Fake Shot (Boston Rebels Book 2)

COLT

Two months later

“Are you nervous?” I ask Jameson as we walk toward the side door that will lead us from this small room out to the altar of the church. I can’t stop my hand from twitching so I shove it in my pocket.

He looks me up and down. “Not as nervous as you, apparently.” His voice is dry but amused. “What has you so fidgety?”

I haven’t told Jameson about my plan yet. Everyone knows we’re headed to Bora Bora for two weeks after the wedding. No one, except Drew, knows we’re headed somewhere else first. And because I want to make sure Jules is surprised, I’m going to keep it that way until we get back from our vacation.

“Dude, if I’m feeling like this about seeing Jules walk down that aisle, why aren’t you more nervous to see Lauren?”

“I already saw her.”

“Isn’t it bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?” I ask. I don’t know a ton about weddings, but that seems like one of those superstitions that’s stood the test of time.

“Like I’d go a whole day without seeing her.”

“I knew you were whipped from the minute you asked about that marketing job with the Rebels two seasons ago.” I roll my eyes, remembering when Jameson first started talking about his former colleague who was relocating back to Boston—the way he was always going out of his way to help her, whether it was to set her up with an interview for a new job, or to go watch her kids when she couldn’t get home in time during a snowstorm. He’d claimed that she was just a friend, but even before I met her, I could tell something was different in the way he talked about her.

“You’re one to talk. When’s the last time you were away from Jules for more than eight hours?”

“Not since the semi-finals.” I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve been following her around like a puppy since we were knocked out of the playoffs in a very tough loss in Game 6 of the semi-finals. Professionally, there was nothing I wanted more than to advance to the finals. But getting an extra week or two of the off-season to spend with Jules this summer—that seriously took away any disappointment I was feeling.

She keeps joking that she’s going to get tired of me if I’m always around, but there’s no truth in her words, which she proves over and over as she rushes back to me any time she has to be away, too.

“Exactly. So don’t give me shit for seeing Lauren on our wedding day. Besides, we wanted to take some first look pictures before the chaos begins.”

“So that’s where you went.” An hour ago, Jameson told me he had to take care of something, and he’d meet me in this room before the ceremony. I watch the way his eyes get misty as he stares off into space. “Shit, you cried, didn’t you?”

In typical Jameson fashion, his jaw ticks as he holds his emotions in.

“Don’t worry, man,” I say and clasp him on the shoulder. “There’s, like, a ninety percent chance I’m going to cry when I see Jules, and we’re not even the ones getting married.”

“Yet.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. She’s not ready for that yet.”

“You guys just going to stay engaged forever?” Jameson asks.

“Not sure. First, I have to really propose, and she has to really say yes.”

“Bora Bora?”

“It’s been three months,” I say dryly. I’d have married her yesterday, but even I know that three months is quick. She’s still wearing my ring, over a month after we were knocked out of the playoffs, which was our end date. We’ve had endless talks about the future, but she’s never said the word “marriage.” I did think about proposing to her on our vacation this week, but I’m waiting for her to let me know, without a doubt, that she’s ready for a lifetime commitment.

“Dude, you wouldn’t be okay without her. You know that, right? It’s like being with her has altered some part of your brain chemistry, and you’re no longer Colt, you’re Jules and Colt.”

“I’m fine with that.”

“Me too,” he says with a nod. “You’re a better version of yourself this way.”

“So I was a dick before?”

He sighs. “You were just you. And right now, you’re acting awfully cagey. It reminds me of all the times you did something I was going to have to fix, but you didn’t want to tell me.”

I chuckle. I used to do such stupid shit and try to hide it before expecting him to fix it, instead of owning up to my mistakes.

“Don’t worry,” I say as I reach for the door and pull it open. “I’m not planning anything sketchy.” If we don’t get out of this small room, just him and me, I’m probably going to break down and tell him my plan.

We enter near the altar of the church right as Drew is ushering Graham, in his little six-year-old-sized tux, out of the church through the doors into the entryway. Which must mean the bridal party has arrived.

The other groomsmen—Lauren’s friends’ husbands, Nate, Beau, and Alex—meet us at the front of the church, joined shortly after by Drew, whose amused expression makes me wonder what kind of pandemonium is going on out there. With Lauren’s three-year-old twins as flower girls and Graham as the ring bearer, not to mention Lauren’s seven bridesmaids, I imagine it’s quite the scene.

When the music plays, and the bridesmaids start walking in, I can’t take my eyes off Jules. As always, she’s the most stunning woman in the room—she’s wearing minimal makeup, but her blue eyes sparkle under those long dark lashes, and her lips are glossy and so fucking delicious looking that I want to meet her halfway down the aisle and kiss the shit out of her. But I refrain, because it’s my best friend’s wedding.

When she gets to the end of the aisle, she gives me a wink and then takes her place on the steps leading to the altar. Morgan is the last bridesmaid down the aisle and she’s flanked by Lauren’s twins, who are doing a great job throwing petals onto the runner, and only occasionally stopping to say hi to people. Graham comes down the aisle with the rings, followed by Lauren’s Maid of Honor, her sister, Paige, and then everyone is standing.

When the doors open and Lauren steps through—her white lace dress clinging to her small frame all the way down to her knees before fanning out toward the ground, and her face covered in a short veil—my best friend clears his throat several times.

And I don’t even want to give him shit about it because I’m choked up too, thinking about what it will be like to one day see Jules walking toward me like Lauren is walking toward Jameson.

We’ve already started our life together, much like they have, but there’s something about the idea of a ceremony where we commit to each other in front of our friends and family that has me suddenly feeling very impatient.

JULES

“Hey, Tink.” Colt’s voice wakes me up. Or maybe it’s the way his hand is stroking my face gently, and the familiar feeling of his thumb tugging at my lower lip like it so often does before he kisses me. “We’re here.”

I open my eyes and see nothing but darkness out the tinted windows of the big, black SUV. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, and I hate the way I feel—confused and incoherent—when I’m woken up with anything less than a full night’s rest.

“Where are we?” I ask. I guess when we left the reception and he said we were staying somewhere else before tomorrow’s flight to Bora Bora, I anticipated a short drive to a hotel. Instead, we’re somewhere pitch black. It feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere. If I weren’t with Colt, I’d be terrified to wake up not knowing where I am or how I got here.

“You’ll see.” He opens the car door, and there’s nothing but the sound of crickets and the gentle rustling of leaves. The air is markedly cooler than when we left the wedding, and I don’t know if that means we’re far away or if it’s the middle of the night, or both?

Two months ago, this not knowing would have been enough to send me spiraling into a panic attack. Today, I just inhale a deep breath of the crisp evening air—taking note of the earthy, damp smell as a hint that we’re not near the city—and give Colt’s hand a squeeze.

Stepping out of the car, he holds his hand back toward me, and I take it again, sliding across the back seat. “Where are you taking me, exactly?”

“You’ll see.”

He uses the flashlight on his phone to light the way, and I hold on to his arm tightly as we follow a paved path down the gentle slope of a hill. We’re surrounded by trees so thick I can’t see how wide the path is, or even see the sky through their branches above us. But after only a minute of walking, there’s light ahead. We reach the end of the path and the full moon above glows brightly, a marked contrast to how dark it was under the thick trees. In front of us is a large, level clearing and beyond that, the gently lapping waves of a lake.

But the part that takes my breath away isn’t the spectacular view in front of me, where the earth and water meet with trees and mountains all around us and the bright smattering of stars in the dark sky. No, the thing that takes my breath away are the hundred or so glass hurricane vases with candles set up in the middle of the clearing. They’re in the shape of a large rectangle, with lines of candles inside forming smaller rectangles.

I glance up at Colt, and his look as he gazes down at me is full of love, but also . . . nerves?

“Oh my god, is this what I think it is?”

His low rumble of a laugh fills the space. “I highly doubt it.”

“Okay,” I say, wondering if that means he isn’t proposing to me tonight? “So, what is this, then?”

“Let me walk you through it,” he says, walking toward a straight line of candles that run parallel to the shore, and closest to the road we just walked down.

I follow beside him, his arm wrapped around my lower back protectively, like he’s trying to make sure I don’t trip. Which is good, since the first thing that happens as we step into the clearing is that the toe of one of the flip-flops I put on at the reception catches on a tree root sticking out of the uneven ground, and I start to fall forward. Colt’s arm keeps me upright.

He stops between two candles, dead center on the line. “I want you to imagine a big front porch here, with a doorway.” Moving forward, he brings me along. “This is the entryway. To the left”—he points—“is a den. To the right is the dining room.” He walks a few steps farther between two rows of candles.

“Beyond that is the kitchen”—he points right—“and on the other side of this wide hallway is the bathroom.” He leads us a few more steps closer to the lake. “And this is the great room. Imagine a wall with several sets of French doors surrounded by windows overlooking the water, and outside, a large screened-in porch where we can set up rocking chairs to watch the sunset.”

It’s the rocking chair reference that does it for me, and I gasp. “Colt . . . is this . . .”

“The floor plan of your great aunt’s house on Lake Sunapee? Yes.”

“Is that where we are? In Sunapee?”

“No. And I think you’ll like this better, actually. Follow me through our glass doors to our porch and down to the lake,” he says, and walks forward, through a row of candles. We’re only about thirty feet from the water now, and I can see a brand-new dock jutting out into the lake. The dock is at least twenty-five feet long with a huge platform at the end that would be a perfect place to set up chairs and read a book, or dive into the lake on a hot summer day.

He steps up onto the dock first, then holds out a hand to me as I step up onto it.

“You going to tell me where we are now?” I ask, wishing my phone wasn’t sitting back in the car so I could just take a look and see exactly where I am.

When we get to the end of the dock, he wraps his arms around me, pulling me to him so my back is resting up against his chest. He kisses the top of my head, then extends his arm, pointing out at the lake. “I thought you would like it here, because this little cove is quiet and private, but we still have views of the mountains across this part of the lake. And the big lake is right down there.” Lifting his arm to the left, he points to an opening beyond which all I see is water sparkling in the moonlight.

“Where are we?”

“Lake Winnipesaukee.”

My heart skips a beat. Audrey and Drew have been looking for a place up here over the last few months, because he grew up coming to his family’s cabin on this lake every summer and wants to continue the tradition with Audrey and Graham.

“So that I can be close to Audrey?” I ask.

He turns us toward the shoreline and that’s when my eyes land on a house, its windows lit up in the moonlight, sitting just to the side of our future house. There is a fairly narrow line of trees between our properties, and I’m actually surprised it’s so close to where our house will be. Coming out from that house is another dock, running parallel to this one. There are no other properties in this small cove that I can see.

“I hope we like our neighbors,” I say, hugging his arms where they wrap around my abdomen.

His chest shakes against my back as his low laugh rumbles against my hair. “We do.”

“Are you . . .” I can’t even fathom what he’s telling me. There’s no way my sister bought a lake house and didn’t tell me. Is there? “Did Drew and Audrey buy that house?”

“Drew bought it, and we subdivided the property. I had this area cleared so that I could build you your dream house right next to your sister. I have the original plans to your great aunt’s house, so we can rebuild it exactly if you want,” he says, and now it makes sense why he was able to describe a house he’d never been to. But how did he even get those drawings? And how long has he been planning this? “Or you can have Audrey design you something completely different. But I knew that, either way, you’d want to be involved.”

I look up at him, almost unable to breathe because the realization of what he’s done for me has my heart expanding in my chest so that there’s no room for anything but my love for him. “You know me so well.”

“And yet not as well as I want to,” he says. “I feel like I’ll never stop wanting to learn new things about you.”

“What happens when you run out of new things to learn? Or get bored of me?” I ask. It’s not a real fear, but every once in a while, the doubt creeps in.

“Impossible.” He squeezes me tighter. “Do you remember when we were sitting on the dock at my parents’ house, and I said I didn’t have a favorite place?”

“Yeah, of course I remember.” I just didn’t realize he was taking such careful notes about the place I loved so much.

“I finally figured it out. My favorite place is wherever you are.”

My god, this man! It’s like knowing how to love me is just second nature to him. I have no idea what I did to deserve him, only that I will do whatever it takes to always show him I feel the same way.

My heart races when I tell him, “My favorite place is with you too. I want to spend forever with you, making all kinds of new memories in new favorite places.”

In the quiet night air, with no one but the crickets keeping us company, I can hear the way his breath hitches at my admission.

He puts his hands on my shoulders and steps back as he turns me toward him, and then he says, “I’d have married you already if I thought you were ready. I want to spend every day of the rest of my life making you happy.”

“That’s perfect, then.” I smile. “Because I also want to spend every day of the rest of my life making you happy.”

His hands slide down my arms, and he takes my fingers in his big palms, sliding his thumbs over the two rings I wear—the engagement ring that never really felt fake, and the silicone band on my opposite hand—as he sinks to one knee.

My eyes fill with tears so quickly that I almost can’t see him when he says, “Jules, I know we’ve been engaged for months already. Nothing about us together has ever felt anything except perfect. From the first moment I kissed you in the alley, I was yours, completely. I’ve never had to pretend with you, except when it comes to letting you know how much I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’ve been waiting until you were ready to talk about forever, so that I could finally ask you for real: will you marry me?”

I sink to my knees on that dock, my hands flying up to cup his face as my lips crash onto his. And between kisses, I tell him, “Yes. Absolutely and without a doubt, yes.” And then I kiss him again, before I say, “I’ve wanted you since the moment I first laid eyes on you, Mathieu Coltier, and even though my feelings for you have changed and grown in a hundred different ways in that time, I never could have imagined us here, now. I never could have imagined how unimaginably wonderful you are. How perfect you are for me. How much I want to be perfect for you, too⁠—”

“You already are, Jules. Just as you are,” he says as he kisses my nose. “There is absolutely nothing about you, about us together, that isn’t already enough. And I can’t wait to spend every single day, forever, with you.”

We’re lying tangled up together, sweaty and naked, on the enormous bed that takes up a good quarter of the adorable tiny house trailer on our new property. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it when we first came down what I now know is the driveway, but it sits off to the side under the trees. The big window above the headboard faces the lake, so I’m already looking forward to that view first thing in the morning.

I still can’t believe everything Colt has done over the last month—how he bought this property with Drew and cleared land for us to build my dream vacation house; how he had this cute little trailer set up so we’d have a place to stay up here this summer as we make all the plans to start the build in the fall; how he and Drew planned this surprise so he’d show me our future house tonight, and Drew will bring Audrey and Graham up here to see their new house tomorrow.

Or today, actually, as it’s now somewhere in the early hours of the morning as Colt kisses his way up the inside of my thigh. I groan and tell him, “I can’t come again. Twice is enough.”noveldrama

“I bet you can give me a third,” he says with a cocky grin, and when his hot breath meets the opening of my pussy, my entire core clenches and I’m pretty sure he’s right. “Besides, you haven’t let me taste you yet.”

“Since this morning, you mean?” I ask with a laugh. This man loves to eat, and I know I’m incredibly blessed. If I’m only ever going to have sex with one person in my entire life, I appreciate that he’s committed to pleasing me in every way possible.

His tongue slides over my clit, warm and rough, with enough pressure that I moan out his name. And as he slides two fingers inside me, I wish it had been more than two minutes since we’d had sex so I could have him inside me again. His fingers are great, but there’s nothing better than the way he fills me perfectly with his cock.

“I will never get enough of you, Tink,” he says, and the wet, sloppy sound of his fingers sliding into me while I’m still filled with his cum is its own kind of filthy pleasure. He strokes his tongue over my clit again and again, until I’m practically panting, and then says, “I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything,” I gasp, eager for him to stop talking and get his mouth back on me as soon as possible.

“Whatever you decide on for this house, please don’t make it one of those crazy huge mansions like you see on this lake.”

He knows me well enough to know that’s not at all the kind of house I’d build. “Why not?”

“I never want us to live in a place that big,” he says decisively. “I never want to be that far away from you. In fact”—he wraps one arm under my leg and anchors my hip to the bed—“I think maybe this is the perfect house for us.”

“You can practically reach both sides of this trailer when you stick your arms out. How could this be the perfect place for us?” I laugh, until his tongue strokes over my clit again, making my hips buck while he holds me firmly to the bed.

“Because,” he says, lifting his head to look up at me between my thighs, “I love the idea of always having you within reach.”

“Oh yeah,” I tease as I reach down to stroke his face. “Why do you always want me within reach?”

“So I can do this, any time I want.” Returning his face to my center, he swirls his tongue over my clit as his fingers stroke me from the inside.

“Yes,” I hiss, my fingers gripping his hair, “I can see the appeal.” The vibrations of his laughter send ripples of longing throughout my body as he works me closer to the edge, until I’m almost ready to tip over into the abyss. “But I promise to let you do this any time you want, anywhere you want, in our new house.”

“In that case,” he says, just as he meets my eyes with a demand, “come for me.”

“Make me,” I taunt.

The way he holds my clit between his lips, sucking on it rhythmically as his tongue slides over it, sends lightning through my veins. And then I’m screaming his name as the waves of pleasure crash over me, again and again and again, until I think I might not be able to breathe.

My body feels like a pool of liquid as he climbs over me and lays himself beside me, pulling me to him. “God, I love to hear you come,” he says, kissing my shoulder, “but I think we need to invest in the best sound-proof insulation and sound-proof windows on the planet. Because I don’t want to share those sounds with anyone, and you know how sound carries across water.”

“Fuck,” I sigh, “now the whole lake knows you’re here and what you’re doing.”

His laugh shakes the whole bed. “Luckily, there are no other houses in this cove. I doubt the sound carries that far. But unless we want to traumatize your sister’s family when they arrive tomorrow, we’ll have to practice being quiet.”

I never want to be quiet where Colt is concerned. I want to love this man out loud, and I want the whole world to know how much I love him. But he’s probably right that the whole world doesn’t need to know about our sex life.

“Yeah,” I tell him, running my hands over his skin, “we’ll need lots and lots of practice.”

His teeth sink into my shoulder with a playful nip. “Don’t tempt me. We do need to get some sleep.”

“Are we actually headed to Bora Bora tomorrow, or was that just an elaborate ruse to get me up here? I’m okay either way,” I tell him.

“Our flight is tomorrow night. Let’s get some sleep so we can spend some time with your sister tomorrow, then we’ll head to the airport. That overwater bungalow I got us will actually be the perfect place for us to practice being quiet,” he says. “We’ll be pros by the time we get back here.”

“Are we spending a lot of time up here this summer?”

“As much as you can manage with work.”

I’m more thankful than ever that I’ve been able to build such a competent, wonderful team of women at Our House. Because despite already taking the next two weeks off to go to Bora Bora, I’m now thinking that I should take Fridays off this summer so we can spend long weekends up here, dreaming about and planning out our future vacation house.

“I already can’t wait,” I tell him, kissing his neck as I snuggle into him and close my eyes. “We’re going to build something amazing here—not just the house, but the whole life we’re creating together.”

“Our life is already pretty damn amazing, and it’s only going to get better,” he promises, and it’s with visions of our future together—with the person who makes me feel loved, and safe, and cherished, in a way that I didn’t even know was possible—that I settle into a deep, happy sleep.