wear a dress.” His eyes seemed to run the length of me, and as he did, my body warmed under his stare.
Well, this was new.
I mean, sure, he flirted with me all the time, but I couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at me like this.
Like I wasn’t just his best friend.
“I’m glad you liked it,” I managed to say, my cheeks feeling hot.
He bit his lip. “Let’s just say that the next guy you date is going to be a very lucky guy.”
Okay, that was definitely not a platonic look he just gave me.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you practicing your flirting skills on me to make sure they work tomorrow?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Sure.”
And before I could dissect what he was saying for any hidden meanings, he disappeared into the night.
13
Cole
Knees slightly bent, push knees back like boom. Step to the left. Snap. Step to the right. Snap. In my head, I went through the moves I’d studied this afternoon, as I sifted through my closet for the right button-up shirt for tonight.
My original plan with this whole scheme was to bomb all my interactions with other women. So I supposed sucking on the dance floor would go right along with that plan.
But call it the perfectionist in me or not, I just couldn’t go through with it.
Because even if I didn’t go to clubs every week, like the other guys on the team, I wasn’t completely clueless when it came to having a recognizable face. I knew I was only one bad dance away from becoming a viral video on the Internet.
So if I was going to have people sharing videos online of me dancing, I wanted to make sure they didn’t make me the laughingstock of the NFL.
Which was why I had pulled up several YouTube videos after doing a workout with my trainer to make sure I nailed down a few basic moves that would at least give the illusion that I knew what I was doing tonight.
I was just pulling a blue-and-white plaid button-up out of the closet when my phone buzzed with a notification saying that someone was at my front door.
I frowned and opened the app for my security system. When it showed the view of my front porch, I saw Arianna standing at the front door.
Had we arranged to meet at my place?
I could have sworn we agreed for me to pick her up.
Oh well.
I dropped my phone into my back pocket and slipped my arms through the sleeves of my shirt as I walked out of my master closet, and then down the hall toward the entryway.
The doorbell rang just as I had finished buttoning my shirt. I checked myself in the mirror by the door, just to make sure I looked decent. My short hair still surprised me every time I caught my reflection. But aside from looking a lot more clean-cut than I usually did, I looked presentable enough.
So I swung open the door to greet my friend.
But instead of coming face to face with a vibrant woman in a form-fitting dress like I’d expected, I found myself looking at a disheveled-looking Arianna with blotchy eyes, tear-stained cheeks, and the outfit she must have worn to work at the salon.
“W-what’s wrong?” I stepped back, my eyes widening as I took her in, looking for any sign that she was hurt or sick.
Instead of saying anything, she simply handed me her phone and pushed her way into my house.
As she headed toward my great room and plopped herself down on my leather sofa, I looked at her phone’s screen.
It was a personal message from someone named Cassandra Mars. There was a message that read, I thought you should know.
Below the cryptic message was a photo of a tall man with blond hair kissing a woman with light brown hair at what looked like a hotel bar.
I frowned and tapped on the photo to enlarge it for a better view. And that was when my stomach dropped to the floor.
It was Chad.
While I couldn’t be sure, since I’d only seen her a few times in passing, the woman looked a lot like his co-worker Amber.
“There’s more, too,” Arianna said.
I scrolled to the next photo and saw Chad and Amber again, this time hand in hand as they stood in front of an elevator.
The next photo was of them just outside a hotel room door.
And the last was slightly blurry, like the photographer had been in motion while trying to