Four days of radio silence andthat’sthe text she decided to grace me with twenty minutes before kickoff? As far as I knew, she was supposed to board a plane early that morning with ample time in between for traditional pregame tailgating and shenanigans—which I’d assumed she’d been doing with Sage and Chloe as usual.
Tied up in New York.
Right.
For what?
With who?
Kirk? Fuck him.
Rage engulfed me—not toward her. Toward myself.
You should have at least told her you ended shit with Harper before she left.
Had I done what AJ said, Macy probably wouldn’t be on the eastern seaboard falling forCaptain Kirk.
Regardless, I never bothered texting her back. Didn’t want her to know how much it mattered that she wasn’t there. How much I craved her presence. How much she’d been missed over the last four days, nights packed with dreams of her riding my cock.
“Heads.” Sherlock Benson stood across from me at coin toss, a smugger-than-fuck scowl etched into his ugly face.
The referee flipped a coin, shiny silver spinning in what felt like slow motion, until it bounced to its death on the green.
“Tails,” announced zebra-man, making fans go wild with roaring excitement.
I strapped my helmet on, shouldering past Sherlock who pestered, “Bet you were shocked I wasreallyfucking your girl.”
“Oh, you mean the slut who probably kissed you after having my cock in her mouth?”
Sherlock hoofed toward me, the referee stepping between us, palms pressed against our jerseys. “Really, guys? Save this soap-opera-grade skirmish for off the field before you both receive a penalty.”
Fists clenched, I jogged over to my team, inner voice reminding myself beating the crap out of that bag of dicks wasn’t worth a personal foul resulting in an ejection from the game.
“You okay?” AJ whacked the top of my helmet, eyes reading my expression. Our years-long friendship had gifted him the ability to recognize when my blood reached its boiling point, and God knows he’d been one to stop me from losing my shit when a rival’s trash talk cut close to home.
“Yep.” I pounded my fists together. “We need to win.”
“C’mon, bro. You know damn well we’ve got this.”
First quarter ended up being a cinch, a touchdown keeping us in the lead, and at the end of our first half, we were in our zone, owning the gridiron, ahead by double digits.
“All right, guys. Listen up.” Inside the locker room, Coach K commanded the team’s attention, scaling us down from our victorious high. “We’ve still got two quarters left and you know damn well those quackers are in there, reviewing our last scoring plays.” He leaned against a row of lockers, brows knitted, arms folded over his chest. “Don’t. Get. Comfortable. This game is ours to win or ours to lose, depending on where your heads are. Stay focused and don’t dick around. And linemen”—he eyeballed Danny, Matt, Carter, Jordan, and Todd—“keep watch; their pass rushes have been getting a little too close to Lucas.”
Energized and focused, we pretty much dominated the second half, triumphant pride puffing our chests out. Thanks to a sweet, eighteen-point lead, we’d more than earned rights to claim dibs on trash talk, and during a fourth-quarter pre-snap formation, Levi spit out, “You on your period today?” to the Ducks’ three-hundred-fifty-pound defensive tackle before snapping me the ball.
Surprisingly, the Ducks stayed quiet, not a single one of them visibly roused by Levi’s heckling.
After catching his snap, I spotted AJ, ran back a couple feet, ready to pass him the pigskin when I got slammed into from behind, air escaping my lungs, shockwaves of pain tapping nerves in my body as I hit the ground.
And everything went black.
14
Get up, Lucas.
Please… Get. The. Hell. Up.
Pain gripped the walls of my chest as I watched UCChat’s live stream, Lucas on the field facedown and motionless after getting tackled by a monster-truck-sized Duck—their defensive end crashing into him from behind.
