Brody: Knock, knock.

My brow furrows. What the hell does that mean? Is Brody at the door? It’s been two minutes since the message alert. With a pounding heart, I scramble from my bed and leave my room.

“Shit,” I mutter. Racing back, I grab the test paper and shove it underneath my mattress. I head back out, grabbing my cotton robe as I go. The living area is dark. Leah’s gone to bed, thank god. While I appreciate her mama bear protectiveness, it needs to loosen a notch before she strangles me with it.

Shrugging on the robe over my plain white tank top and panties, I tie the belt and pad over to the apartment door. Undoing the locks, I open it a fraction and peer out into the brightly lit hall. Emptiness greets me. There’s no one there. Disappointment slugs me in the gut. God. This is crazy.

Once back in bed, I settle the sheets around me with forced calm and pick up my phone.

Jordan: What are you doing?

Brody is waiting for my reply because his answer is instant, complete with his usual errors.

Brody: Ur supposed to answer with whose there.

A joke? I’m getting a random joke? There’s no fighting the smile that tugs at the corners of my lips. I know I shouldn’t reply but it’s easier said than done.

Jordan: Who’s there?

Brody: Beets!

Jordan: Beets who?

Brody: Beets me!

A chuckle escapes me.

Brody: Knock, knock.

Jordan: Who’s there?

Brody: Yah.

Jordan: Yah who?

Brody: I didn’t no u were a cowboy!

I barely have time to shake my head at that before the next one hits.

Brody: Knock, knock.

I glance at my textbook and sigh deeply. Whatever game Brody’s playing, I don’t have time for it.

Jordan: Brody, I can’t keep doing this all night …

Putting down the phone, I pick up my book and flick to my page as another alert comes through.

Brody: Last one, I promise.

I give in because I’m a total fool.

Jordan: Who’s there?

Instead of a text reply, Brody rings me instead. I waver a very short time before hitting answer.

“Fuck it, Jordan,” he’s saying before I get out a simple greeting. Leaning forward, I grab for the blanket at the end of my bed. Lifting it up and over myself, I burrow down against the storm his voice sets off inside me. “I don’t care about jokes. I care about—” He breaks off, creating a charged silence. I sit and wait, breathing heavy under the heat of the blanket. “Pizza.”

“You care about pizza?”

He clears his throat. “I do.”

“That’s good, Brody. We all have to care about something.”

His chuckle comes through the phone. “Christ, I have mad skills with a football, but when it comes to you I have no idea what I’m doing.”

His vulnerability tugs at my heart. It makes me protective. It makes me want to rip Kyle Davis’s intestines out through his throat and strangle him with them for all the torment he’s caused Brody. Soon, I promise myself. “Maybe you could start by telling me what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m trying to ask you to come out for pizza with me after your soccer game on Wednesday.”

“Brody—”

“Don’t answer yet,” he says quickly. “I have a bedtime story I want to tell you first.”

“A bedtime story?” I echo faintly.

“Yes. A bedtime story.”

“Well, okay then.”

“Once a upon a time, there was a little boy called Brody.” Delight curls my lips. Bedtime stories bring out my inner child, and Brody can be a bit of a closed book. The opportunity to hear snippets from his youth is one I’m not turning down. “Before he ever picked up a football he knew he loved the game, but he wasn’t ever allowed to watch it.

“One day when he was six, they were driving past the local high school and a game was on. He rolled down his window and fell in love. The atmosphere was intense, the crowd, the chants, the fun. He could smell popcorn and hotdogs, and fresh cut grass. But most of all he could see the home team. They were worshipped like gods and treated each other as family. Brothers. They belonged to each other and to the game.

“The little boy craned his neck as they went by, sucking all that in so he could play it back later in his head. He snuck in to watch their next game, and the next, and the next, until he knew without a doubt that football was going to be the best thing that ever happened to him. But no matter how much he begged, or how many bargains he tried making, his parents wouldn’t let him play. The little boy was destined for a more conservative future in politics.

“But the older that little boy got, the more they realized he wasn’t going to be anything more than an embarrassment so they gave in.”

Understanding hits like a lightning strike. Brody hides his dyslexia because it’s an embarrassment to his parents. Something to be ashamed of. And that shame is so deeply ingrained inside him he can’t let it go. My eyes burn. “I hope that little boy grew up to realize his parents were wrong.”

Brody replies and his voice is stilted and thick, as if the words are hard to get out. “He didn’t. The problem is that these two people are the ones he’s been trying to please all his life. He knows he never will, not as long as he plays football, but maybe one day he’ll be great, and what they think won’t matter so much anymore.”

My lips tremble and I press them together.

“But then something amazing happened.”

“What?” I ask, needing to hear something good.

“Not what, but who. What this little boy didn’t realize, was that it wasn’t just football that was going to be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

My breath catches. “Brody.”

“This little boy grew up and he met a girl. She was the first person to see all of who he was, and still believe in him, even when he didn’t believe in himself. She was smart, and pretty, and god, so wholesome he wanted to defile her with wicked words and hot sex. But this girl was far too serious, so he made her laugh and taught her that it’s okay to sometimes let go.” Brody takes a deep breath and lets it out. “This girl was utterly perfect, and he was so scared of disappointing her like he did his parents, that he fucked up by pushing her away before it happened.”

Silent tears fall down my cheeks. One after the other they drip from my face and plop onto the sheets below me. I sit up in my bed, wiping them away with my palm. I realize this isn’t a game Brody’s playing, yet he’s won regardless. He’s under my skin—a part of me now—whether I want him or not. And I want him.

“You know what I think?”

“What?” he asks.

I affect a casual tone, but inside my heart is racing. “I think that if the boy told this story to the girl, that she would get it, and that if he still wants to take her out for pizza, she’d tell him her soccer game starts at three o’clock so don’t be late.”

I can hear the grin in his voice when he says, “Yes, ma’am.”

A teasing smile forms on my lips. “And if he still wants to defile her, well … he should know that turnabout is fair play.”

A pained groan comes through the phone. He releases a harsh breath. “It was the knock-knock jokes that did it, wasn’t it?” I laugh and he groans a second a time. “God, Jordan, I love that sound.”

I suck in a breath. I don’t want to wait. I want Brody now.

“Hell,” I hear him mumble softly.

“Brody?”

“It’s late. I’ve kept you up. Goodnight, Jordan,” he says and then I get dial tone. Just like that he’s gone, but as I set my phone on the bedside table, the smile on my face is still there.

Brody

“Why the hell are we still doing this?” Damien grumbles. “Jordan already agreed to go out with you tonight. We don’t need plan B anymore.”