Not that anyone who wears a black hoodie with bright, sparkly purple letters spelling out FABULOUS across her chest needs a bra.

The hoodie speaks for itself.

“Oh my god, this coffee is the best,” she moans after downing the whole cup in one gulp.

My cock leaps to attention and asks if it, too, can have some of what she’s having.

Preferably with her.

I lean back, hook my ankle over my knee to hide it, and signal the barista. “Can she get another one of those, but decaf?”

TJ gasps in horror.

And it’s so Tillie Jean, and exactly what I thought she’d do, that I’m suddenly laughing, and there’s no amount of holding my own mug to my face that’ll hide it.

“You.” She points at me, eyes still as round as her pretty pink lips. “You are pranking me before the sun’s up on a Sunday morning.”

“It’s eleven AM, Trouble Jean. Sun’s been up for hours.”

She gasps. “And now you’re depriving me of my fantasies. For shame, Max Cole. For. Shame.”

I am not flirting with Tillie Jean.

I’m not flirting with Tillie Jean. I don’t have a death wish, and flirting with her in broad daylight, here in Cooper’s mother’s coffee shop, would be a death wish.

I’m being her friend.

At least, if anyone asks, that’s what I’m telling them.

The truth?

The truth’s hairier.

The truth is, I’m taking Tillie Jean on a date. In her mother’s coffee shop. Where Cooper will hear about it.

You don’t do that if you’re not serious about treating your teammate’s sister right.

“TJ, you want another full-octane caramel macchiato?” the barista calls.

“Two, please.” She winces like the sound of her own voice is hurting her head. “This is why I don’t drink,” she mutters to me.

“Alcohol turns you into a grandma sloth?”

She pulls her sunglasses down just enough to peer at me with bloodshot eyes. “Have you been saving that one all morning?”

“Nah. Came up with it on the spot. I’m quick like that.”

I’m not touching her, but I want to be. I want to rub her temples and feed her more bread and hand her a coffee mug full of water to see if she’d drink it or if her palate will only tolerate coffee.

I fucking missed her. She snuck in the cracks between all the reasons I’ve sworn I’ve hated her forever, and I fucking missed her.

“You paint this?” I gesture around the room.

She nods, then winces as she leans back in her chair, sunglasses back in place. “I was thirteen the first time Mom remodeled. Now, we freshen it up every three or four years. She’ll shut down for a weekend over the winter and Grady and Cooper and Dad stop by and offer exceptionally unhelpful ideas, like you should put an octopus eating a crab on that wall, Tillie Jean, but Cooper always gets us take-out for all of our meals, and Grady bakes us cookies, and all three of them move the tables around while we fight over which music to listen to. It’s glorious.”

“You know how lucky you are to like everyone in your family?”

A smile touches her lips. “I do. But you know, family comes in all flavors. I’ve never seen the team as tight as you guys seem to have been this year. You’re a family all your own.”

“Still can’t pick them all ourselves though. If only we’d get rid of that Cooper guy. His feet stink.”

“That’s the lucky socks.” She frowns. “What’s your lucky charm?”

“Hard work.”

“That’s it?”

“Can’t change luck, but you can change yourself.”

“Just when I think you can’t possibly get any sexier,” she murmurs.

It’s not the casual, annoying flirting she used to do. There’s too much sincerity in her words, and it makes every spare drop of blood in my body—and some that are definitely not spare—surge to my dick. “So spying on me naked didn’t do it, but hearing I work hard did?”

She grins. “It’s stair steps. Whatever will you do tomorrow?”

I lean back, put my hands behind my head, and casually flex my triceps. “I’ll think of something.”

“I am so dead if my brother walks in that door,” she whispers.

“Because a friend who saw you needed a helping hand took you for coffee?”

“That is not what this is, and you know it.”

I do.

But it’s nice to hear she agrees.

It’s also probably a very good thing I can’t see her eyeballs. If I could, they’d probably be very obviously stripping me out of my clothes and humping me against the windows of the sun porch in here.

Much like I’m mentally stripping her and bending her over the counter between the cake plate holding scones and the tip jar. “You know that photo shoot I did yesterday?”

“Yes. You were in the way of the birds I was watching.”

I wait for my brain to tell me to shut up.

It doesn’t. “They want a longer interview. Want me to talk about playing with anxiety.”

Her lips purse for a second before she gulps more coffee. “Do you want to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because you’d have to bare your soul, or because you think there are better guys in the league to open up and talk about the stuff that nobody talks about?”

I jerk in my seat and look at her closer.

One corner of her mouth hitches up. “You guys live out of hotels four to six months a year and get asked to do things like star naked in shampoo commercials and strip down for photo shoots on baseball diamonds in January. There’s pressure to always get better. You never know when an injury might derail you or when your contract won’t get picked up or when you’ll hit a rough patch. You’re born to win, but you can’t win every day. You are not the only guy in the league to battle demons, Max. So, do you want to be one more of the few guys talking about it to make other guys feel normal and know it’s okay to struggle, or do you want to be the guy waiting for someone else to talk about it to make you feel better?”

I reach for my green tea. “Are you sure you’re hungover?”

She grimaces, then grabs her head. “Very much so. I’ve also been around professional athletes for almost a decade, and it drives me freaking batty that you men are always like, I can handle my problems on my own. I don’t need to talk to anyone. Grunt. Sniff. Scratch. Grunt. Oh my god. Just talk to someone.”

I shouldn’t be smiling, but she’s fucking adorable.

And right.

“I do talk to someone.”

“High five, studmuffin. You get a gold star.”

She holds out a palm, and I hit it with mine. “Thanks.”

“So. You gonna do it? Gonna spill your guts in a national magazine to match all those buff pictures of that new tattoo you still haven’t told me about?”

“Tillie Jean.” Mrs. Rock—the elder Mrs. Rock that all the kids in town call Nana—bursts through the door before I can answer. “Are you grilling that young man on what kind of oil he put on his body to make it all sparkly and defined and pretty yesterday?”

She plops down at our table without an invitation, which is only awkward since it’s a two-person table and I don’t leap up fast enough to help her drag over the wooden chair, considering if I do, I’ll show off a very impressive boner.