Page 57 of Campus Heat

I was shocked to hear those words leaving his lips. Ethan wasn’t the type you’d expect steadiness from. It was completely against his nature, but the idea of it sounded so damn tempting.

“You seem like the type who sticks around,” he said, tightening his grip. “Something steady.”

My breath caught at his words, but before I could respond, his phone buzzed. He threw a pillow at it, but it just kept buzzing.

“Who on earth would bother me at…” he looked at my watch and went pale. “Oh, God. It’s four in the afternoon. How can it be four?”

With a sense of urgency, he jumped out of bed and grabbed the phone as he struggled to get into his pants.

“Hey, Coach. I’m sorry my study session ran late, but I’ll be right there,” he said, recording a voice message. “Damn. I totally forgot about the film study.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, and I could tell he was already halfway into his athlete mode. So I sat up, sheets loosely concealing my breasts as the atmosphere in the room shifted.

Before he ran off, he returned to the bed and cupped my face. “This isn’t me running away or leaving you.”

“I know.”

As the door shut behind him, I realized I didn’t know if I was trying to convince him or myself. The awkward silence stretched as I stared up at the ceiling. I didn’t regret what we had done.

But now that it had happened? It had meaning.

And that terrified me.

21

Ethan

Our never-ending losing streak wasn’t so loud anymore. And that was actually the worst part, because it was taking its toll on us all. At first, there was a lot of noise. The guys expressed their frustration, and we all yelled at each other to get our points across. Then we had the film sessions that felt like FBI interrogations. But now it was quiet and heavy. A constant weight that followed us onto the field and settled on our shoulders as if it belonged there.

Our practice sessions started tense and never loosened. I could feel it in our huddles. In each hesitation and in the half-second delays before our routes sharpened. In the way the guys looked at me instead of each other, and I hated it. That look and the way it made me feel. Like I was their only salvation.

“Run it again,” I said after the first botched drive.

None of them had the motivation to continue, so I clapped my hands sharply, refusing to acknowledge the defensive cheer coming from the other side of the field.

“Run it again!”

“That’s not the play,” Malik said, his voice as steady as ever.

“It should be,” I shot back, my annoyance clear in my tone of voice. “If it was just executed in the right way.”

“It was executed,” Dylan scoffed. “But you didn’t throw it.”

I replayed the last practice in my head, trying to find all the mistakes and see if he was telling the truth or not.

I turned slowly, heat rising within my body. “You weren’t open.”

He threw his hands up. “Yes, I was.”

“You mean for that half a second?”

“It would’ve been enough.”

Oh, there it was. This had nothing to do with what happened during the practice. He was just as fed up as the rest of us were, and he wanted to take it out on someone. I happened to be his target; whether that was intentional or not was still a mystery.

“It wouldn’t have been enough if you got picked.”

The air shifted, and suddenly all attention was on us. Our teammates had stopped what they were doing and were watching us like they expected something to happen.