Page 11 of Keeping Score

But when he blushed—really and genuinely blushed—I knew with a profound certainty that this boy I didn’t know might be many things, but a dickhead was not one of them.

“Nothing,” he responded quickly, seemingly shy that I even noticed him at all. “Forget I said anything.”

Yeah, that won’t be happening.

I went through the motions with Liam, finishing the conversation until he finally relented, and I left without sparing the beautiful boy so much as a second glance.

But that didn’t mean I forgot him.

Not even close.

Chapter Four

Brody

“Draw four, asshole!” Maggie cackled, slamming down a card against the floor between us.

I stared down open-mouthed at the cursed image in front of me. Those four little colorful rectangles that Maggie somehow never seemed to have a shortage of during every round of Uno.

If I loved her less, I might’ve called her out for mixing the deck in her favor, which I knew she did on occasion.

She really hated to lose.

“Margaret Brynn, you take that back right now,” I protested, trying to balance my already full hand of cards. “Using a draw four card right now is evil. Even for you.”

“Nope.” She shook her head, leaning forward to hand me the next four cards from the deck.

If normal Maggie was competitive, drunk Maggie was a demon training for the Olympics of Hell.

“I don’t know why I agreed to play Uno with you,” I said, throwing my cards down in forfeit. “It never ends well for me.”

“Because it’s my birthday,” she reminded me again. “And you have to do what I say.”

It was a good thing I’d grown up with three sisters, because a lesser-trained man might’ve crumbled when encountering the drunk, diva energy of a birthday girl.

“Your birthday ended three hours ago,” I said, looking out the window at the pitch-black sky. “But nice try.”

“If we haven’t gone to sleep yet,” she reasoned, “then it still counts.”

“Then maybe we should go to sleep.” I leaned across the floor to pluck the cards from her hands.

“Sore loser,” she said through a yawn.

I pulled her to her feet, planting a kiss on the top of her head to ease the blow of her bedtime punishment.

The apartment was trashed, but I figured that was a problem for Morning Us. Or, I guess, Afternoon Us—since judging by the way Maggie stumbled to the bedroom, I figured there was no way she’d be getting up before noon.

“Can you set the alarm for seven thirty?” she mumbled, throwing the duvet back to crawl into bed.

I laughed at the request, earning a scowl from Maggie.

“What, are you serious?”

“Why would I joke about alarm clocks?” Maggie groaned, slinking down beneath the covers.

“What would you possibly need to get up that early for? You know that’s like four hours from now?”

She winced.