Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn
Chapter Thirty
Dixon
Partially naked and alone in a tent that still managed to smell like sugar cookies and sex even though Fiona was gone, Dixon stomped over to his boots and roughly tugged them on.
Just good fun. Yeah. That’s exactly what he’d been thinking.
He yanked on his shirt.
Text for the next date.
Precisely. Because that’s what mattered.
He pulled the laces on his boots as tight as they’d go, wanting that sharp sting.
Now he could just focus on winning the bet. His cousins had done him a favor by exiling them out on the island for the night. A huge favor. The biggest. He should buy them each a beer—or a whole brewery.
He grabbed the sleeping bag and shook it out before rolling it up. It wasn’t until he’d secured it that he looked down and noticed Fiona’s gold heart necklace on the floor, the one she’d toyed with at the museum and the one that had bounced against her flushed skin as she’d rode him. He picked it up. The clasp had broken. He pocketed it. He’d have Ernie mail it back to her.
“The giants are gone,” Nash said from the other side of the closed tent flap. “You can come out now.”
“I’m not hiding.” He was taking a moment to be fucking grateful for his dipshit cousins, whose asshattery had made last night possible, and so he could stop thinking about Fiona in any way but as a key component of getting a win.
“You sure?” Nash asked. “You just banged their sister, and they don’t seem too thrilled about it.”
Dixon unzipped the tent door flaps with more force than necessary and walked out into the morning sunshine. The air was crisp with that fresh outdoors-in-fall-in-the-woods smell he never got in Harbor City. His cousin stood next to the ashes of the campfire holding up the silver-and-purple hot chocolate bar wrapper. It had taken six calls and four cashed-in favors to get that damn bar—and judging by Nash’s asshole grin, he fucking knew it.
“Shut up, Nash,” he grumbled and swiped the wrapper from his cousin’s grip.
“Everyone keeps telling me to shut up today.”
Dixon snorted. “We’ve been telling you that your whole life without you ever listening.” He grabbed the last of the trash, double-checked no embers were burning, and hitched his supply bag higher on his shoulder. “If I thought it would work, I’d invite Fiona’s brothers back.”
“That’s just because you’re already half in love with your date,” Nash said, sounding every bit like the egotistical know-it-all he was.
Dixon shrugged. “So?”
That answer felt less like a lie than it had on the train. Postcoital brain, no doubt.
“Cut the shit,” Nash said as they headed down the path to the dock. “No one is buying it. You still have to go on the other dates, and by the end of them, you actually will fall for her, and then you’re gonna lose the bet. She’s perfect for you. This couldn’t have worked out better if I’d picked her for you myself.”
Keeping his gaze locked on the small rocks on the path worn smooth from centuries of wind and decades of Beckett cousins walking across them, he asked, “Why’s that?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not going to enlighten you. I’m just gonna enjoy the show.”
“You’re wrong.” He was attracted to Fiona, sure, who wouldn’t be? That’s why their no-strings-attached agreement made sense. But he wasn’t falling in love ever again—it was a sure shot at losing. Nicole had taught him that. “I’ve already been down that road. I’m not going down it a second time. Hope you enjoy losing.”
“Keep lying to yourself.” Nash chuckled. “It will just make watching even better.”
If it had been any other time of the year, Dixon would have shoved his cousin off the dock and into the lake, but knowing Nash, he’d take that as proof he was right. Which he wasn’t. There was no way Dixon was going to fuck up this bet by falling for Fiona.
