The Bromance Book Club

by Lyssa Kay Adams

  Nope. She had married Gavin for love.

  But seeing how well that turned out, she might have been better off marrying for the cash.

  Thea had been completely unprepared for life as a baseball wife. Being a Legends WAG brought its own kind of celebrity and responsibility. Between the charity events and promotional appearances, it was like being yanked into a sorority she never meant to rush. She didn’t have anything against sororities. She’d even been in one in college—an artsy collection of theater majors and music majors and feminist studies students who protested cuts to the women’s center.

  But this sorority was different. This one demanded conformity and total obedience—the opposite of everything Thea once stood for. But Thea had had to figure it all out on her own with infant twins because Gavin was gone more than he was home. And somehow in the process, she got lost until she no longer even recognized herself. How had Southern Lifestyle magazine described her last summer in a feature about Tennessee’s pro athletes and their families? Wholesomely pastel. That was it. And they were right. Her entire Lilly Pulitzer wardrobe had become a walking tribute to cotton candy. She used to wear vintage Depeche Mode T-shirts and black Chucks, for God’s sake.

  The article was like a bucket of cold water over her head. A wake-up call. She’d sputtered and stumbled and realized she’d become everything she once despised. And Gavin either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared that she had morphed into some kind of sanitized version of herself.

  Or, worse, he preferred the sanitized Thea.

  At the sound of his clearing throat, Thea finally turned around. The shadows beneath his eyes were more pronounced under the kitchen lights, like twin bruises. He really did look awful. Gavin could never handle the hard stuff. And she didn’t just mean alcohol.

  She slid her glass across the island toward him. “Do you want an aspirin?”

  “Already took some.”

  “Didn’t help?”

  “Not really.” He cocked a half smile. His hand wrapped around the glass she’d just shared, his thumb rubbing up and down the cool condensation. There was no holding back the zing of surprised longing that made certain parts of her ache and other parts tingle. She had either reached pathetic level bless her heart or was just starved for affection if the sight of his thumb distractedly stroking a glass of water could make her pink parts stand at attention. He hadn’t touched her since that night—the night of the Big O-No. But despite what he apparently believed, she had always loved being touched by him. She had never faked that.

  Damn him. “I want to keep the house.”

  Gavin cocked his head as if he didn’t hear her correctly. Like a dog. “W-what?”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I won’t need as much child support if you’re willing to pay it off for the girls and me. I’ll work, obviously, but—”

  Gavin pushed the glass away. “Thea—”

  “I think things would have been easier for Liv and me if Dad hadn’t sold the house after he left Mom. And since this is the only house the girls have ever known—” Her voice caught. She sucked in a breath to cover it up. “We need to tell them together. I’m not sure when the right time is, though. Before the holidays? After the holidays? I don’t know. I don’t even know if they’ll understand what it means. They still think you’re just off playing baseball, but that’s not going to hold much longer—”

  “Thea, stop!”

  The staccato of his voice was as jarring as it was atypical. Thea jumped in her own skin. “Stop what?”

  “I don’t want this.”

  “The house?”

  “No! Fuck!” He dragged his hands across his hair. “I mean, yes. I want the house. I w-w-want you and the girls in the house.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I want you!”

  Thea’s mouth dropped open. Surprise stole her voice for a moment before cynicism gave it back. “Stop, Gavin. It’s too late for this.”

  Gavin squeezed the edge of the counter until veins protruded from his thick forearms.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s best to do this now while the girls are still young and won’t remember . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence over a sudden thickness in her throat. She didn’t have time for this emotional crap.

  Gavin’s face hardened. “Remember what? That their parents were ever married?”

  “I’d rather they never remember that than be forced to endure the pain of their family being torn apart.”

  “Then let’s keep our family together.”

  “You tore it apart the minute you moved out.”

  “You told me to leave, Thea!”

  “And you couldn’t go fast enough.”

  His mouth opened and closed for a moment before he blurted, “I needed time to think.”

  “And now you’ll have all the time you need.”

  Gavin bent, dropped his elbows on the island, and held his head in his hands. “This isn’t going the way I w-wanted.”

  Thea bolted away from the counter. “Really? How exactly did you imagine this going? Because you seem to think that all you had to do was show up here, and I’d just smile and pretend everything was fine. I’ve been doing that for three years, Gavin. I’m done.”

  She headed back to the wall. She needed to hit something again.

  “Wh-what the hell does that mean?” he asked, following closely behind.

  “It means that orgasms were the least of our problems!” That’s what pissed her off the most. He was mad at her for faking it in bed, but didn’t he know she’d been faking everything for years?

  Thea picked up the bat and swung as hard as she could. Another hole appeared in the wall.

  “Thea, wait,” Gavin said, wrapping his fingers around the bat to stop her from swinging again. “Please, just listen to me for a second.”

  She spun around. “We’re beyond the listening stage, Gavin. I’ve asked you to listen to me a thousand times since that night, and you refused!”

  “Not everything about that night was awful, Thea.”

  Thea advanced on him, propelled by pent-up rage. “Are you kidding me? You think now is a good time to remind me of your glorious grand slam?”

  It would be funny if it weren’t so not funny. The perfect pun. The night of his greatest career achievement—a walk-off grand slam in the sixth game of the American League Championship series—was the night of an even bigger home run in bed for Thea.

  “I’m talking about what we did after the game,” Gavin said, closing the distance between them, lowering his voice to a seductive tone. “That wasn’t awful.”

  “Then why did you move into the guest room afterward?”

  Gavin held up his hands in a truce-like gesture. “Because I overreacted and fucked up, OK? I know that. And I w-w . . .”

  His mouth worked to push out words that his muscles were determined to hold in. He dragged his hand along his jaw and then gripped the back of his neck. He finally looked at the floor with a growl, frustration tugging his lips into a frown.

  The front door suddenly flew open for the second time that morning. Gavin bit back a curse as Amelia and Butter ran into the house with Ava and Liv following slowly behind. Amelia stopped in the hallway and held a dog treat as high in the air as her little arm could reach. “Daddy, look!”

  Amelia commanded Butter to jump. The dog merely lifted his head and took the treat from Amelia’s fingers, but Amelia squealed as if she’d taught Butter to talk.

  Gavin smiled softly. “Very cool, baby,” he said, his voice strained.

  Liv caught Thea’s eye as she walked into the kitchen. A few seconds later, “All the Single Ladies” blared from the Bluetooth speakers.

  “She’s subtle,” Gavin said quietly.

  “No one is as loyal as a little sister.”

 
; “We’re going to go jump on the trampoline,” Liv said, picking up on the still-unresolved tension in the room.

  She turned up the music before going out back with the girls.

  Gavin approached Thea cautiously. “Just tell me what it w-w-will take. What do I need to do?”

  His face conveyed a beseeching plea that reminded her way too much of the fake baby, please tone her father would use whenever he begged her mother for a second chance. Or a third or a fourth. How many times did her mother believe her father’s promises and take him back? Too many. Thea wasn’t going to make that mistake.

  “It’s too late for this, Gavin.” Thea sighed, repeating her words from earlier.

  Gavin’s face blanched. “Just give me a chance.”

  She shook her head.

  His eyes pinched at the corners. With a strangled noise, he spun around, his hands stacked on top of his head. His T-shirt tugged over taut back muscles that bunched and bulged as he battled his thoughts. A moment fraught with tension passed before he spun back around. Determination drove his steps as he ate the distance between them. “I’ll do anything, Thea. Please.”

  “Why, Gavin? After all this time, why?”

  His eyes dropped to her lips, and, oh God, was he going to—

  Gavin let out a growl, slid one hand to the back of her head, and slanted his mouth over hers. Thea stumbled back and grabbed the back of the couch to keep from falling, but she didn’t need to because Gavin wrapped an arm around her back. A strong, protective, bulging, masculine arm that held her against his hard body. His mouth plundered hers. Over and over. And when his tongue swept between her lips, she couldn’t stop herself from responding. She curled her fingers into the front of his shirt and opened wider for him with a sigh. He tasted like toothpaste and whiskey and a shot of long-lost dreams.

  But the shot came with a chaser of confusion and betrayal. Was she really this easy? One wild kiss and she was literally weak in his arms? One kiss and she forgot everything that had happened between them?

  Thea wrenched her mouth away. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “You asked why,” Gavin panted, his eyes dark. “That’s why.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You did what?”

  Gavin slumped in the passenger seat of Del’s truck, the smell of the pizza, chicken wings, and other snacks in the back seat threatening to break the cease-fire in his stomach. It had been several hours since he last threw up, but the spicy odor of buffalo sauce warned that could easily change. “I kissed her.”

  Del swore. “I specifically told you not to go see her!”

  “I know.”

  “And I definitely did not give you permission to kiss her.”

  “I didn’t know I needed it.”

  “You do. But more importantly, you need hers. Shit.” Del banged his hand on the steering wheel. “You might have set yourself back weeks with that stunt.”

  Gavin didn’t argue because he had the sinking feeling Del was right. If Thea could’ve gotten her hands on a frying pan, she might’ve bashed him over the head with it. After pushing him away, she’d told him he had no right to kiss her like that and ordered him to leave.

  But there’d also been a moment when she leaned into him, opened for him, let her tongue tangle with his, and breathed a little sigh. A real sigh. It was brief, but in that moment his wife had kissed him back. So maybe he hadn’t completely struck out.

  Del hung a right and merged onto the freeway. The inside of the car glowed yellow from the lights of oncoming cars heading into downtown Nashville for a night of honky-tonks. They drove for nearly fifteen minutes until Del exited near Brentwood, a subdivision outside the city where many athletes and country stars lived.

  Gavin preferred Franklin. A lot of celebrities lived there too, but the historic, tree-lined streets gave it a small-town feel. They lived in a normal neighborhood, not a stuffy mansion-filled subdivision. Their house was within walking distance of a little downtown where the girls could get a library book and an ice-cream cone, and where they had become regulars at the local diner with its cracked vinyl booths. The only tourists they ever got there were Civil War buffs who wanted to tour the local battlefield.

  Gavin was skeptical at first when Thea suggested they live there. His salary could afford something more lavish. But when he saw the way her eyes lit up when she pulled up the listing for the 1930s brick Craftsman on her phone, there was no way he was going to push for anything else. And now he wouldn’t give up their small-town lifestyle for anything.

  Except he almost had.

  Five minutes later, Gavin balanced five boxes of pizza and four cartons of wings up a manicured sidewalk. “Whose house is this?”

  By the ostentatious display of sports cars in the garage, Gavin feared they were at Asshole-Ate-His-Apple’s house.

  He was right. The door swung open, and Mack greeted them with a snort. “Hey, look who’s finally sober.”

  Gavin shoved the pizzas and wings at him. “Hey, look who’s still a dick.”

  “You two need to knock that shit off,” Del growled, walking in.

  Mack swung the door shut with his foot. “All in good fun, right, man?”

  “No. I kind of hate you,” Gavin said.

  Del turned around. “Everyone here?”

  “Yeah,” Mack said. “In the basement. Is he ready for his initiation? I have to get that sheep back to the farm by midnight.”

  Gavin scowled at that, but he trailed behind them through the soaring entryway and past a wide, curved staircase. Beyond that, they entered a kitchen twice the size of his and Thea’s. The sound of voices grew louder as they approached a door that led to the basement.

  Gavin waited for Mack and Del to go first.

  “Food’s here,” Mack announced, turning a corner at the bottom of the stairs. A round of voices harrumphed manly approval followed by several about times.

  “Are we late?” Gavin asked Del’s back.

  “Nah. They just got here early to finalize the plan.”

  Gavin grabbed the back of Del’s shirt. “Hold up. What plan?”

  “The plan to get Thea to take your stupid ass back,” Del said, turning the same corner that Mack had disappeared around. “A plan you made a helluva lot harder today.”

  Gavin sucked in and let out a breath, hovering on the last stair. Finally, mustering his courage with a reminder that this was about saving his marriage, he followed Del.

  Ten of Nashville’s movers and shakers—professional athletes, business owners, and city officials—stood around an elaborate bar, shoving one another aside as they dove into the pizza and wings. Del dumped the paper bag of other snacks. Several bags of chips fell out. A single green apple rolled onto the floor.

  Mack shook his head as he picked it up. “You are one petty bastard.”

  “Everyone hurry up,” Del said. “We gotta get started. Dipshit here kissed his wife today.”

  The room exploded. Heads swiveled. Chairs toppled. A hockey player in the corner swore in Russian.

  “What the fuck, man?” Mack barked. “We told you not to go see her!”

  A dude he recognized as Malcolm James, running back for the Nashville NFL team, choked on his beer. “Did you at least ask permission first, or was it a sneak-attack kiss?”

  “Sneak attack, I guess?”

  Yan smacked the back of his head. “That’s grand-gesture shit, man! You can’t do that yet.”

  “Grand gesture what?”

  The guys gave him varying degrees of dirty looks as they gathered their plates and headed for a massive game table on the other side of the basement.

  The Russian grumbled over the remains of the food, finally settling on a bag of pretzels. He tucked it under his arm as if someone might steal it. “Too much pizza,” he said, glaring as he walked by Gavin. “Cheese. It sh
oot straight out my ass.”

  That was a visual he didn’t need.

  “Gavin, come on. Time to get started.”

  Swiping his apple off the counter, he dragged his feet toward the one remaining chair.

  Del cleared his throat and stood. “Everyone ready?”

  The guys nodded, mouths full.

  “Good. First rule of book club?”

  They finished in unison. “You don’t talk about book club.”

  What. The. Fuck.

  Gavin looked around for a hidden camera. This had to be a prank.

  “A book club? That’s your grand plan for saving my marriage?”

  Del nodded at Mack, who rose on one hip and pulled a book from his back pocket. He tossed it at Gavin. It nailed him in the face.

  “Nice reflexes. Hope you’re better at shortstop.”

  Gavin bared his teeth. “I play second base, asshole.”

  Mack shrugged. “Isn’t that basically the same thing?”

  Gavin ignored him and retrieved the book from the table where it fell. He blinked at the cover. A woman from, like, the 1800s or some shit was leaning on a couch with a dude in one of those old-timey suits standing behind her. His shirt was open.

  “Courting the Countess,” Gavin read slowly. He ground his molars and looked up. “Is this a joke?”

  “No,” Del said.

  “This is a romance novel.”

  “Yes.”

  Gavin shot to his feet. “I can’t believe you assholes. My life is falling apart, and you’re making fun of me.”

  “I thought the same thing when Malcolm brought me in,” Del said. “But it’s not a joke. Sit down and listen.”

  Gavin pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, everyone was still staring at him. Not a weird dream, then. “Wh-wh-what the hell is going on here?”

  “If you’d shut up for a second, we’ll explain it to you, douchebag,” Mack said.

  Gavin returned to his chair. “You guys read romance novels?”