Page 44 of His Reckless Freshman

Sawyer’s eyebrows dip into a frown. “I thought we agreed not to.”

“I… I…” Letting out a sigh, I finally admit, “I felt sorry for her. She worded everything wrong when she approached Darian and then got iced out by the rest of you. I couldn’t do it to her.”

“You and your marshmallow heart.” Charli laughs from her perch on the bottom step. She’s putting on her shoes and grinning at me.

“Shut it, sis,” Darian growls. “You’re not the one she’s writing shit about.”

“She’s not writing shit,” Mac murmurs, winking at the girl at the table. Her lips twitch, then give in to a flirty smile. But Darian is oblivious to it all. He’s too busy glaring me down.

“We’re supposed to be a team. We agreed as a team that we wouldn’t talk to her, and you fucking betrayed us all!”

“It’s a good article.” Mac holds up his phone, but Darian’s still too busy ranting.

I roll my eyes and pull out my iPhone, quickly finding the article and reading it through.

Damn, Jolie knows how to write.

Talk about making us look good.

“Wow,” Jimmy murmurs, his lips twitching as he reads the article as well. But then he starts to frown, and I wonder if he’s ahead of me or something. Did she finish on a bad note?

“What does it say?” Darian looks between us. “Why aren’t you raging? She said we were the worst team in the school. Did she write that shit?”

“Of course not,” I defend her with a little more ferocity than I mean to. “She was never going to write that about us. If you’d given her a chance, you’d know that.” I quickly finish reading and have no idea why Jimmy looked so worried.

“Read the fucking article, man.” Mac throws his phone at Darian, who catches it and scrolls to the top of the page.

Sawyer’s looking at his phone now too, and there’s a pleasant beat of silence as we all read and reread an article that is masterfully written. It talks about our teamwork, how loyal we are to one another, how even though we don’t always win, we know how to have fun on the court. Success isn’t always about winning. It’s about enjoying life, and according to her, the Nolan U basketball team is doing just that.

She’s used my best quotes and made me look so fucking good.

It seriously turned out way better than I thought it would.

“Holy shit,” Darian finally murmurs, slapping the phone against his thigh and shaking his head. “Damn, who is this chick?”

“Her name’s…” Sawyer looks at his phone again. “Jolie. Is that how you say it? Jolie Carmichael.”

“Yes.” I give Darian a pointed look. “And she was sweet and kind.” And I will never tell you about how innocent she is or the conversation we had during the second interview.

“I’m still pissed that you went behind our backs.” Darian scowls at me.

I roll my eyes. “I was trying to protect the team. If she’d written something without talking to any of us, who knows what she would have said? At least this way I could talk us up.”

“Thanks for what you said about me.” Jimmy gives me a shy, somewhat pained smile that I don’t understand.

I study him for a beat and he breaks eye contact, squeezing the back of his neck. “I only speak the truth, brother.”

“Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yep.” He glances up, silently telling me not to ask before moving into the kitchen to no doubt start brewing that funky-smelling tea he likes so much.

I have no idea what’s up with him. Hopefully I can ask him later. For now, I flick my eyes back to Darian, who’s started reading the article again.

By his second run-through, he’s even more impressed, his anger evaporating.

He forgives me with a soft grunt and mumbles, “Thank you for what you said.”