Free Calling It by Jen Doyle Page B

deny it, Nate wasn’t sure he could. His heart was racing so fast that he felt dizzy. A picket fence suddenly appeared in the corner of his mind, and it scared the hell out of him. He pushed it right back out.
    “Just a momentary distraction,” he mumbled, trying more to convince himself than Wash.
    “So you wouldn’t mind if I threw my hat into the ring?”
    Nate only barely resisted throwing Wash up against the wall. Since they seemed to have overcome whatever tension had built up over the past two years—farm chores went a long way in rebuilding bonds—that would have been a seriously bad move. It also would have sent a message he wasn’t at all ready to send.
    But Wash wasn’t fooled, even though he gave a deceptively easy smile. “I mean, you’re heading back to Chicago soon and you can be damn sure someone’s gonna be stepping in if there’s a void.” He bent down to pick up the box Jules had packed. Opened it up and lifted the tissue paper. “Hell, if she’s there tonight?” He shook his head. “Only reason she hasn’t been snatched up is because no one’s met her yet.”
    Trivia night. Right. Nate had planned on making an appearance, but only briefly. Stopping in at the Bombers’s game this afternoon was already more than he’d planned. But Wash was right. From what Nate could tell, Dorie had been either at work or in the apartment pretty much since she’d arrived in Inspiration. It was a small enough town that anyone new stood out. If anyone else had even a fraction of the reaction to her that Nate was having...
    Nate shook his head. “It won’t work.” He needed to hear the words in order to absorb them. There were snowballs in hell, and then another ten stops down that road was the chance of something happening between them.
    But then Wash’s snapped, “Why?” got his attention. “Getting ready to cut and run again?”
    Because, of course, all that talk had just been Wash goading him. Not to be an ass—Wash wasn’t like that and never had been. But he was one of the few people in the world who could get past Nate’s walls, could get him to admit something personal.
    And, yes. Even though it had only been a matter of hours—at the farm that first day back, and then working at the library yesterday—Nate had his brother back. So for the first time in longer than he could remember, he spoke God’s honest truth. “I have no idea what in the fuck I’m doing.”
    He truly didn’t. Because, yes, ‘cut and run’ had been his MO for a long time. Pretty much from his first days in college all the way up to when he’d met Courtney. And when it came down to it, his relationship with Courtney had been the exact same thing—yes, he’d been involved with only one woman. But that’s really all it had been. They’d been perfect on paper, both at the top of their fields, completely untouchable. But, Nate was beginning to realize, it had been a business relationship more than anything else. Business with benefits.
    He’d played his part well, and so had she. But into each other the way two people about to be married should be? Not even close. It had been all body, no soul. And she hadn’t cared enough to chase him down; if anything, she’d deliberately pushed him away.
    To actually be invested in someone? To want to stick around merely because being in their presence made everything... better ?
    Nope. No fucking clue what to do with that.
    The smile came back into Wash’s eyes. “You should probably figure that out.” Taking a muffin out of the box, he took a bite as he closed the lid.
    “No shit,” Nate muttered. Sinking back against the wall, he watched Wash turn and walk off in the same direction as Dorie.
    So what exactly could happen? He’d had no intention of staying in Inspiration longer than a week, two at the absolute outside. Even if it turned out his playing days were coming to an end sooner rather than later, he’d... Well, there had been some vague conversation when