The Best Mistake - Cookie O'Gorman Page 0,67

10:00 pm, all three of us, including Coach O’Brien, were in bed. The team had a curfew I hadn’t known about.

I was nearly asleep when my phone buzzed.

With a frown, holding the phone close so the light wouldn’t disturb Mrs. O’Brien or June, thinking it was probably Charlie, I opened the screen to see what was going on. But the text wasn’t from her.

Archer: You were wrong.

Me: About what?

Archer: I would’ve definitely had more fun if I’d stayed with you.

My heart rate accelerated. How did he do that with such a simple sentence? I tried not to think about how much his next answer mattered.

Me: Why?

Archer: Is that a real question?

Me: umm yes…?

After about a minute, his answer came through.

Archer: Well, for one, I could’ve pumped you for more info about this Jamie guy. Fictional or not, it’s always good to know the competition.

I laughed at that.

Archer: Two, if you’d been there, I could’ve stared at you instead of my brothers. A definite improvement. And three, between them and those girls from the game, I had a hard time concentrating.

Me: Oh. So, Marguerite and her friends were there?

Archer: Was that her name? I can’t remember.

I rolled my eyes. Archer had just spent several hours with girls who doted on him, wanted his autograph, for goodness sakes, beautiful girls who by his own admission made it hard to concentrate. This shouldn’t make me jealous, and I wasn’t, not really. I just wished I’d gotten to spend that time with him as well.

Me: I’m sure it’s hard to remember names when there are so many gorgeous girls around.

His response was instant.

Archer: It wasn’t like that.

Me: I see.

Archer: I’m pretty sure you don’t.

There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I waited instead.

Archer: Honor…come on. Like I said, it would’ve been more fun with you. My mind was on you the whole time. How was your night? How’d the writing go?

Me: It went well. Got done with two articles, and I did a lot of thinking.

Archer: Any thoughts about me?

Me: Maybe.

Archer: I hope they were good ones.

Me: They were.

Archer: Details?

Me: No way.

Archer: Okay, just tell me this. Was I wearing a kilt in any of these “thoughts”?

I laughed quietly.

Me: No, not this time.

Archer: Damn. Next question: Did I take off a kilt in any of them?

Me: Goodnight, Archer.

Archer: Goodnight, Honor. Sweet dreams. Hopefully of me.

As if he had willed it to happen, I did dream of Archer that night. And they were sweet (for the most part). But that bit of heat was in there, too, and there were no kilts this time. Just me and Archer, and it was more than enough. By the time I woke up the next day, I was even more confident in my decision. I could hook up with Archer. No strings, no expectations, no heartbreak. Just fun with a guy I greatly esteemed and was attracted to. I was determined to see this through (if he still wanted me, of course).

No matter what happened after…

It would be worth it to have him just once.

Honor was acting strange.

After we won the second game against Covington, she hardly spoke to me, and then she’d opted to ride back to campus with June instead of taking the bus with the team. She had claimed it was to edit and work on her articles. She wanted to make sure they were print-ready before she sent them to her boss, but I still felt like something odd was going on.

It felt like she was avoiding me.

Though maybe I was just being paranoid. After all, it had only been a few days.

Wednesday was weights and conditioning for the team, so a bunch of the guys were in the gym. Usually, I led by example, one of the first to get in and get my reps done. But today I was dragging. Chase finished with his workout, and I was still at the half-way point.

He came up to me as I was doing my final set of bench presses.

“How’s it going?” he said.

“Good,” I replied, pushing out a breath as I lifted.

Chase raised a brow. “Any word from Honor?”

“No.”

“And how are we feeling about that?”

“Fine.” I laughed a bit breathlessly. Had it always been this hard to get through my circuit?

Chase made a hmm noise, but thankfully, he stopped with all the questions. After doing the last reps, I sat up, grabbed a drink while wiping the sweat from my forehead. Parker Graves came in a second later followed by Baylor, T.J.