“Fuck,” I whisper reverently as my cock strains hard and heavy.

“You like to watch,” she whispers back.

“Only you.”

“I like you watching me.”

I have died and gone to erotic heaven.

She crooks a finger on her other hand. “But I like you touching me more.”

I don’t need a second invitation.

Not to Tillie Jean’s bed.

So I take a flying leap, making her shriek with the kind of laughter that she only lets loose when she’s completely turned on and laughing while on the edge of orgasm, and when I land on her bed beside her, it’s instinct to slide my hand between her legs.

But my hand doesn’t make it before there’s a loud pop!, then a creak, and the entire bed collapses.

“Oh my go—” she starts, but a string of pop! pop! pop!s interrupts her.

And before I can process that something is fucking wrong here, the entire room erupts in glitter.

The.

Entire.

Fucking.

Room.

It shoots out of the floors. The walls. Off the ceiling fan.

“Oh my god!” Tillie Jean shrieks.

I can’t see her through the glitter.

Gold glitter.

Silver glitter.

Rainbow glitter.

It’s everywhere.

It’s every-fucking-where.

Raining down.

Floating up.

Swirling like a fucking glitter tornado.

Tillie Jean’s making spitting noises.

“Close your eyes,” I bark out, snapping my own shut, and I choke on glitter too.

“Cooper!” she bellows.

Cooper.

Cooper.

“Fucking fuckity fuckwit,” I gasp.

“He is—bleeeech—so—eeeehhhhhth!—dead.”

He is.

He’s fucking dead.

Right fucking now.

“Is it in your eyes?” I blink my own open, see glitter in my own fucking eyelashes, and peer at her through the red haze blurring the rest of my vision.

“No. But—” She holds out her arms.

Glitter.

Glitter everywhere.

Glitter on her face. In her hair. Down her arms. Covering her nipples. Piled in her belly button.

Her fucking belly button is full of glitter.

Nothing’s swirling or falling anymore, nothing shooting up from the floor.

Not a lot, anyway.

Fucker rigged a glitter blower.

“Shower,” I order.

I’m off the bed, ripping the glitter blower out of the electrical socket behind the bed, then shoving on my own clothes.

“Max?”

“Go. Take. A. Fucking. Shower.”

Yeah.

We’re busted.

I’m busted.

My glittery ass is so busted. I can’t walk out of this house without all the evidence of where I’ve been and what I was doing here.

But you know what?

Cooper Fucking Rock is fucking busted himself.

“Max—” Tillie Jean says again.

I round on her with a glare. “I’m handling this.”

I don’t bother with a shirt or shoes. Just pants. Just enough that cousin Chester the asshole won’t put me in jail if he pulls me over for angry driving on my way up the mountain.

I probably look like a fucking troll doll and I don’t care.

It’s time.

It’s past time for me to march into Cooper’s house, look him straight in the eye, grab him by the balls, and tell him I’m fucking his sister, and he can go take a goddamn leap if he thinks I’m not good enough for her.

But halfway up the mountain, after rejecting the umpteenth call in a row from Tillie Jean, I realize what I’m doing.

I’m about to go toss the best friend I’ve ever had off the side of a mountain.

I slam on the brakes in the middle of the road.

Fuck.

Fuck.

If I walk in Cooper’s front door and smash his face in, that’s it.

We’re done.

Spring training will suck. The season will suck. I’ll be begging my agent to get me traded before the end of my first regular-season game.

This?

Shipwreck?

Tillie Jean?

It’s not real.

Luca’s right. We don’t talk. We just screw. There’s no future. This is fun.

She has the luxury of fun.

I thought I did too, but I’m sitting here parked in the middle of the fucking road on the side of a mountain with my chest squeezing tight and my throat constricting and it takes me three stabs at the button to make my window roll down.

Can’t breathe.

Can’t. Fucking. Breathe.

And not because I’m glittering.

But because good things don’t happen to guys like me.

Head down.

Do your job.

Go home.

Don’t get attached.

The rules.

I lifted my head.

I dreamed more.

And now—now—now Cooper’s probably going to punch my face in for touching his sister.

I can’t go back to her.

Can’t let her see me like this.

I’m over this shit.

I’m done with the panic.

But one two three four, there it is.

One two three four gasp for breath.

One two three four can’t find the air.

One two three four it’s so fucking hot in here.

Fuck.

Fuck.

“Drive,” I order myself on a gasp. “Fucking. Drive.”

Driveway.

There’s a driveway.

I can make it.

I can get off the road.

Just a little bit more.

And then I’m safe.

32

Tillie Jean

Do you know how hard it is to get dressed when your wet body is coated in glitter and you don’t want to have to burn your entire house down?

“It’s fucking hard,” I yell at Cooper an hour later. “Lines, Cooper. Fucking lines.”

His lips are twitching like he’s trying to take me seriously, but the next thing out of my mouth is, “I will have glitter in my fucking cooter for the rest of my natural life,” and Luca over in the corner snorts and has to turn away.

Henri tries to give him a stern glare, but even Henri—Henri—isn’t quite managing.

“You know I’m good for buying you a new bed,” Cooper says. “I even made sure I could still get the exact same model.”

I shove his shoulder, then swipe my hand over my tongue to try to get more glitter off of it—yes, glitter on my tongue, and yes, it’s uncomfortable—and then I smear my wet hand all over his face. “I don’t want a new fucking bed. I want to not have to burn my house down to de-glitter it.”

I’m shrieking.

I’m fully aware that I’m shrieking, and it’s not that I don’t appreciate Cooper pranking me back in a manner that will require me to take out a loan in order for me to get vengeance, because yes, there will be helicopters and vats of glue and feathers and ski ramps and manufactured mudslides involved, but I can’t find Max.

Cooper dodges my glittery slime hand. “C’mon, TJ. Could’ve been worse. You could’ve had guests.”

“I was banging Max when it happened.”

Yep.

That just shrieked right out of me too.