Page 85 of The Killer Card

They’re engaged, is all my brain seems willing to supply. One day soon, they’ll be married. Then Clara and Rowan will follow. Then they’ll all start having babies together and their children will be best friends and you’ll be…

I’ll be in Boston. Or D.C. Rising to the top of a game I never really asked to play. Six months into a three-year program and I’m already questioning several life choices. Not that I’m anywhere near as ready as these four are to settle down. I’ve never seen myself as marriage material and my mother absconding from her own family kind of put a damper on the whole marriage and children ambition.

Picking up my Cosmo, I drain the glass, setting it back on the bar before I exit the suite. I just need a moment away from all the joy. And a moment away from him.

It’s been almost a year since we last saw each other at Clara’s graduation party. I wasn’t able to make it to Nelly’s this December since it fell right in the middle of my exam week, but I Facetimed her after.

I’m so happy she finally found something she’s good at. She’s always been a fantastic writer but telling her that and her actually believing it were two very different things so long as her parents- and Cristian- were planning a meaningless future.

Elias has been so good for her. Funding her classes, staying up late to help her study for exams, reading and editing all of her assignments. It doesn’t hurt that his fame is also partially why she landed the internship that led to her new job. She’s been writing pieces for an online blog since she graduated, making fantastic money, and hardly ever refers to it as work. I think her official title is Junior Sports and Entertainment Columnist, and I couldn’t be prouder. Of her or of Clara who has managed to be signed on with an exclusive dance company since graduating.

Miracles must be real after all if Doctor Christina Ramirez learned to fully support her daughter’s ballet ambitions. I’m still kind of pissed she never told us how good she actually is. Fucking bitch.

But of course, she has Rowan to push her in those endeavors. Who better to make sure a ballerina always hits her mark than a trained Seal? I’ve called after her practices before only to hear her screaming and raging and every now and then sobbing while Rowan patiently managed her in the background.

They’re so fucking cute it makes me sick.

Finding a blissfully empty hall, I lean my back against the wall, releasing a sigh. I am happy for them, truly. It’s just getting harder and harder to pretend I’m not a little jealous, I guess. I don’t have anyone like that waiting for me back in Boston. I don’t have the possibility of some great love just coming around the corner and sweeping me off my feet—

“Todo fino?”

I look up at the one person I very much wanted to avoid. Like me- like all of us- he’s wearing his teal blue Santos jersey. Except he cut off his sleeves, leaving it gaping along the sides, revealing the unfairly toned muscles of his beach tanned arms. Not that I blame him, it’s hot as fuck for February and I cut off the bottom half of mine too.

“Did you follow me?” I glare, reaching up to fix the thick ribbon holding my hair in a bun atop my head.

He scoffs. “What do I look like, a puppy?” He holds up a finger immediately. “Don’t answer that.” I can’t help the smirk that lifts my lips. “You had a few,” and then it’s gone. “I was just checking on you—”

“I’m an adult, Graham.” I turn away. “I can hold my alcohol. And I hardly even had—”

“Three Cosmos is not hardly anything, Naomi and you know that.” He exhales slowly, holding up his hands. “I’m not here to chastise you. I was just making sure you’re okay. Which it appears you are, so I’ll be going before you bite my head off.”

To his credit he does turn to leave. It’s me that stops him from going when some ridiculous emotional place compels me to say, “They’re engaged.”

Graham turns back, leaning his shoulder against the wall. “They are indeed,” he nods. “About damn time too, I think.”

“Do you?” I laugh a little. “Twenty-three is the perfect age for marriage?”

“I mean, if I could go back and do it all over again? You know, if my childhood and adolescence hadn’t been absolute shit,” he shrugs. “Yeah, twenty-three would have been a good age to fall stupidly in love.”

I avert my gaze to the opposite wall where annoyingly a ginormous mural of the Miami team is painted on the wall. Cristian is front and center.

“But I’m glad I didn’t.”

I blink, looking back at him. “You’re glad you spent your twenties in and out of rehab—”

“That’s not what I said,” he corrected, pushing away from the wall, closing the distance he kept carefully between us. “I said I’m glad to have not fallen in love back then.”

“And why is that?” I ask as he comes to stand in front of me. The only man to be even slightly taller than me. His smirk as sinful as the devil. His green eyes glimmering in the fluorescent light of the stadium hall. He’s far too pretty, even after all this time I still have yet to meet anyone who physically compares to Graham Rosales.

“Because,” he bites his lip, dragging my gaze down to the curve of his mouth. “And you’re the lawyer here, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve been told a divorce is very expensive?”

I snort out a laugh, genuine, unfamiliar even to me. “Yes, it is very expensive.”

“See,” his hand finds my waist, his thumb brushing the bare skin just above my shorts sending a shiver rippling down my spine. “And I already have so little. You’ve seen my apartment. Divorce would leave me destitute.”

“And why,” God it’s pathetic that I’m already slightly breathless from his touch. “Would a divorce be necessary?”

Okay, so maybe we did hook up after Clara’s graduation, making it almost a year since he’s touched me like this. Almost a year since I’ve seen the stars only he can make me see. Graham Rosales once told me he was weak for me, but maybe I’m also weak for him? Just a little bit? Can a girl be blamed for enjoying a decent orgasm?