Hard Fall (Trophy Boyfriends #2) - Sara Ney Page 0,5
my hands frantically in the stop-no-no-no signal. I do not want to attend!
My whining and gesture do not work.
“Of course I can, Thomas. You leave it to me.” Judging by the look on his face, it hasn’t escaped his notice that she’s just used his actual name and not called him Mr. Westbrooke, a breach in etiquette he won’t forget any time soon. Old fashioned. Stuffy. Stuck up—just a few words that describe my father.
“Dad, it’s kind of you to offer, but really, I—”
Madison pulls me into her, covering the phone with her right hand. “You are going—we are going. Do not ruin this for me. I am single, dammit! You are single, and there will be single guys there.”
Is she nuts? Going to a fundraiser for a serious human rights organization to pick up dudes? I cannot with her.
I resist, though I know it’s pointless—she will win this argument, like she always does, because I have nothing going on this weekend and she knows it, and she’s going to drag me there whether I want to go or not.
“Right, exactly—you know who is going to be there? Marlon. He’s at all those freaking things because he is an ASS kisser,” I hiss. “I don’t want to risk running into him.”
“Don’t be such a pussy,” she hisses back. “Suck it up. At some point you’re going to have to see that piece of shit, and wouldn’t you rather have me by your side when you do it?”
“No! God no, you’ll make it worse. I don’t need you stabbing his eyes out with a fork in public.”
“At least I wouldn’t stab his dick.”
The sound of a throat clearing has us both looking down at my phone—down at my father’s bright red face.
“Oh shit.” Madison laughs.
Oh shit is right.
“I’m still here,” Dad somberly intones. Unamused. Unimpressed.
Your dad is so hot, Madison mouths.
I could kill her.
“Send over the tickets, sir. We’re going to that fundraiser.”
I hate my best friend sometimes.
3
Trace
There’s a lot to be said for being attractive.
I would know, because I’m handsome.
I can’t control what my face looks like—it’s not my fault I’m so damn good-looking. At least, that’s what my mom always told me when I was growing up. Then again, she told my brother the same thing, and he’s not even half as gorgeous as I am.
I swing my car around and put it in park so my asshole brother can climb in; he loves riding together to visit our parents. No idea why. I suppose it’s because he’s one cheap son of a bitch and loves saving the gas money.
Tripp earns more than I do by almost double; he can afford the quarter tank of fuel it takes to get to Mom’s, but does he ever volunteer to drive? Fuck no.
“Get in, bitch, we’re going shopping,” I tell him as he squeezes his large body into my luxury sports car. It was my first stupid purchase after I signed my contract with the Chicago Steam, but it wasn’t my last. Car. House. The diamond watch glittering on my wrist, casting prisms throughout the interior of my car.
“Shopping? I thought we were going to Mom and Dad’s,” Tripp says, buckling himself in, not trusting my driving. The guy is one of the worst backseat drivers on the planet. Such a nag.
“We are going to Mom and Dad’s. Stop being so literal—I was making a joke.”
Not nearly as good-looking, and not nearly as clever—my brother doesn’t think anything I say is funny, and I’m hilarious, just ask me.
“Is True going to be there?” Tripp’s referring to our younger sister as he shifts in the seat of a car that realistically doesn’t fit either of us in it comfortably. Too tall, too broad, too big for this boxy, compact sports car.
“No, Mom said she’s got something going on. Packing to go out of town or something like that.”
Our sister works in athletics, too, as a junior agent for a management company, and she spends a lot of time going on recruiting trips with scouts. It’s baseball season at the university level and we haven’t seen True in weeks.
“Maybe we should FaceTime her later—make sure she’s alive.” For all the grumbling and bitching he does about us, Tripp sure has to know what we’re doing all the damn time. He’s not even that much older than we are, the three of us each only a year apart. Boom, boom, boom, our parents banging us out within a four-year period.