stop to me reaching for PJ’s arm so I could ask him if he still wanted to grab dessert.
By the time the firefighters pulled me out of the elevator, he was already surrounded by a bunch of his baseball buddies. Bryce rushed over to me, his partners quick on his heels, apologizing for what happened. I hid my smile, because no one could realize how not-sorry I was.
It was definitely an unexpected turn to the night, but I wouldn’t take back any of it.
After being checked over by the paramedics and declared unharmed, I was released from their care. Zach suggested that we go back to the party for a while, but I wasn’t in the mood to put on a happy face while the man I wanted to spend the evening with went on with his life.
It was ridiculous of me to think there could’ve been anything more than a stolen moment in a broken-down elevator. If Zach knew I was already obsessing over PJ, he’d tell me to grow a set of balls and leave the fairy tales to little kids. But I couldn’t help it. I’d always believed everything in life happens for a reason, and there had to be an explanation for the elevator breaking down.
Yeah, idiot. It broke down because this hotel is old as hell and things break, I scolded myself. It wouldn’t do any good to start trying to find any sort of deeper meaning than that.
Zach offered to bail out of the party to keep me company, but I didn’t need a babysitter. I needed time on my own to snap out of the funk settling over me. I blew PJ’s mind to keep his focus off being stuck and that’s all there was to it. Nothing more could happen. I was out and proud and he was still focused almost as much on staying in the closet as he was on staying in the game.
The next morning, Zach threw open the curtains on our hotel room before launching himself onto my bed. I pulled the pillow over my head to block out both the glaring light from the sun rising outside the window and Zach’s inevitable rambling. The problem with being a twin was that it was impossible to get anything past him. I could bullshit a lot of people in my life, but never him.
“Go away,” I grumbled. Even though the words were muffled by the pillow, I knew damn well he understood me. I also knew he’d ignore my pleas.
“Get your ass up!” He bounced on the bed like we were still six years old. “It’s after nine and I drank a hell of a lot more than you did, so there’s no reason for you to waste the day away.”
“If you’ve forgotten, I also had a traumatic evening,” I pointed out. If I could avoid telling Zach that part of the trauma was the fact I couldn’t stop thinking about how PJ sounded and tasted as I blew him, I would. There was nothing in the twin code that said he needed to know absolutely everything about my life.
“Tough shit, we’ve got breakfast with some of the Mavericks in an hour and then we have to head straight to the airport.”
That was not part of the deal. No one had told me we’d be having breakfast before we flew back to Raleigh. If I’d known the was a chance I’d see PJ again this morning, I might’ve stopped myself last night.
The only thing more awkward than mornings after was having to go through them in a room full of people. Dammit, why did I have to do something out of character for me? Normally, when we were at any sort of event for Zach’s career, I was calculated about not doing anything that could harm his image.
“How’d that happen?” I asked, because the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that there’d been nothing mentioned about anything beyond the event last night. In fact, Zach had told me we’d get to have a lazy morning in our room before we had to fly out because he’d rather not have to fly hungover, and he knew he was going to get drunk. Our dad still tended to micromanage as much of his time as possible, constantly reminding him that the off-season didn’t mean he could slack off on his diet and workouts.
“After you punked out last night, I wound up hanging with some of the guys.