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JACE
She was a brat.
And, no, I wasn’t talking about Nicole, who was practicing her cheers on the track with the rest of her peppy team. Nicole was a bitch. She irked me, but not as much as Allie did every time she had the chance.
I stared at Allie, sitting with her friend Imani on the bleachers during football practice. Face stuffed inside a Biology textbook, she pushed those thick-as-hell black-framed glasses up her nose and tapped the top of her black ballpoint pen against her chin.
My fingers dug into the leather football, and I clenched my jaw.
After I hadn’t picked her up from school last night, she’d told my fucking dad, who chewed my ass out and punished me by sticking me with Allie for the next two weeks while he and his trophy wife went to celebrate their one-year anniversary on a boat somewhere.
As soon as they left the house tomorrow night, I was going to put Allie’s bratty ass in her place, let her know not to fuck with me again or else there’d be consequences. I didn’t care how long it’d take for her to break, but it was going to happen.
“Harbor, move your ass,” Coach Carol called from the sidelines. “We don’t have all day.”
I growled through my helmet, tossed the ball back to fucking Carter, and jogged to the line, getting in my stance. All I wanted to do was hit him hard right in the fucking chest, show him that he might’ve been the quarterback, but I wasn’t to be fucked with again.
Carter stared at me from the other side of the line of scrimmage, standing behind his center and readying for the hike, and fucking smirked. As soon as the damn ball was hiked, I tore through the players defending him and hit him as hard as I could in the side before he could throw the ball.
He grunted as I drove him into the mud, making it hurt. His mouth guard came flying out and landed next to us. I dug my elbow into his exposed stomach and pushed myself up before Coach Carol could catch me.
“What the fuck?” Carter asked, struggling to stand. “You still mad about Nicole?”
“You can have that bitch,” I said through clenched teeth, gripping his jersey and pushing him away because Coach was watching us with those hawk eyes of his. I walked back toward the line with Jamal. “She’s fucking garbage.”
“Like your stepsister?” Carter asked.
I turned right the fuck around to slam my fist into his jaw, but Jamal jumped in front of me, grabbed my jersey, and pushed me back.
“He’s not worth it, Jace.”
“I wonder how she’d be in bed,” Carter said, walking backward toward the line.
I pushed against Jamal harder, slipping out of his grip, ready to end this fucking boy’s ass for talking shit.
Jamal and another guy from the team each grabbed one of my arms, holding me back. “Don’t be stupid. He’s trying to rile you up, so you get kicked off the team. He wants all eyes on him.”
“It’s not like you don’t wonder the same thing.” Carter smirked at me. “She’s got a fat ass.”
“Harbor!” Coach Carol shouted as they struggled to hold me back.
Coach waved me over, and I cursed myself for not ending Carter right then and there. I should’ve, so he couldn’t touch anyone else.
“I’m going to kill that fucking kid,” I said, storming to the sidelines.
“Practice is over,” Coach said, waving everyone off.
I grabbed my shit from the sidelines and tore off my helmet, shaking the sweat off my hair.
Coach pulled me aside. “What’s going on with you today, Jace?” he asked, stuffing his clipboard under his arm and pushing his phone into his pocket.
“Nothing, sir,” I said, glaring at Carter, who disappeared into the locker room, and wiping the sweat from my forehead.
Sure, Coach might’ve been worried about me, but I was fine. Completely fucking fine.
“I saw you staring over at the girls,” he said, nodding to the cheerleaders.
I lifted my gaze and met Allie’s eyes. One of her brows was arched as she stared at me, her book resting in her lap. I tightened my jaw, remembering how my hand had felt around her throat last night. Her pulse had been so fast, racing underneath my palm, as she stared up at me through those glasses of hers. God, I wanted to see her staring up at me like that through them, my cock stuff—
“Don’t let those cheerleaders distract you, son,” Coach continued.
I shook my head and tore my gaze away from her. What the fuck was I even thinking? She was my bratty, annoying-ass stepsister. Nothing more than that—and she’d never be more than that.
“Keep up your training, and you’re going to make it to big places,” Coach said, giving me a strong smile. “I see you in the NFL, playing this game for the rest of your life.”
I stared at him, pressed my lips together, and nodded, trying not to show him how much it meant to me that someone believed I could make it, that this wasn’t all a big waste of my time, like Dad thought.
When he let me go shower, I sauntered into the locker room, knowing that Coach had never thought this about anyone else on our team and maybe not even during his twenty-five years of coaching football at Redwood. We had a good team, some guys had made it into big colleges, but nobody had made it to the NFL.
I tore off my jersey and tossed it into my locker, sweat dripping down my abdomen. “Party at my place tonight, boys,” I said because I needed something to forget about Nicole and to get my mind off Miss Know-It-All, who I’d have to deal with for the next two weeks. “Don’t be late.”
