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Not so bad he hadn’t brought in Jack Youngblood, with all his half-assed scheming, to maximize profits.

And not so bad he hadn’t changed his mind and decided to keep the operation running even after we graduated.

Sometimes it felt like Dalton was so blinded by the idea of making money at the hands of Demere’s rich idiots, he’d lost sight of why he was doing this shit in the first place.

But then, who was I to criticize someone about getting distracted from their original objective?

Dalton turned toward his office with one last look over his shoulder. “Just think about it, okay? That kid could be the key to a big payday. We just have to figure out how to work it.” He huffed out a little laugh like he was impressed with his own ingenuity. “Maybe having him at the fight would be worth the risk.”

I barely held myself back from shouting at him to stay away from Bett fucking McNeely.

Then repeated the same mantra to myself—one that had burrowed into my skull over the past five weeks and echoed through my skin like a low, throbbing baseline playing on an infinite loop.

Stay away from Bett fucking McNeely.

9

BETT

I managed to spend the past several weeks nailing every kick at practice and in games, ignoring or avoiding Arden’s strange hot-and-cold routine on campus, showing up for as few of my father’s campaign events as I could get away with, and putting Elliot fucking Vaughn out of my head.

And, okay, maybe I hadn’t quite nailed that last one, but I’d done way better than expected.

I’d ignored his sultry whispers late at night, when he’d urged me to touch myself again. I’d ignored his teasing winks when he told me I looked pretty after practice. I’d ignored his murmured “G’night, babygirl” every time I slunk past him and face-planted in my bed after a late-night work session for the Ethics class that was kicking my ass.

And I’d ignored the way he made my dick hard every single minute of every single day.

Tonight, after returning home on the bus from Nashville, I was finally ready to put Vaughn Arden fully behind me by finding someone to fuck.

My goal was someone easy, up for anything. Free of all strings and pressure.

Someone who’d make my dick hard and do something about it without all the bullshit.

Someone other than Elliot Vaughn.

We’d won our game, and the team was already raising hell when the busses pulled into the lot behind the sports complex and spit us out into the cool, dark night. My plan was to detour quickly to my dorm room to drop my shit off and change out of my game-day suit before heading to the frat house.

On the way there, I ran into a girl from my Rhetoric class who stopped me to ask about the game.

“Yeah, good. We won,” I said stupidly, wondering after the words were out of my mouth how she didn’t already know that from the whooping still coming from the sports complex a few blocks behind us.

“You going to the house to celebrate?” she asked with a big grin. “I’m Lisa, by the way.”

“Yeah, hi. I remember. Just gonna get changed first.” I started walking toward Whitman again, and she fell in line next to me like she was headed in the same direction.

She was cute. And maybe if I’d already had a couple of drinks, I could’ve asked her back to my room without even needing to go to the party, but I wasn’t quite ready for that. And I couldn’t be sure my room would be empty, even though it was a Saturday night and most people partied on the weekend.

But as we turned the corner toward the entrance to Whitman, I saw my asshole roommate walking out the front door with a familiar woman on his arm. Garrett’s ex-girlfriend, Rowan, was beautiful in a way that was different from Arden. Edgier. With a sexy-as-fuck nose ring and dark, inked swirls visible on her back and shoulders behind the thin straps of her dress. Somehow, she suited Vaughn. Better than Garrett, anyway.

My eyes moved back to him against my will. He was wearing a pair of dark jeans I’d come to recognize as the closest thing he had to formalwear, with a white button-down tucked into them. He also wore a black belt I’d never seen before, which matched the black leather boots on his feet that usually lived in a messy tumble at the back of his closet.

He turned to say something to his… date, inadvertently showing off the round curve of his ass in those jeans. Unhelpfully, the movement reminded me of what he looked like naked. The way his pale butt cheeks bunched as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, putting on clothes. The way his tattoos moved and flexed over his muscles.

He always did it on purpose to provoke me, taking his sweet time when he changed and turning so I could see his cock and balls hanging low between his thighs.

It didn’t matter how many times I looked away, it seemed like I was always front and center when he chose to get naked in our room.

And that wasn’t even counting the times he stripped down for sex. Or to stroke himself off. Or simply because he was “hot” and “fuck late Georgia summers and shitty dorm A/C.”