Rematch the reed brother.., p.1
Rematch (The Reed Brothers Book 22), page 1
REMATCH
REED BROTHERS MEETS LAKE FISHER: ON THE MAT BOOK 1
REED BROTHERS
BOOK 22
TAMMY FALKNER
Copyright © 2024 by Tammy Falkner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
1. Seth
2. Gabby
3. Gabby
4. Seth
5. Gabby
6. Seth
7. Gabby
8. Seth
9. Gabby
10. Seth
11. Gabby
12. Seth
13. Gabby
14. Seth
15. Gabby
16. Seth
17. Gabby
18. Seth
19. Gabby
20. Seth
21. Gabby
22. Seth
23. Gabby
24. Seth
25. Seth
Gabby
Seth
Also by Tammy Falkner
About the Author
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1. Scotty
2. Frankie
3. Scotty
4. Frankie
1
SETH
I’m not going to lie. Flying private is pretty damn dope. We don’t have to go through the regular security protocols or stand in any lines. And we don’t have to fight the crowds of people who always try to get the Reed brothers’ autographs. Instead, we get off the big buses that took our whole family—yes, all of us—to Lake Fisher for the Christmas holiday, and we board a commercial jet bound for New York so we can go back home. Minutes after we board, the pilot announces that we should fasten seatbelts, and then we’re in the air. And it’s not until after we get in the air that they ambush me. I should have seen it coming. I really should have. Because while the Reed brothers might be kind and generous, they’re also nosy as fuck.
I look up to find the five Reed brothers and Edward settling into seats near me, all of them converging to make a circle around me. “What’s up?” I ask as they all stare at me. Logan is the last to arrive, and he has one of his kids balanced by his butt against his forearm, kind of halfway asleep against his shoulder, and the newest Reed kid, who is only a few days old, is bundled in a blanket in the crook of his other arm. “Hold this,” he says as he hands me the baby, and I take it because when somebody holds out a baby and says, “Take it,” you sort of feel obligated to take it.
I look down into his little red face. He has baby acne, which Aunt Sky always assures me most babies get. He looks kind of like a potato might look if you wrapped a potato in a blanket, painted on a few slits for the nose, eyes, and mouth, and added a few little red dots across its nose. He’s a cute potato, though, if you were ranking potatoes by something other than their ability to become French fries.
“What do you want me to do with it?” I ask.
Logan snorts. “Hold him. My hands are full.” He adjusts his other kid’s legs around his waist so that the kid is leaning on him, completely asleep, his mouth hanging wide open, and a string of drool rolling out of his mouth onto Logan’s sweatshirt. Logan doesn’t seem to mind, nor does he attempt to wipe it away. “Got a little drool right there,” I say, pointing to his shirt.
“It’s fine,” he says. “Emily fell asleep, and I didn’t want anybody to wake her up.”
Finally, he sits back with a sigh and stares at me. I look from one to the other of them, and they’re all looking at me. Matt has one eyebrow arched in my direction as he leans his weight primarily on one elbow on the armrest of the seat next to me. Logan is on one side, Matt’s on the other, and the other four, including Edward, are turned around backward in the seats in front of me, looking over the back.
“Did somebody die?” I ask. I look toward the back of the plane. Aunt Sky waves at me from her seat. She grins, which is fucking weird.
“Did you talk to her?” Matt asks.
I look down at the wrapped bundle in my arms. I thought it was a boy. “Was I supposed to? He’s asleep.” I thought I could just hold him.
“Not the baby, dumbass,” Paul admonishes.
I look around. “Then who?”
“Gabby, numbnuts,” Pete says. He waggles his brows at me. “She did punch you in the face, you know.”
“Yeah, thanks for that, by the way. You guys really helped in that situation.” I grit my teeth together. We’d been playing a game of football, and Gabby, the daughter of the people who own Lake Fisher, the place where we all went for Christmas, threw the ball back in bounds and hit me right in the face. They’d all stood around, high-fiving one another, while my nose had bled. In their heads, they’d already started planning our wedding because there’s a Reed brothers rule that if a woman hits you in the face, you marry her. Right away.
“Did you explain it to her?” Logan asks. “Did you explain why we thought it was so funny?”
“I didn’t get a chance,” I admit. She’d refused to talk to me anymore after I’d blurted out that I didn’t want to marry her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to marry her. I didn’t want to marry anyone. And I particularly didn’t want to tell a woman I really like a lot and would love to spend more time with that my family thought we should elope immediately in order to fulfill a stupid family tradition. “She hates me now anyway,” I mutter.
Sam rests his chin on the back of the seat in front of me, which makes his head bob up and down when he speaks. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Do about what? What are you guys even doing right now?” I ask. It’s like they’re staging an intervention or something. My voice is loud enough that the baby in my arms jerks inside his blankets. I lay my hand on his chest, and he immediately gets still. I look up at Logan. “Did you name this thing yet?” I ask. I point toward the little face. “I keep thinking of it as ‘the littlest Reed.’”
He chuckles. “Em has been calling him Jimi.”
I must look confused.
“One of the greatest electric guitar players of all time,” he goes on to clarify. “According to Em.”
“Jimi,” I say quietly. He doesn’t stir. “That’s so much better than what I was calling him.”
“Yeah, well, I called you a few things when I saw how you fucked up that whole ball to the nose thing,” Edward says.
“See, the thing is,” Matt starts. He stops for a second, like he’s weighing the weight of the words. “We feel a little guilty about how all that happened. We were fucking around, and she had no idea what was going on, and you didn’t explain it very well, and we’re afraid that we might have contributed to her hating you.”
“You think?” I toss back.
He grimaces. “We’re pretty sure.”
“I think her feelings were hurt, particularly since she was the only one cut out of it all. So, we think you should go and find her as soon as school goes back into session, and you need to apologize to her for us.”
“Why should I apologize for you?” I’m not their father. I’m not even their kid.
Paul glares at me. “Because if you don’t, we’ll probably all feel led to go and apologize to her ourselves.”
I heave out a sigh. I wouldn’t push this group on an unsuspecting person. “Fine. I’ll apologize for you.”
“So, here’s what you should say,” Pete begins.
I hold up a hand. “No, no, no, no, no.” He bites his lips together. “I know how to apologize. I can handle it.”
“It’s important,” Edward says. “Because I’m pretty sure she felt like we were all making fun of her, and that’s not settling right with me.”
“Or me,” Sam adds quietly.
“Or any of us,” Paul adds. “It was just so fucking weird that it happened when we were all together.”
“Or that it happened at all,” Matt adds. “So, we just want you to extend our apologies. You think you could do that?”
“Sure,” I say slowly. “Is that all this is about?” I look at them each in turn again.
They nod. “Unless you want some advice about how to get her to like you again.” Pete winks at me dramatically.
“No thanks. You guys made this mess to start with.”
Logan chuckles. “Fine. But let us know if you need advice. And let us know how it goes.”
I won’t tell them anything about how it goes because it’s not their business.
“I’m sure we’ll see her at your first home match, anyway, right?”
I nod. “Probably.”
One thing about this family that I can always count on is that they show up for events. It might not be all of them—because good God who wants all of them to show up—but it will always be at least some of them.
“If she still hates us when we see her, we’ll know you suck at apologies.”
“Or it may just mean that you all really pissed her off,” I toss back.
The four of them in front of me scatter back to the back of the plane, and Logan kicks his seat back and closes his eyes. He opens them a second later and asks, “Are you okay holding him?”
I look down at Jimi. He’s still sound asleep.
“Sure. Why not?”
Logan closes his eyes,
I look down at Jimi. “That’s your dad, snoring like a train. Yep.” Jimi keeps sleeping.
I use the time before we land to figure out how in the hell I’m going to apologize to Gabby and how I can explain it all. It wouldn’t matter so much to me, but my mom once told me that if I make a mistake, I need to own it. And that’s precisely what I’m going to do. I’m going to follow my mom’s advice.
2
GABBY
“If he tells me one more time that he could bounce a quarter off my ass, I’m going to punch him right in the face,” I murmur quietly to my best friend, Tasha, as we work together to roll up workout mats and return the free weights to their racks. She was here to take pictures of the wrestling team during workouts, but after the team left, I put her to work. We spray everything down with disinfectant and put the workout tools where they belong because it feels better when the weight room is neat and tidy.
Tasha grabs my hip, spins me around so she can look at my butt, and says in a dreamy voice. “If I had an ass like yours and nobody talked about it, I’d feel let down.” She lifts one eyebrow at me. “Just saying.” Then she slaps my butt with the palm of her hand. I reach back to rub it.
“He’s a pig,” I say as I cut my eyes toward where G.L. Stanton is standing, talking with a few other people near the door.
“I think he means it as a compliment,” she says with a tilt of her head. “A very sexist and misogynistic compliment.” She clears her throat loudly. “So,” she says, and then she glares at me. “My project.” Her gaze hardens even more. “You are going to help me with it. Right?”
I hang my head back and let out a groan. “Do I have to?” I whine.
“Girl, I am in here almost every damn day helping you put shit away, and I never complain.”
Until today, apparently.
I pick up a towel and throw it at her face. She sniffs it and grimaces. “I think this one has G.L.’s sweat on it.” She tosses it back toward me. She picks up a different one and lifts it to her nose. “This one must have been Seth’s,” she says dreamily. “It smells like all my dreams come true.” She holds it to her nose and inhales deeply. Suddenly, she sobers. “So, what happened to Seth’s nose?” she asks.
Seth is one of the guys on the wrestling team, and while Tasha might not know him, she definitely knows of him. Everyone knows of him. He’s pretty popular around the school, mainly because he’s a scholar-athlete but also because he’s so damn handsome with his curly dark hair and workout-ready body. He’d shown up to practice today, the first practice after winter break, with both eyes swollen, his face purple, and his nose a little out of shape. “What do you mean?” I ask, pretending like I have no idea what she’s talking about.
She points to her face. “His nose, Gabby,” she protests. “Don’t pretend like you didn’t see it.”
I did see it. I saw it when it happened, mainly because I was the one who did it. I was the one who messed up Seth’s beautiful face. But I don’t want anybody to know that.
“I saw it,” I say quietly. I hate lying to my friend, and I refuse to do it. But I also don’t want to tell her about the fact that Seth was with my family all through Christmas at Lake Fisher and that I hit him in the face with a football by accident. His nose had bled like crazy.
"So, what happened?” she asks. “Did he say?”
“You’d have to ask him.” I don’t want to say more than that. It would be too hard to explain.
“I will next time he asks me out.” She laughs maniacally.
I stand up straight and stare at her. “Did he ask you out?”
She falls back onto the bench she’s sitting on to stare up at the tiled ceiling. “Not in so many words,” she says. “But he will. I just have to wait for my turn.”
“Your turn?” I ask. An unsettled feeling slips into my gut. I couldn’t give it a name if I tried, but I know it doesn’t feel good.
She sits up so she can look at me with googly eyes. “Seth gets around, Gabby. You know that.” She rolls those huge eyes at me. “Everybody knows that. So, by design, any girl on campus could eventually be on his list.”
“By design,” I repeat almost woodenly.
“He’s working his way through the whole school. So, if my theory is correct, he will totally ask me out before graduation.”
I swallow hard. So hard it hurts when I do it. “Ask you out for what?” I ask quietly.
She tilts her head at me as her eyes narrow. “Gabby, do you have a crush?” she whispers fiercely.
“I do not have a crush,” I rush to say. Although I do. I really, really do. Or at least I did until I hit him in the nose with that football, and he started acting weird. Now I just have confusion. And a crush. Now, I have a confused crush. Damn it.
“You do,” she hisses at me as she points her finger. She holds up her hands like she’s surrendering to the cops. “Fine,” she bites out. “You called dibs. I’ll just have to accept that.”
“I did not call dibs,” I mutter.
“Whatever,” she replies. She grins at me. “So, my project?” She puts her palms together like she’s praying. “You’ll sit for me, right? You make a perfect subject with all that long, shiny, dark hair and your skin tone. It’s beautiful from behind the lens.”
“Tell me what I’d have to do again,” I reply with a heavy sigh.
Tasha is a photography student who needs to complete her portfolio. That’s all I know about it.
“I just need you to do some poses.” She looks everywhere but at me. Then her gaze lands on mine, and she lowers her head, looking up at me like a scolded puppy. “With… a… partner.”
“What kind of partner?” I pick up towels and toss them into a giant bin to be washed while she talks.
“It has to be kind of romantic. Like a couple's photo shoot.” She kicks at a loose piece of tape on the floor with the toe of her sneaker. “Like with some hand holding and hugging.”
“Hugging?”
“Uh-huh.” I can barely hear her.
“You’re not telling me something,” I declare.
“That’s all it will be. You and a man of my choosing will be walking by a lake or in the park. Holding hands.”
I open my mouth to say no, but she waves her hands in front of my face.
“It won’t be weird. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“When do you need it?” I groan out loud. I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.
“Sometime within the next two or three weeks.” She shrugs like the date isn’t important.
“You’ll have to fit it in between workouts.”
She nods enthusiastically. “I know.”
“And the wrestling team has away matches. You know I have to go.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to find somebody else?” Please find someone else.
“Nope. I want you. I’ll find you the perfect partner. I promise.”
I point my finger at her. “If you make me hold hands with G.L. Stanton, I’m never going to forgive you.”
She looks shocked. “I’m your best friend. I would never do that to you.”
“Fine,” I say as I toss the last towel into the hamper. “I have to take these to the laundry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She nods and walks past me to leave, slapping my ass as she goes by. “See, I totally get why G.L. talks about your ass all the time.” She walks backward toward the door as she grins at me.
I smile, too. I can’t help it.
If I had to be honest, I like all the guys on the team, even G.L. They’re all friendly, and the only time they get pissed at me is when I pull them out of practice because of an injury. They’re a great bunch of hard-working teammates. They’re funny, and they’re athletes. Athletes are a different breed from the average person. I don’t know where they get the drive to accomplish what they do, but they do it.
I skid to a stop when I hear voices from behind the head coach’s closed door.
“Damn it, Seth, I want the truth!” Coach roars.
“I told you the truth,” I hear a male voice reply calmly. I assume it’s Seth. I walk past the door because whatever they’re talking about is none of my business. “I was playing football with my family over the winter break, and I got hit in the nose with a football.”
