to myself, dropping the phone down on the sofa next to me.
It’s late. I’m still a little buzzed. I don’t have any good reason to call her other than wanting to hear her voice and maybe make her laugh.
I puff out a sigh and pick up the phone again, testing my self-control and holding my thumb over the call button next to her name.
I rack my tipsy brain for a possible explanation for why I could be calling her right now, and I’m blessed with a stroke of genius.
“The PR shit,” I say to myself with a victorious laugh. “Fucking brilliant.”
It’s not too late to talk about work. Vices are all workaholics anyway, right? That’s all the convincing I need, apparently.
Before I know it, the phone is ringing.
“Hello?”
My head slams into stone-cold sobriety. “Hi, Ellie. It’s Matt.” I sound like a dumbass.
She laughs a little. “Yeah. I, uh, I know.”
“I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No, no. You’re fine. I couldn’t really sleep, just a little…stressed, I guess. I’ve been doing some work stuff to take my mind off things.”
Vices and their damn work. I knew it.
“Oh, good.” I run a hand through my hair. “Well, I just got back from the bar with the guys…”
“Oh, did you now?” she says on the sweetest laugh laced with mock surprise. “I never would have guessed.”
“Oh, yeah, well.” I chuckle.
“That was an awesome game today. You guys had a lot to celebrate.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you had a good time. That’s actually sort of why I was calling.”
“Oh yeah?” She sounds amused. Why is she amused? I’m not amusing.
“Yeah. When I was at the Atlantic, I just got to thinking about your whole PR strategy plan thing to get fans to like me more. And I just had to know…did you come up with anything?”
“That’s what you were thinking about when you were out drinking with your team?” I can hear her smiling, and it makes me smile.
“Well, I…” I shrug, even though she can’t see me. “Yeah. I was curious. And I guess I wanted an excuse to call you and see how you’re doing. With…everything.”
“Well, here I am. And I’m doing…” She pauses for a couple of extra beats. “Better now.”
“Good.” My chest feels light.
“And as for the PR stuff, I have some ideas.”
“Oh, do you?”
“Yeah, actually, some good ones.”
“If you’re not too sleepy, I’d love to hear how in the world you plan on making South Florida get hyped over their second-string QB.”
“I’m not too sleepy.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, and just the sexy sound of it gets me a little turned on. “If you want…I can FaceTime you and tell you about it.”
I lean back on the couch and raise my brows, considering this. If there’s one thing on the planet that Chase Kennedy taught me about women, it’s that you always shoot your shot. Always.
“I’ll do you one better, Ellie Vice. How about I call you an Uber to my place, and you can tell me about all these brilliant ideas in person. With…snacks.”
Okay, maybe not Kennedy smooth, but hey, I tried.
She takes in a breath, pausing for a second and making me sweat a little.
“For work, you know.” I keep my tone playful. “We don’t want to waste a second. Time being of the essence and all that.”
I hear something that resembles a laugh and, if I had to guess, is paired with some form of an eye roll. “It’s after midnight, Matt.”
“You can crash here. I’ll take the couch, if you want,” I add quickly.
Definitely not a Chase Kennedy move, but it felt like the right thing.
“What? Like a…sleepover?” she asks.
“Yeah. A sleepover. You said you were awake and stressed anyway. If we’re gonna be parents together, we can at least be…friends.”
The silence from the other end of the call weighs on me, until finally it’s broken.
“All right. Call me an Uber.” She gives an exaggerated sigh, and I have to resist the urge to do a fist pump.
“Done and done.” I glance down at my phone and open the Uber app, clicking a few buttons to order her a ride. “It’ll be at your hotel in ten.”
She giggles. “This makes no sense.”
“Nothing involving you and me has made any sense at all since the night we met.”
Ten
Ellie
Elizabeth Marie Vice, what the entire hell are you doing here?
I take a deep breath, inhaling the crisp, clean air and the scent of man soap as my mind struggles to understand why on earth I agreed