, bro.”

“We’re not together, and neither were they,” I point out.

“He liked her, though.”

“He’s with that Katherine chick now.” McCarthy is still seeing the girl he met after the semifinals. Which tells me he probably didn’t care about Brenna as much as he cared about hooking up with someone .

“It’s still bro code,” Brooks argues. “I know the team captain card trumps all, but you should do the right thing and let him know.”

“Do the right thing? Since when do you have a conscience?” I ask in amusement.

“I’ve always had a conscience.” He hops off the couch. “I’m grabbing a beer. You want one?”

“Nah.”

“Jensen!” he shouts. “Beer?”

Brenna emerges from the corridor. “Sure. Thanks.” She joins me on the sectional and reaches for her letter tray. “All right, let’s do this thing.”

A few minutes later, the game gets underway. Brooks gathers a few decorative pillows that his mother purchased for us, and sprawls on the floor. He rearranges the wooden squares on his tray. “Yo, lemme go first. I have the best word ever.”

Brenna grins. “Let’s see it, Wordsmith.”

He lays down the word bang .

“ That’s the best word ever?” she mocks. “Bang?”

“Yes, because banging is my favorite hobby.”

“Uh-huh, well, in terms of actual points, that word earned you…” She checks the letter values. “Plus the double-word score… Fourteen points.”

Brooks is quick to protest. “That’s great for the first turn.”

“If you think fourteen points is great, then you’ve never played Scrabble with my dad.”

He laughs. “Coach Jensen is a Scrabble Nazi?”

“Oh, he’s nuts about it. He’s the kind of player who puts down those two-or three-letter words on a triple-word score, and the next thing I know he’s beating me by two hundred points.”

“That’s no fun,” Brooks replies. “I play for the words, not the points. Connelly, it’s your turn.”

Extending vertically from his “B,” I add the word butt .

“As in, ‘bubble,’” I explain innocently .

My roommate flips me the bird. “Oh fuck off.”

Brenna grins at us. “What am I missing?”

“He has a bubble butt,” I tell her.

“I have a bubble butt,” he says glumly.

“Oh. Cool?” Brenna’s amused gaze lowers to her tiles. She rearranges a few of them as she tries to come up with a word.

“Do you want to see it?” Brooks offers.

“Not really—”

“Nah, let me show you. Just be honest and tell me what you think of it.”

Brenna glances at me. “Is this for real?”

“Afraid so. His girlfriend pointed out his bubble butt and now he has a complex about it.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Weston objects.

I rephrase. “Fuck buddy?”

“I’ll accept it.” He hops to his feet. “Okay, Jensen. Look at this.”

My idiot roommate shoves his sweatpants down to his ankles, presenting his bare ass to my…girlfriend? Fuck buddy? I honestly can’t fill in that blank.

I see Brenna’s lips quivering in the candlelight, as if she’s trying so hard not to laugh.

“Well?” he demands. “Thoughts.”

Her gaze focuses on his backside. “You’ve got a nice butt, Weston,” she concedes. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

He hauls up his sweats. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. It’s a great ass.”

A grin stretches his face. “Say that again.”

“No.”

That grin shifts to me. “Your girl likes my ass. She’s into me.”

“Nope,” Brenna says cheerfully. “I don’t know where you got ‘I’m into you’ from that, but I can assure you I am not.” She uses one of the “T’s” to put down the word trolley .

“Good one,” I say .

“Thanks, Jakey.”

Brooks flops back onto his pillow mound. “Jakey? Is that what we’re calling you now?” He sounds delighted. “I like it. I’m using it all the time.”

“Sure thing, Brooksy.”

“I take it back. I do not like it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

As the game continues, it’s more competitive than I expect, especially with Brooks in the mix. Our scores are so close it’s impossible to predict the victor. And while I’m having a good time, I’m not giving one hundred percent of my attention to Scrabble. I keep sneaking peeks at Brenna. It’s hard not to. The girl is a smoke show. And I love hearing her laugh. Every time she does, the musical tone makes my heart beat faster.

When Brooks goes to use the john, I move closer to Brenna and slide my hand beneath her sweater.

I’m rewarded with another laugh. “We’re in the middle of a Scrabble game and you decide to stick your hand up my shirt?”

“Yup. Can I leave it here until he gets back?” With a wicked grin, I squeeze her left tit.

“You’re so weird.”

“Nah.”

She snorts. “You can’t always say ‘nah’ to whatever other people say about you.”

“Why not?”

“Because…well…I guess I don’t know why not.” She pauses suddenly, one ear cocked toward the window. “Hey. The thunder stopped.”

“Power’s still not back,” I point out.

“No, really? I thought the candlelight was just setting the ambience for our threesome.”

“We’re having a threesome?!” Brooks exclaims as he bounces back into the room. He looks like an elated little kid. “For real, Connelly? You didn’t want to have a threesome with Kayla but you’ll do it with your girl and—oh dear God, why am I complaining? Shut the fuck up, Brooks,” he scolds himself.

“Kayla?” Brenna echoes.

“His girlfriend.”

“Not my girlfriend.”

“You were going to have a threesome with them?” Brenna narrows her eyes.

“Not at all.” I glance at my roommate. “And make sure Kayla knows that, because I don’t need her ambushing me naked in the kitchen anymore.”

“Oh no, a naked girl in the kitchen! We need to install an alarm system! Someone get us a guard dog!” He gives an exaggerated eye roll. “Anyway. Are we doing this?”

I let him down not so gently. “We’re not having a threesome, now or ever. This new ass-flashing craze of yours is bad enough.”

Brenna’s gaze strays toward the windows again. “I should probably go soon.”

“Wait until the power’s back,” I say gruffly. I don’t like the idea of her being out on the roads. Several traffic lights had been out on our drive home, and I spotted more than one fender-bender.

“What time is it?” she asks. “If I’m going to leave, it needs to be sooner rather than later.”

I lean forward to check her phone. “It’s almost ten. Maybe you should—” The screen suddenly illuminates with an incoming call, and since I’m looking right at it, I can’t miss the name of the caller.

“Eric’s calling,” I tell her, my tone harsher than I intend.

My peripheral vision catches Brooks grinning at me. Yeah. He knows exactly how I feel about this.

“You’d better get that,” I prompt.

Her expression is suspiciously stricken. She snatches the phone and hits the Ignore button.

“Who’s Eric?” Brooks attempts to sound casual but fails. I’m glad he asked before I did, though, and the wink he gives me reveals it was intentional. I nod back, appreciating the solid.

“Nobody,” she says tightly.

Well, that tells me nothing. Is she seeing somebody else? Does she have a roster of guys she hooks up with, a bench full of McCarthys?

The hot jealousy burning my gut is not a pleasant sensation. I’m a competitive guy, but I’ve never competed for the affections of a woman before. Because no woman has ever chosen another man over me. That sounds pretentious and I don’t care. The idea of Brenna seeing other dudes is not okay with me.

Which creates another first: I’ve never been the one to initiate the are-we-exclusive conversation. How does one even bring that up?

When her phone buzzes with a voice-mail alert, I feel even testier. “Are you going to check that?”

“No need. I know what he wants.”

The unwelcome jealousy burns hotter. “Is that so?”

“Yup. Whose turn is it now?”

“Mine,” Brooks offers. But as he sorts the tiles on his tray, Brenna’s phone rings for a second time.

And then, after she ignores it, a third time.

“Just answer it,” I mutter.

With a heavy breath, she reaches for the phone again. “Eric, hey. I told you I don’t have time for—” Her sentence comes to an abrupt halt. When she speaks again, concern has softened her voice. “What do you mean you don’t know where you are?”

Brooks and I exchange a wary look.

“Slow down, slow down. You’re not making any sense. Where are you?” There’s a long silence. “Okay, stay put,” she finally says, and I swear her voice cracks a little. She blinks rapidly, as if fighting tears. “I’ll be right there.”