Contents

Title

Copyright

About This Book

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Afterword

Also by Misha Horne

About the Author

THE BRAT & THE BEAST DUET BOOK 2.5

AWAY GAMES

MISHA HORNE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the

author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 Misha Horne

www.mishahorne.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Join the Misha Horne mailing list

ABOUT AWAY GAMES

One step forward… and then what?

When you live your whole life just wishing for things to be good enough, suddenly having everything you ever dreamed about is pretty unsettling. Safety, security, love… not the senior year I expected.

Coach T calling me into his office, talking about untapped potential, didn’t see that coming either. He seems to think I’m a brand new guy on the field, and honestly, he might be right.

My future is starting to feel a lot more intense, and I’m not sure I’m ready for any of this. Fortunately, ignoring reality is one of my greatest skills.

At least until my Daddy finds out.

Away Games is a high spice, low angst follow up novella that picks up shortly after The Brat & The Beast Duet ended. Spend some extra time with Logan and Caleb as they navigate their new relationship and plan for the future.

This series should be read in order, starting with Hurt Me, Daddy.

CHAPTER ONE

“Sometimes I wonder if any of you even like fucking football! We can do full dress Thursdays the rest of the season if you all need more time to get your feelings in order.”

“Jesus Christ,” Walker muttered, standing next to me with his arms crossed, one of the only guys on the field not hunched over and gasping for air. Not a great look, honestly, but at least he was getting some attitude back, along with his arm.

I stared at the ground, bracing my hands on my thighs and zoning out for a minute as Coach ran through the usual insults he used as encouragement and we all did the Yes Coach, No Coach like we were listening and not like we’d just memorized the pauses in his speeches. It tore my lungs out to yell while I was breathing so hard, but the louder you were, the faster he let you out of practice, and we were all putting in the decibel work.

My legs were shaking so hard I could barely stay on my feet, and sweat poured down my back and the sides of my face. It felt a hundred degrees when it was sixty. I swear when I inhaled I could smell the blood rushing to my head, and I could barely exhale I was so dry-mouth dizzy. Every year you kind of forgot or at least blocked out how rough shit got by mid-season. Coach T was past caring how much stamina we thought we had, and it was do-or-die from here on out as he ran us into the ground.

Westchester week was always hell, Coach still hanging on tight to a ten-year grudge against the team that snatched playoffs away his rookie coaching year, so we all showed up hard, killing ourselves an extra hour after a whole week of extra hours because Coach T was an asshole in a lot of ways, but you still felt like shit when you let him down. Everyone hated the Wolves anyway, all smug ass rich pricks, so we were happy to jump on board someone else’s revenge.

Well, maybe happy was a stretch when we were all melting in full pads, listening to his tough love you-all-are-a-bunch-of-garbage-slackers speech when we actually looked fucking decent. But if anyone could appreciate a good grudge, it was me.

Plus, the attention all my scrapes and bruises got me after practice was priceless.

“Beast is totally undressing you with his eyes,” Ellis said, leaning over and nudging me in the ribs like somehow he knew what I was thinking about. He jerked his head not at all subtly over toward the fence. “You’re like stark naked on the fifty right now, bro.”

“Shut the fuck up.” I nudged him back harder with what energy I had left, which wasn’t much, and wiped off my forehead with the back of my arm, sneaking a half-wave in Caleb’s direction as I slid my eyes over to the bleachers where he was enjoying the show. He always claimed the same spot, front left by the gate, got all spread out and comfortable with a book in his lap like he was studying, but mostly I knew he just studied me. Couldn’t keep his eyes off me.

I fucking lit up when I felt him watching me too, no lie. It just gave me some extra drive, having him there. Always had me wanting to show off, make him proud, make him fuss over me when we got home and he saw what a beating I’d taken. Bandage me up and feed me apples and tell me how tough I was. Say things like Just relax and Poor baby and I’ll take care of it until I wanted to cry.

Just boyfriend shit.

While I watched, Caleb leaned forward and draped his arms over the railing, letting me know he’d seen me waving. He’d picked up quick that practice was not social hour, not even a little, but no one was better at stealth than he was.

Once I looked over at him, it was hard to look away, he was just so goddamn appealing, rocking the academic vibes in his sweater and his preppy ass fall jacket, this navy thing with brown buttons and a plaid lining I stared at sometimes when it was hanging in the closet because when the hell did this nerd shit start doing it for me. It really fucking did, though.

His hair was all messy and his cheeks were all pink from the wind you couldn’t call a breeze anymore— it was solid fall. You were grateful for it when you were sprinting up and down the field sweating fucking buckets, but sitting all afternoon was different. On the hard ass bleachers too.

Lots of people showed up to practice when it was still warm— it was the fucking place to be in September. But attendance dropped when the temperature did, and there were only a dozen or so die-hards left coming to a cold, late Thursday practice. The Beast was definitely a die-hard.

Didn’t matter that he couldn’t catch onto football for anything, he watched anyway, tried to follow, even if mostly what he followed was my ass when I bent over. That was good enough for me. In twenty minutes, maybe thirty if the non-pep talk went long, I’d finally be at home in bed with him, sucking up all that post-practice energy. Since I knew he was watching, I bent over a little more, made my ass bounce in his direction even though I felt it in just about every muscle, making sure he got his money’s worth for showing up.

“Prescott! We good?”

I zoned back in and pushed myself up to standing, definitely not copping to getting caught boyfriend-staring. Coach T wasn’t a fan of friends and family at practice, was largely not a fan of more-than-friends at practice, and I’d always thought he was being a real hard ass about that, but honestly, I could see it now. Having the guy you wanted to go home and get in bed with sitting in the bleachers was a fucking distraction.

I was on point anyway, though. That particular distraction fucking worked for me.

“All good, Coach. Ready to kick Westchester’s ass,” I told him, getting into it for him, and Riggs and Ellis howled like wolves, one-upping each other until it got annoying and Coach waved at them to knock it off.

“Okay, then. Hit the showers before I change my mind. Get some rest tonight boys, no fucking around. I mean that every way you think I mean it. Keep your head in the game, am I clear?”

We all Yes Coached one more time before he blasted his whistle and let us go. I jogged backward, watching Caleb stand up and pull out his phone before I turned around to head in. I was a little too wrung out to make quick work of it, but you know I dragged my sore ass body inside as fast as I could.

CHAPTER TWO

A few weeks ago, guys were sprinting out of practice on Thursdays, full of that half day energy, but sprinting season was over. It was slow walking and staggering and full on limping back inside these days, no matter how ready we were to bust out.

I was still first to my locker though, yanking off my jersey and dropping my gear and speed-spinning the lock while guys crashed down on the benches all around me, aching and groaning and chugging water, rubbing sore muscles, too broken down to even get undressed yet. I went straight for my phone, reaching in and thumbing open my texts like an outright addict, that after-practice one always waiting there for me like a treat in a shiny wrapper.

Nice practice, Prescott.

The back of my neck flushed a little when I read it in Caleb’s low, rumbly voice— the one he used when he fucked with me, calling me Prescott when I got especially agro, like a joke, but not a joke. A fucking turn on, for sure.

“Dude, you can’t stay off your phone for five seconds,” Riggs laughed, toweling sweat off his face with one hand and stretching his calf behind him with the other until he fell over. “Even I’m not that bad.”

“That’s just a straight up lie,” I told him, glancing up from the screen to roll my eyes.

“You see me with my phone out?” he asked, showing off his empty hands. “Whattayou, got dick pics on there?” He tossed his nasty practice jersey at me, pulling way wide. It landed in a puddle on the floor, and I kicked it back to him.

“Yo, you think about my boyfriend’s dick way too much.”

“Facts,” Walker agreed, uncapping his water and guzzling before he emptied the rest down his back and sat down, finally looking tired.

Riggs laughed and picked his jersey up, aiming it at the laundry cart this time, arcing even further off, and Howser walked through just in time to scoop it out of the air and fling it up on top of the lockers.

“The fuck, asshole.”

“Your aim’s looking about as good as your boy’s,” Howser told him, turning around and grinning that ugly way he had, tipping his mouth so high on one side he was almost winking. “Maybe you should be QB.”

“You better back the fuck up, man,” Ellis said, up on Howser out of nowhere in zero seconds, tossing his helmet across the floor so a couple freshmen had to dodge it, and going full fight mode. You could see his fucking muscles twitching under all his sweaty skin, and I knew that feeling, all amped up with nowhere to put it, desperate for somebody to push you a little too far just so you’d have an excuse.

Pre-adrenaline crash Ellis was the worst version to tangle with, he could turn on you real quick, and Howser was already toeing some invisible line only Ellis could see. I should have stepped between, but honestly, I was ready to see Howser get his ass kicked. The guy would not lay off Walker, and he would not lay off the same tired jokes and it was getting old. Plus, I’d gotten between Ellis and his meal before, and it wasn’t worth it.

Wasn’t worth it yet for Howser either, I guess, and he just laughed and took a few backward steps, turning the corner to his locker. “Whatever, psycho.”

Ellis threw up his intimidation shoulders and followed him halfway, then turned back around and stomp-jumped up onto the bench, grabbing Riggs’ jersey and tossing it down into the bin, snagging another one of those goddamn stress balls and sending it sailing into the other side of the lockers, which I guess was maybe good for your stress.

The same fucking fight happened and then didn’t happen every day, and if I thought Howser had half a brain cell, I might think he did it on purpose to wind Ellis up. That was seriously playing with fire though, and it wasn’t going to hold.

“So over that guy,” Ellis muttered, tightrope walking down the bench towards us, stepping over Walker who was leaning back with his eyes closed and his legs stretched out into the middle of the room, ignoring it all or pretending to.

“He’s right,” Walker said, rolling his neck around.

“Bullshit he is. Fuck that guy. You looked solid. Ish.”

Walker snorted. “Thanks, man. But I meant Riggs is right,” he said, blinking his eyes open and looking over at me, smirking. “You’re worse than him texting Ally all day long.”

I glanced down at my phone again, itching to start typing, not really caring if that was true or not. Which it wasn’t. I’d seen some of those text threads, they were next level.

“Oh yeah, my bad, that’s big true,” Ellis agreed, striking up the one-legged yoga pose Coach Shannon taught during extra Monday stretches, balancing on the end of the bench, raising his arms up in the air and twisting them around, one flexible motherfucker. I shook my head, really fucking tempted to push him over, but he’d just land on his feet anyway. “This is all very out of character, Press.”

“What is?”

“You. Acting like a human being. Instead of a pile of wet blankets.” He thumped his foot back down and his eyes lit up, and I caught on a second too late to step away before he catapulted off the bench and landed on my back, reaching for my phone. “Are we texting Beast? What are we saying? Use lots of hearts.”

I grunted, bending my knees and hearing joints pop as I held the phone out and away from him. “Fuck off, Ellis, Jesus,” I laughed, trying to toss him off me as I gave up and stuffed my phone back in my locker. “Go take a fucking shower.”

He finally dropped his heavy ass down onto the concrete. “Say hi from me. Use that little kiss face guy,” he told me, nudging me in the shoulder as he went to pick up his helmet.

I pulled a half clean shirt out of my locker to wipe my face off and dropped down onto the bench, for once my ass not instantly hating me. I had a feeling Caleb was going a little easy on me these days, putting up with a little more of my shit just because he knew how tired and sore I was all the time. I liked special treatment, no point lying about that discovery, but I wasn’t so sure I was built for it. Football season lasted a fucking decade, and I was gonna need it rough again before winter. The way I figured it, if I was already limping, now was a great time to really lay into me, fuck me into the ground, just cover my ass with bruises, no one would even notice.

“How am I this sore?” Riggs rubbed at his shoulder and groaned, sliding off the bench and onto the ground in a dramatic puddle, sprawling on the nasty ass floor like a corpse. “I’m fucking dying.”

“From what? How much energy does it take to be a punching bag?” Howser asked him, coming around to our side of the locker room again, letting his foot hover in the air over Riggs’ stomach, playing chicken with his cleats until Riggs lunged at him from the ground and threatened his nuts. “When fucking Food Stamps over there is outworking you, you’ve got a stamina problem,” he said, pointing at me like a visual aid. “This whole team is pathetic.”

“Fucking quit then, win-win,” Ellis growled, starting the whole cycle again. “No one’s gonna miss you keeping the bench warm.”

Howser sneered at him, tilting his head toward one shoulder so his long sweaty hair fell like a curtain. Swear to god the guy was living his own supervillain movie in his head. “Funny.”

“Not a joke. See me laughing? See anyone laughing? That’s because you bring the fucking mood down, asshole. Only one pathetic here is the guy who talks shit to his own team nonstop.”

Howser snorted. “Some team. Taking the elevator to the bottom senior year. Love it.”

I wasn’t sure there was a guy left who thought playoffs were realistic this year, even if they were still technically possible, but Coach had made it clear Howser wasn’t the answer to that problem and he didn’t take well to being a backup dancer.

Another year, I’d have gotten sick of this shit a lot faster, probably gotten some swings in by now, and who knows what else. This year… I guess things just seemed a hell of a lot easier than they normally did in the fall. It was pretty fucking mindblowing what not being stressed out every second of your life could do for your overall mood, even when your team was out of rhythm. But not everybody shared my new positive outlook.

“Your negativity is really starting to piss me off, man,” Ellis said, getting up close in Howser’s face, closer than a minute ago, and guys backed away when the air changed like maybe this was finally go time.

“My negativity is pissing you off? But catching one pass out of six last week, that’s not pissing you off? Our captain is a dog, that doesn’t piss you off?”

“Our captain is a what?” Ellis said, his voice dropping into dangerously soft territory. Ellis didn’t do soft, and guys who knew that took another step back and I braced to grab someone if I had to.

“Hey!” I jumped when Coach T walked in, clapping his hands together hard and pushing his way through the guys standing around watching. “I was nice enough not to stick anybody with clean up, but I can change my fucking mind.” He grabbed Ellis and Howser both by the shoulders and shoved them a few feet apart. “Keep the drama out of my locker room, I’m done repeating myself. Shut it down or you can both retire early. Are we clear?”

They stood there staring each other down, snarling and twitching like hungry dogs, and for a second I really thought they might lunge right over Coach and get it done, but then Ellis nodded and took a step back.

“Clear, Coach. Just a little… edgy. We’re good.”

“Great. Then everybody put down the popcorn and get the fuck out of my locker room. Don’t you all have homes you want to go to? Jesus Christ.” Coach turned his general scowl on everyone until they started to move out, and then scanned around until his eyes landed on me. “Prescott. I want a minute.”

He jerked his thumb back toward his office and I blinked and rubbed my hand over my face, nodding as he walked away. Getting called into his office— or any office— historically was not a good time. Hard to tell from his face if he was pissed at me or just pissed in general.

Ellis shook his head, sighing. “I swear to god, Press, if you’re flunking out again—”

“I’m not flunking out, asshole.” I was almost completely sure that was true, but I was never really completely sure about anything.

“He’s gonna ring you up for checking out Caleb during practice,” Riggs told me, finally getting up off the floor. “Been there, done that. Probably gonna give you the PDA speech too. I get that one like six times a year.”

I snorted. “Try six times a week. We’re not as bad as you and Ally.” As a hook, there were better ones, and I really needed to stop repeating that.

“Eh.” He shrugged, grabbing his clothes out of his locker. “Survey says bullshit. Keep denying it though if you wanna practice lying.”

“You made out for like ten straight minutes before practice,” Walker informed me, like maybe I didn’t remember the soft and then rough and then soft again kisses up against the fence before practice officially started. Like I didn’t remember how uncomfortable I was in my jock for the first set of sprints.

“Yeah, you’re a real messy kisser, Press,” Ellis added, kicking off his cleats. “You should clean that up.”

“Hey, here’s an idea. Don’t watch me make out.”

“Not likely.”

I snorted as I shrugged myself into a tshirt, instantly feeling sticky again. No part of me could imagine Coach T, who did everything in the world to avoid uncomfortable conversations, trying to give me a stop-letting-your-boyfriend-be-a-distraction speech, but Jesus, Caleb would really get a kick out of that, so I almost hoped Riggs was right.

CHAPTER THREE

When I hit the doorway of his office, Coach T was standing in front of the whiteboard, weaving the marker through his fingers, and tugging on his whistle, doing all the fiddly things he always did before a Westchester game. Ellis wasn’t the only one feeling edgy.

“Coach?” I tapped on the door frame, and he glanced over, so deep in the trial run of whatever he was trying to draw up that it seemed to take him a minute to even see me standing there.

“Yeah, yeah. Come in. Shut the door a minute,” he said, calling me over, pointing to the chair in front of his desk like it wasn’t piled up with a big stack of blue binders.

Further into the season it got, the more his office looked like he was getting ready to move out, all his shelves and drawers emptied out on the furniture, half open booster boxes and Shark merch stacked up and spilling out all over the place. I slid a box of water bottles out of the way with my foot and closed the door slowly, gnawing on my lip and steeling myself for some cringey get a room talk, or maybe something worse. You didn’t get kept after unless you were fucking up somewhere, and there wasn’t much I hated more than getting blindsided, so I wished he’d just blurt it the fuck out.

“I want to talk to you about… some things,” he said, still keeping it vague, half his attention on the whiteboard. He gestured at the chair again, and it seemed like he expected me to clear it off whether I felt like sitting or not. I lifted up the stack of binders, moving them to a mostly empty spot on his desk and sat down.

He tapped the marker against the board a minute while he looked at me, that irritating rattle getting on my nerves as much as him staring at… I didn’t know what. Finally he came around behind his desk and settled in, creaking around in his old chair while I waited some more.

“How’s your ankle?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again, frowning, not sure what he meant. My freshman year sprain had healed up a long fucking time ago.

“My ankle?”

“Looks like you’re favoring it a little.”

I cranked it in a circle as I sat there, more habit than anything. It had its days but nothing that interfered with my game. At least I didn’t fucking think so.

“Nah, it’s alright. Gets a little puffed up sometimes when it’s—” I cut myself off just before I used the word overworked, knowing how that would go over. No such thing as far as he was concerned, and suggesting it would for sure put me on clean up, which was the last place I wanted to be. “When it’s a long week,” I finished instead. “But it’s all good.”

“Ice it tonight,” he told me. “It’s all hands on deck tomorrow. Ankles too.”

I was almost sure that was a joke, at least sort of, but he didn’t laugh, so I just nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“Want you to start taking better care of yourself. When you work hard, you gotta rehab hard. Understand?”

I nodded again, reeling the surprise in so it didn’t show so hard on my face. Coach T telling someone they were working hard, even in a roundabout, annoyed kind of way, that was practically fucking coddling.

“Yeah, I’ll uh… I’ll ice it. For sure.”

Well, Caleb would. And he’d be really fucking into it, too.

“Good.” He didn’t say anything else for a minute, but he clearly wasn’t done, so I just sat there trying not to look at the clock. I was exhausted and starving and seriously in need of a shower, and I was ready to wrap up whatever this was and endgame for the day.

He leaned back in his chair, and it made the please-replace-me groan that sounded like a sick cow. “Listen, Logan. You’ve always been a solid player. You know that. You have your slips, but you’re one of my best guys. You show up early, you stay late, you don’t complain… You’re made of good stuff. But you just…”

I literally moved to the edge of my seat as he held out on me, tapping his fingertips together, thinking while my stomach twisted up listening to what sounded like an exit interview. Finally, he spread his hands out, sighing, like he was giving up trying to be tactful.

“You weren’t set up to excel,” he told me, like that was any secret. “So you didn’t. Not like you could have. Not a lot you can do about that, it’s just… the hand some guys get dealt. You did the best with what you had, you really did. And it made you better some ways because you had to figure out your alternatives. Stronger. Tougher. Meaner. All good things. You always had the hustle. You just never had the muscle. Or the stamina. Or the…”

He gestured at me vaguely, trying to pinpoint some other way I was lacking. If there was a punchline besides making me feel like shit, he was taking a long time getting to it, and he could probably see that on my face because I was for sure not sitting there expressionless.

“Look, I know your… home life situation has… evolved,” he eventually spit out, pulling out the big words, trying to make it not awkward and making it more awkward. He’d never outright mentioned anything about me moving in with Caleb— still hadn’t, actually— but it was clear what he was getting at. Well, partly clear.

I nodded slow, trying to feel out where he was going, because we were treading over shit we both already knew and I was just feeling mostly insulted. That half a compliment about working hard was feeling pretty faded already.

“Yeah,” I confirmed for him, since he seemed to be waiting for it.

“Well, it’s been good for you. Really good. Last couple weeks you’ve been showing me extra again and again. I’m seeing something new out there. I’m seeing a guy who’s not maxed out yet. You’re relaxed, you’re focused, you’re keeping weight on, stacking those bills, it’s made a big difference. So I need you to tell me, A, how consistent this is gonna be moving forward, and B, how serious are you about football? Because if you buckle down and really do something with this opportunity, I believe you’ve got a future bigger than Donovan. Bigger than college ball potentially.”

This was the last conversation I expected to be having in the middle of a struggling season, and I sat there a minute trying hard to process, trying to feel something besides angry and embarrassed and annoyed, which I knew were not the feelings I was supposed to be having. But frankly, what he was saying didn’t sound very realistic, and I didn’t get excited for too good to be true.

Also, it was kind of fucking humiliating. It wasn’t so hard to read between the lines and hear him asking was I actually going to keep eating and sleeping on a regular basis, because it turned out that made a difference to your game. Three Beast-sized meals a day plus anything else he put in front of me, it built up fast. I was adding more weight to my reps without even thinking about it. But Coach wasn’t telling me I’d picked up a step, he was talking about a whole damn staircase.

“It’s consistent,” I finally told him, when what I really wanted to say was Fuck you, quit jerking me around, maybe stand up and boot that fucking whiteboard across the room and walk out. But that part of me that was built to lash out was sitting mostly abandoned these days, like demolition time was coming. It was hard to explain, but it was fucking obvious where it came from. Even when Caleb wasn’t sitting right beside me, he was. Staying calm had officially been added to my list of special skills. “I’m not… leaving. It’s permanent.”

That was a big word to be throwing around, but it was accurate. I didn’t believe in much, but I believed that. There were plenty of places I could level up, but for the first time, my home life wasn’t one, and Caleb made it extremely fucking clear on the daily that I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Okay then,” Coach said, nodding like I’d already agreed to something. “Good. Then I need you to tell me what you plan to do with your life. Donovan… don’t get me wrong, it’s a good enough school. And you were already a good enough player for them to get their hooks in you quick. They’ve got a solid staff over there that’ll be good for you. Not a lot of talking, just core athleticism. But. If you wanna get serious, I’m talking extra practice, extra reps, extra sprints, put another twenty, thirty pounds on you— not enough to slow you down, just enough to make you straight up dangerous… You’ve got a chance to really be something special.”

I knew he was still waiting for me to get excited, but what he was talking about didn’t seem any more real than actually showing up to Donovan next fall felt real. I wasn’t anything special and I wasn’t trying to be. But suddenly I was getting fucking built up, getting an extra look because… luck? Because Caleb could afford to feed me nonstop protein shakes and shushed me back to sleep at night when I woke up confused and terrified, but otherwise I’d have just been left to enjoy swimming in the bottom of the barrel? That wasn’t any kind of fair. I earned my shots. I had earned my shot. And now good enough wasn’t good enough anymore? What kind of bullshit was this?

“I mean… I already got a scholarship, why do I… what else do you want me to do?” I sounded like a fucking asshole, even to myself, but he didn’t seem to hear it.

“Everything,” he said, slapping his hand on the desk. “Act like you don’t have it. Act like it’s nothing, because if you can put in the work I know you can, D1 will come calling for you, offering a lot more. I know this is a lot to throw at you right now. But I know you can handle a lot. I wouldn’t be calling you in here if I thought I was wasting your time. So don’t waste mine. You wanna start doing early Sundays, show up this weekend. We’ll have a solid sit down and I’ll help you however I can. You have a sliver of a window, Logan, to find out what you can really do. So what do you want and how bad do you want it?”

CHAPTER FOUR

I hit the showers the second he let me bolt, throwing up promises like flags just to make him stop talking, babbling some shit about giving it serious thought and not fucking around. I was feeling sweaty and clammy and sticky and hot all through, way deeper than cold water could reach.

I had enough awareness to know it wasn’t normal to feel like the world was ending when someone said you were doing a good job, but I kind of did anyway. I was just starting to work out what stability felt like, and while I got that all this was supposed to be a positive thing, a rug was a rug and he’d just yanked mine out from under me.

I rubbed my hands through my hair, letting the spray hit me in the face as long as I could stand, and then stared down at myself the way I did a lot these days because I couldn’t help how good I looked.

I’d always known why I couldn’t keep weight on, but there was a difference between vaguely knowing but pretending I didn’t, and watching the change stack up and turn into bills. I felt it in the way my clothes fit, felt it in Caleb’s hands when he grabbed me and there was extra. I’d added bulk to places I’d always been sensitive about. My legs didn’t shake and cramp up nonstop anymore. That constant-acid-in-my-stomach thing was gone, and I was a whole lot less exhausted even though I was mid-season dead.

That was all great, sure, got me fired up in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a kid, like I could outlast anybody on the field, but it was a little late to pretend I was going to be a pro athlete. No matter how much potential I supposedly suddenly had, I just didn’t have the personality to excel at high level shit.

Hell, I didn’t even like thinking about how the fuck I was going to navigate Donovan next year. I was only managing that by pretending it wasn’t real.

I’d never truly let myself believe that I’d actually make it out of Maddox, maybe not actually make it out of high school alive on some really dark days, and when I did imagine it, it was the vaguest kind of fantasy, nothing more than academic vibes I picked up from campus tours and tv shows probably.

I’d basically signed my life away sight unseen because it all just felt like counterfeit money I’d never redeem anyway, scholarship or not. Not saying Donovan was a bad decision, I didn’t think it was, but what mattered was always getting out, not where I landed. And now I was supposed to not just make it off the bench, but break out?

My comfort zone stretched from about end zone to end zone out on Sharks Field, and setting my sights on places guys like me didn’t belong seemed like bad mental health advice to me. I could feel myself about to be swallowed up by a million worries and decisions and plans I’d never asked for, and if I kept thinking on that stuff, I was about to be spinning out for real. So, I stuffed it down, out of sight, out of mind, because that was one thing I really did excel at.

For once in my life, I had everything I wanted, I was happy exactly like I was and this sudden Time to find out what you’re really capable of was a lot of pointless pressure I wasn’t interested in. Even if there might have been a sharp little knot pulling tight under my ribs that said otherwise.

* * *

The locker room seemed empty except for Ellis and Walker still hanging out when I came out from the showers.

“Riggs leave?” I asked, glancing around.

“In a fucking bolt of lightning. Thursday night date night,” Walker reminded me, looking over from shoving more shit into his already maxed out locker.

“Oh right.” I started pulling on my clothes, getting a little nauseated just from the effort it took to put arms through sleeves. Like I needed that as a permanent lifestyle.

“Five bucks says they’re broken up again by Monday,” Ellis said scrubbing his hands through his hair while he checked himself out in the mirror inside his locker.

“I’d go with tonight,” Walker hit back. “No way he doesn’t fall asleep at the movies again, and that won’t be good. He’ll be crying on the bus on the way to Westchester.”

“You guys are way too invested in Riggs and Ally drama.”

“Well, if you and Beast were a little more interesting, we wouldn’t have to be,” Ellis told me. “But all you do is make out. Hold hands. Carry each other’s books.” He made a gagging sound. “You’re like freshman year Riggs and Ally. Be more like season two. Big juicy fights in the cafeteria. Remember when he kept calling her Ally Cat and she got all offended and scratched him? Do that.”

“That’s a terrible nickname though,” Walker said, always Team Ally, but I had to agree with that one. “Alley cats are all dirty and eat trash. Like fish bones and stuff. That’s disgusting.”

“See, that’s because you’re more of a house cat,” Ellis told him, reaching out and scratching Walker behind the ear before Walker batted him away. “Ally Cat is a badass nickname. I wish people would call me that.”

“Your name isn’t Ally,” I pointed out.

“Whatever. I’m still a total alley cat. I bet you and Beast have little names for each other too. What are they? LoLo? Logan-Pop? Wicked Beast of the East?”

“Jesus, how are you so bad at nicknames?”

“What are you talking about? Walker loves it when I call him Walkie Talkie.”

Walker snorted. “I do not.”

“Walk of Shame? You like that one?”

“Stop.”

Ellis swiped at him with a curled up paw. “Getting your claws out, house cat? Come on. Let’s go.” He bounced on his toes, his pent up energy all refilled already, like we hadn’t just murdered a two hour practice. Walker snorted and sat down, pulling on his shoes.

“What’d Coach want?” Ellis asked, turning his attention to me when Walker wouldn’t give him any, hopping in my direction and jabbing at my shoulder. “He really give you the keep it in your pants speech?”

I shook my head, not even able to pull out a good lie, my brain was still so busy turning things over, shoving shit in boxes where I wouldn’t have to see it and deal with it. “Just a bunch of smoke about working up to my potential,” I finally muttered.

“He didn’t say anything about keeping your eyes on the field and off the sidelines? Cause you’re kind of embarrassing out there with your heart eyes and shit,” Ellis said, landing a solid punch on my shoulder and I pushed him back, shaking out my arm.

“Aww, leave him alone, he’s in love,” Walker said, smirking all sly as he looked up from his laces. Then he frowned. “That’s bullshit though. You look vicious out there. I thought you knocked Riggs out for real yesterday. You’re the last guy that should be getting that speech.”

I shrugged, already feeling shitty about Coach giving me ups when Walker was having such a down season, such a down year, feeling worse when he jumped right in to defend me anyway.

“It’s whatever. He wants me to… start ramping up extra practice. Add more muscle to my hustle, or some bullshit.” I shrugged again, and again my muscles did not thank me for the extra strain, no matter how small. “Think about making big gains and bouncing out to D1.”

Walker raised his eyebrows. “Dude, you could.”

I shook my head. “That’s not my style.”

“What’s not? Working yourself to death? That’s your fucking religion. Don’t be an asshole. Take advantage.”

“Take advantage of what? I already got a fucking scholarship.”

“So get a better scholarship. I never got why you settled for Donovan anyway.”

“I didn’t settle. They were the only ones who offered me a ride.”

“They were the first ones who offered.”

“You don’t need a ticket, so you don’t get it,” Ellis told him, finally cutting in when I shook my head again. “But you are a fucking asshole if you don’t ride this as far as it can go,” he told me. “Don’t you want to get the fuck out of here?”

“Says the guy who’s going nowhere next year.”

“Don’t worry about me. There’s exactly zero chance of me going nowhere. What’s the big deal about a couple extra practices? At the very least you could annihilate senior year even if you’re too fucking weak ass to go any farther. I mean, personally, I enjoy being at the top of my game all the time, but it’s not for everybody, I guess.”

“He doesn’t wanna leave Caleb behind,” Walker said, half mocking, half not, putting a real sharp fucking point on something I hadn’t even started thinking about.

I shook my head. “It’s not even like that.”

“It’s exactly like that,” Ellis argued. “But if you leave him behind, there’s no point anyway. No fucking secret why you’re suddenly playing like a ninety-nine. Beast’s your secret weapon. And your meal ticket.”

“Jesus, Ellis.” Walker snapped, scowling at him like he was new here.

“Sorry, is that not true?” Ellis spread his arms out like he couldn’t imagine what was wrong with saying that. “I know I’m not the only one noticing that giant ass you grew since The Beast got you off that broke joke diet plan. That boy fills you up.”

It was dead silent for a minute and then Walker started snorting and shaking, acting like he was hiding his laugh, but not really. “You are… thicker these days,” he finally said.

“Lucky for you,” I muttered, rubbing at the back of my ears when they got hot. Fucked up that some part of me still found it embarrassing to not be starving all the time, but there was only so much reconditioning you could do in a few weeks.

“Beast would bounce anywhere with you though,” Ellis said, like it didn’t even matter. “The guy’s obsessed. He comes to more practices than I do.”

“Sounds like a you problem.”

“I’m just saying. If someone spotted me like Beast does you… I guess I wouldn’t worry about them not following me to a D1,” Ellis said, shrugging.

“I’m not worried about anything but getting the fuck out of here and off my feet the rest of the night,” I told him, and there was a lot of truth to that. I was battling some serious muscle tension, and I could think of a few ways to cure it. But none of them involved standing in the locker room while guys weighed in on shit I didn’t want to think about anyway. “We bailing or what?”

CHAPTER FIVE

End of practice used to be my least favorite part of the day, especially once it started getting cold.

The long walk to school was one thing, where at least I knew about what to expect when I got there, but walking home after, it was a fucked up thing to put yourself through every day— never knowing what you were in for and having to drag your tired body home twenty-five minutes on jagged sidewalks to find out.

I still got a stomach-squeeze thing walking out the side doors of the athletic building, but it wasn’t dread now, it was anticipation. Sweaty palms and fluttery stomach, I had it, holding my breath until we rounded the corner toward the parking lot where Caleb was always waiting, leaning against the fence and watching to catch my eye as soon as he saw me.

I lived for end of practice now.

Ellis and Walker made kissing sounds as I broke out of formation and crunched from the dirt to the gravel and up onto the blacktop, heading toward Caleb like a magnet was pulling me. Part of me legit wanted to run and vault on him, I was in it so damn deep.

He grinned that sexy as fuck grin I couldn’t believe I’d ever lived without, and already it felt like exhaustion was lifting up off my shoulders as he started coming my way. He just made me so fucking happy, and being someone who never really got the whole happiness thing, it was like a drug.

He held out his hand as he got closer, curling his fingers at me. “Give me that,” he said, reaching for my gym bag. “You look like you’re about to topple over.”

“Yeah,” I admitted, reduced to a one word sentence. Him carrying my bag was fucking ridiculous, but I didn’t have the energy to argue, just lifted it up off my shoulder with a grunt and handed it over.

“Good boy,” he told me, throwing my bag up onto his shoulder like it was empty, and not even knowing I was going to, I just let myself fall against him, sliding my arms around his sides and letting him support all my weight— physical, mental, all of it, because I knew he could. I knew he liked to. When he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, giving me a rough squeeze, I swear it wiped half my hard drive I relaxed so much. This was all I needed. Just this.

The way he put his arms around me— at home, in the halls, on the sidewalk heading home, it was so easy. So casual and comfortable it was hard to remember sometimes that it hadn’t always been like this. Sometimes when I tried to think farther back than the last few weeks it was like hitting the edge of the world. Looking over the cliff and thinking nah, not worth it.

He rested his chin on my head as I leaned against him, and I never would have thought I’d like being so affectionate with somebody, let alone in public. But it was like I couldn’t even help it, barely realized I was doing it. I just couldn’t get enough of being touched.

“You looked good out there today,” he murmured into my hair, and I smiled against his jacket. It wasn’t soft like his sweaters, it was scratchy, but I still liked it, all warm and smelling good like him, and I rubbed my face against him like a fucking cat. A house cat, I guess, that was me now, just looking for someone to pet me while I curled up in their lap.

“Yeah, that’s what your text said. Sorry it took so long.”

“It’s okay. I get it. I don’t mind waiting.”

He genuinely meant that, and I couldn’t think of many people who would. But the guy would legit hang around for hours, just thawing out or reading a book, and I figured it was probably something he learned growing up with so much alone time, channeling his emptiness into chill the way I’d bought stock in chaos. Dude didn’t have an impatient bone in his body as far as I could tell, and you wouldn’t think patience would be such an A+ quality, but damn, it really was. Top ten at least, and he had a long list.

I pulled back and looked up at him, trying to make up for all the hours I didn’t, eating him alive with my eyes. I’d changed in the last few weeks, but so had he, not filling out but filling in. Getting more visible around school, going from black and white to color, and it worked for him, bringing some of that arrogance he had in private out to the streets. The guy was turning heads and it wasn’t just because he was with me. The two of us together— it would have been power couple shit if you believed cafeteria gossip, if either of us cared about that. But we were both a little more single-minded.

He gave me a once over like he did after every practice, eyes, face, lips, liking it all, and then down my neck and chest, liking it less. “It’s fall,” he said quietly, taking the front of my jacket in his hands and tugging me closer gently. He took his time buttoning up the top three buttons I’d left open, taking so long it made my whole body hot from all the attention. “Button your coat. You need a lesson in getting dressed?”

I wasn’t even cold, especially after practice, honestly only wore the thing because it showed up on my side of the closet one day when the temperature dipped hard, the way clothes just magically appeared sometimes, and he had really good taste and it made him so happy, so who did it hurt, really.

“How about a lesson in getting undressed? That sounds more fun.”

He smirked and his eyes caught fire as he put one hand on my face, rubbing his thumb across my bottom lip. “I’m not sure you need help in that area,” he said, dropping a soft kiss on my forehead and then one on my mouth before he zipped open his backpack and handed me a water bottle and a power bar, moving snack time to the parking lot, and my stomach literally vibrated I was so fucking in need of some calories.

Goddamn did he know how to spoil me after a tough practice, almost like he knew it was an empty spot that thrived on attention. Like most of my spots, let’s be real.

“You’re the fucking best,” I told him, going hard on the water and getting my footing back while he kept a hand on my side like he was legit worried I couldn’t keep myself upright. He worried too much, and I told him that a lot, but we both were kind of into it, I guess.

“Yo, where’s our snack, Beast?” Ellis called out when he and Walker finally caught up behind me, taking the long way. “We worked hard too.”

There was a mini standoff the way there always was, Caleb still not quite on board with Ellis and his rough edges, and Ellis daring him not to get won over. Then Caleb unzipped his bag again and handed over two more bars because that was just how he was. Always overprepared and never about to let anybody go hungry.

You’d have thought they won the fucking lottery instead of mashed up blueberries and sawdust the way they grinned when they tore them open. Post practice crash was real, especially this week.

“If you ever ditch your first choice, call me,” Ellis said, mildly choking as he scarfed his down. “I fucking love snacks. You can wait for me any day.”

“Pass,” Caleb said, and Walker snorted.

Kind of fucking ridiculous how into my boyfriend all my straight friends were. But not really. He was a hell of a catch.

“You guys wanna come run routes with us?” Walker asked, and I shuddered, my body automatically slumping toward Caleb just at the thought. I was no slacker, but Jesus.

“Fuck no. You guys are seriously going out again tonight?”

He shrugged. “What else are we going to do?”

“Go home.”

“Some of us are still trying to up our stats. Put more muscle in our hustle and so forth,” Ellis told me, twitching his hips around. “But you go home. Do all those important things you do while the rest of us are reaching our potential.”

“Fuck off.” I shoved him and he fake stumbled forward a few yards, heading for the exit, making Walker jog to catch up.

“Later, losers,” Ellis shouted, pitching his trash and then leapfrogging over the can, spinning around to wave and then flip me off.

“Did you want to go?” Caleb asked, glancing toward them and then back at me. “I’ll go.”

He would, too. He’d done it twice, staying after on the field one day and going to Walker’s another, putting all he had into playing football with a bunch of jocks who used to make his life miserable, and every time he did, I loved him more, because he tried so fucking hard. Maybe a little bit because he liked the attention, liked seeing what he was capable of, just out of curiosity. But mostly he did it to make me happy.

I shook my head with all the intensity I had left. “Absolutely fucking not. I am done with football for the day,” I told him, and I meant the hell out of that. No more squats, no more shuffles, no more D1 potential bullshit. Just my fucking boyfriend schooling me in getting undressed. “If I stand here any longer my legs are going to lock in place though,” I added, mostly being funny, but not entirely.

He looked down at me with a little pity and a lot of pride, an expression I liked way too much to still be standing in the parking lot. “Poor baby.” He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me close and steering me in the direction of our street, and I straight up glowed under all the attention. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

CHAPTER SIX

The walk home was automatic now, muscle memory my body seemed really eager to build up. It didn’t take me long to stop veering toward my old house, the one I knew was sitting empty now with boarded up windows, because I had veered once, and instead of tugging me back in the right direction, Caleb had fallen in step beside me and we walked all the fucking way back to where I’d come from, because once I started, I needed to finish. Just to see. Just to make sure.

It had helped, standing there with his hand in mine, staring at the house I’d lived my whole life in. Barely recognizing it, even though aside from the huge broken window and glass shattered across the front lawn and a tarp covering part of the roof, it looked the same. I could imagine a million things that could have finally shattered that thin wobbly glass that never should have lasted as long as it did in a house where things were constantly being thrown at me. But I didn’t really need to know the details to know that probably until the very last second she’d been there, my mom had made that house a miserable place to be.

Veering once was enough.

I didn’t miss it, not any of it, but I did think about the other direction every time we walked home— how much it changed your mood, just the things you looked at every day, half noticed from your peripheral. I kind of understood now how twinkly lights and flower boxes were actually necessary in their own way. Sure, they weren’t basic essentials, but walking by them on your way home put you in a real different mood than walking by piled up trash and broken fences and dead plants.

That seemed obvious when you really thought about it, but it wasn’t anything I’d ever thought about before. When things are always one way and there’s not much you can do about it, you just don’t bother wasting your time thinking about how they could be different. Especially when you have so many bigger things to think about.

Not saying Caleb’s neighborhood wasn’t still extra as hell, but I guess part of me was coming to terms with liking extra. Nice things made you feel good. That wasn’t a crime, even if it felt like one sometimes. Like I shouldn’t even be thinking about nice things, let alone looking at them or enjoying them.

Was I clearheaded enough to realize this was the same kind of shit I was fighting against in Coach T’s office, or when I told Walker the spotlight wasn’t my style? Afraid and annoyed to try leveling up when I already didn’t deserve what I had? Sure. But knowing absolutely was not half the battle and whoever said that was so full of shit. Knowing was just a mosquito in your brain you couldn’t squash, that you had to keep waving away when it got close enough to piss you off.

Twinkly lights and flower boxes and Caleb’s huge arms around me in his huge bed was enough for me. Reaching for more when I’d already been given so much, the universe would for sure punch me in the face for that kind of move, and why the fuck would I risk it when I already had plenty? Just so I could remember what it was like to get things yanked away from me again? No thanks.

“Want to stop anywhere?” Caleb asked me, the way he always did when we got to the street full of shops that led home, like one day I might say take me for ice cream, or for one of those ridiculous danishes they sold at the bookstore he liked. Buy me more shoes, more clothes, more notebooks.

I shook my head like I always did, but I did appreciate him asking. I liked repetition, there was something so safe about it. And I liked knowing if I ever did need something I wouldn’t have to start the conversation. Not that I could imagine him not knowing instantly and buying it before I could ask. I liked that too, even if he indulged me way too much.

“Not stopping till I hit the bed,” I told him. “So, let’s pick up the pace, Beast. All my sore spots need some attention.”

He laughed and growled his way closer to my neck, kissing and nipping and pulling me tighter as we headed home a little speedier. He had a real thing about giving me anything I wanted.

* * *

Whoever had done the landscaping outside the Millstone apartments hadn’t been great at spacing out the plants, but they’d done a good job of picking things that stayed green all year. The flowers were slowly disappearing, but everything else was still all wild and lush, made you feel like you were getting an extra influx of oxygen when you walked up the path to our building. It was a great place to come home to.

We never saw much of his neighbors, but I was starting to recognize what day it was by the meals they cooked— chili Sundays and pot roast Tuesdays, and barbecue Thursday filling up the hall as we made our way into the apartment.

It was practically a ritual now the way he led me to the bedroom and stripped me out of my clothes, laying me out on the bed, and as much as I wanted to get in on the undressing, I wanted him to do it for me just a little bit more. So I put in minimal effort, letting him lift my arms and do all the manhandling stuff that I liked until I was lounging in the middle of the mattress in my shorts like a spoiled piece of shit, and I don’t know which one of us was more into it.

“Where does it hurt?” he asked me, standing over me and surveying the surface damage, but always wanting to go deeper.

I was never completely sure how to answer that question— I was so used to being beat up all the time that I barely even noticed all the stuff Caleb got so worked up over. By this time of year, I was torn apart, there was never enough time for one bruise to fade before there was another right on top of it. But at least I had a specific answer this time.

“Coach wants me to ice my ankle,” I told him, and I knew he’d have a reaction to that.

His eyebrows shot up and then jammed back down, and he scowled, just straight vicious against all my injuries, like how dare they hurt me. “What happened to your ankle?”

“Nothing,” I promised, before he got too upset about it. “It got torn up freshman year and sometimes it acts up a little. Like me.”

He smirked. “Is it acting up now?”

“Maybe a little,” I admitted. “But it’s just stiff from so much practice. I’m not actually injured or anything.”

“Let’s keep it that way, then. Stay.” He kept his eyes on me as he backed out of the room, half joking, half not. Usually, I did what he told me, sometimes I didn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, just because I liked seeing what would happen.

I was too tired to get up off the bed just to be a brat though, so I made a show of stretching and tucking my arms behind my head, settling down into the pillows that were so damn fluffy and comfortable it was hard to imagine why I’d ever want to move.

He shook his head at my theatrics and went to get some ice, and I sank deep into relaxed mode as I stared at my reflection in the mirrored closet doors, looking for all the places those extra pounds were making a difference— even though I was apparently sitting on the main one. I looked so goddamn good these days it was hard not to stare, just muscles on top of muscles, juicy curves that just seemed to pop out overnight, some of them. I had scrapes and bruises everywhere too— a ton up around my shoulders and a huge one on my right thigh— but I didn’t notice those nearly as much as he did.

What I did notice was how square my jaw looked, how alive my eyes seemed even when I was exhausted, how fucking bright as hell my shorts were because Caleb kept my whites white, did laundry way better than the washers at school. I’d always been a package, but now I was a gift. I sat up a little and twisted my arm around, trying to get a good look at my tricep, see if the dips were making an impact. I didn’t love doing arms, I was definitely more of a squats guy.

“Like what you see?” Caleb asked me, teasing when he came back in the room in time to catch me flexing.

“Hard not to.” I grinned, looking up at him, not even embarrassed about it, and put my guns away, tucking my arms back behind my head and settling back onto the pillows.

“You’re right about that.” He was carrying one of the fat, striped pillows from the sofa and a kitchen towel he held up and shook so I could hear the ice he had wrapped inside rattle a little. “Will this work? I keep forgetting to get those gel packs.” He frowned, like that was inexcusable. “I put it on the list.”

I shook my head at him and his list, where he wrote down anything that came out of my mouth that remotely sounded like a request. “Normal person ice is fine,” I told him, even though that wasn’t what he had.

Even his ice was extra— he had these weird blue trays that spit out round ice cubes, and when you put those in your drink it just made it better for no logical reason. No joke, the guy really knew how to live. He was obsessed with stuff, sure, maybe let himself get suckered at the register a little too much, but every weird thing he owned made you a little happy. Round ice instead of square. Bright colors where it was completely unnecessary. Options where one was more than enough. He knew how to make boring things fun, and shit, that was so underrated.

“Can you lift up?” he asked me, and I raised my leg high enough to show him I was perfectly fine and to let him slip the pillow under my foot. “Where does it hurt?” he asked again, coming up on the bed, moving himself in between my legs, and I spread them a little further to make room for him, my body instantly reacting, getting all tingly just because he was suddenly closer.

I glanced down at my ankle, twisted it back and forth a little, looking at the knot on the side. A little swollen, a little tweaked, but the normal amount.

“It’s seriously fine. Coach just gets a little extreme when we play Westchester. Goes looking for problems and sees them even when they’re not there.”

He growled a sigh as he took a long look at my ankle, and clearly did not like that answer. “It looks kind of puffy. Compared to the other one.”

I nodded, since we both could see it and there was no point arguing facts. “Yeah. Kind of. It’s just from hell week, though. There’s nothing actually wrong with it.”

“Time to stop saying that and tell me where to put the ice,” he told me, and it was in that firm enough-is-enough voice that made me shiver more than any ice did.

He brought the towel over to my foot, pressing up gently against the side, looking for direction.

“It’s not that sore,” I told him for the millionth time, just to see how much I could get away with, and the side-eye he gave me said that was the limit. “You don’t have to be fragile about it,” I told him, twisting my foot to the side a little, pointing. “It’s more on the… top, sort of. Instead of the side. Kind of in between. Like on the curve part.”

He moved the towel around, making clinky little ice sounds and leaving a swirl of cold all over my foot until he ended up in the right spot. I flexed and pointed, testing it out a little, and then sighed, somehow leaning back even harder against the pillows I was already drowning in.

“God, that feels really good, actually,” I admitted, arching up my back and getting a cat stretch in. Still kind of blew my mind how much a little extra first aid was such a game changer, made my whole body shimmer, and not just because it was a turn on. I was just so used to nobody caring that it was hard to switch that mindset and lean in, even though I loved it. It was always so much easier to say no big deal and ignore things.

He adjusted the towel, let the ice curve all around the knob where all the swelling was, and I sucked in a breath when I got another blast of cold, and then sighed and relaxed, letting my eyes half close as he took care of me.

“How’d you hurt this? Originally?”

“Henshaw game freshman year,” I muttered, and nope, I still couldn’t say it without a scowl on my face. “I was big then, but not that big, nobody expected me to play so hard.” I laughed a little, remembering the first time I’d knocked a guy twice my size on his ass, the look on his face, how it was all I wanted to do from then on. “I took a starter stud down hard, hurt his ego, then next time I landed at the bottom of the pile, he got up and just full on two-fifty cleat stomped me. Total bullshit.”

“What do you mean, he just stomped on your ankle on purpose?” He seemed overly shocked and also danger-pissed, colder than the ice he was holding against me, and that was a little funny and a lot hot.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “That shit happens all the time. Refs only catch like half what goes on. Call it even less than that. It was real nasty for a few weeks, all purple and bloody looking, but it was really just a little sprain. I didn’t even use crutches or anything, I just kept it wrapped. So now it hurts a little sometimes. If it gets hit wrong. Or if it’s overworked,” I told him, busting out the word Coach T wouldn’t hear but I knew Caleb would.

“You’re definitely overworked this week,” he agreed, and the acknowledgment felt even better than the ice. “You’d tell me if you were really hurt, right? No games now, I’m serious. I can see your bruises, but I know there’s stuff I can’t see. Don’t keep things from me.”

He was so damn close to my confess button, and Don’t keep things from me was basically a direct order. It wasn’t the kind of hurt he was talking about, I wasn’t sure it qualified as hurt at all, but part of me really did want to break down and tell him everything Coach T had said that was still kind of stressing me out even though I was ignoring it. I just really didn’t feel like going into it, for a whole stack of reasons. Mostly, I had better things to do with my time and my mouth.

“Yeah, I’d tell you,” I promised, and I really did mean it even if I wasn’t doing it, which made it seem less like a lie, I guess.

“Good. Now, who’s the guy who stomped on your ankle?”

I grinned. “Why? You wanna go beat him up?”

“Yeah, I just wanna talk.”

I laughed out loud. “Vince Booth. Number ninety-four. He graduated, I think he went to Piedmont. You wanna go for a visit?”

He shrugged, not even hiding his protective side. “I mean yeah, kind of.”

“I love it when you get all murdery for me,” I told him, teasing but not, and he smirked.

“Good. Turns out football season brings it out in me. I hate watching guys try to knock you over.”

“Do you?” I asked, a little surprised. Honestly, he seemed pretty into watching the rough stuff.

“Sort of. Except you hardly ever get knocked over. And when you lay guys out, I really like that part.”

“You’re some kind of freak, Beast.”

“I know.” He smiled at me, holding my eyes long enough to make my cheeks hot and my shorts tighter before he dropped his gaze down to the rest of me, definitely doing the undressing with his eyes thing before he looked back up. “Tell me about practice,” he said, and I yawned like just the mention of it wore me out, and honestly, I guess it did.

“It was long.”

“What was the best part?”

“You being there,” I told him, and while sure, that would have been another great opening if I was going to tell him about Coach T’s untapped potential speech, my answer was still the truth, so I wasn’t lying when I just didn’t mention it.

He smiled and let his other hand rest on my opposite calf, cool from the ice but warm underneath, hard and strong as he squeezed me gently, rubbing his thumb across my skin. “Besides that.”

At first, I’d thought him quizzing me after every practice was him trying to learn about football. But eventually, I realized it was his way of learning about me. Keeping up with me, keeping tabs on me, massaging words out of me while he massaged the tension because—shocker— I fucking sucked at talking unless it was dirty talk. Actually, I wasn’t even too impressive at that.

So, when Ellis got in another dumb argument or when Riggs and Ally broke up for the twelfth time that week, or Coach pissed me off, I filled him in. I was getting better at talking. At least most of the time. It made it easier when he was genuinely interested in everything I said, even the dumb stuff.

Guiding me through conversations had the unexpected bonus of teaching me to calm down and think and focus, remember my days instead of throwing them in the trash, which was a hard habit to break but a lot easier with him helping. Like most things, it turned out.

I thought through the day’s drills and blocks and reps and times. Just reliving practice in my head made me yawn again, but also it made me pinpoint where I was quicker and stronger, where I was off and lagging, made me want to get back on the field and do it all better.

“The Super Snake,” I decided, thinking back to the whistle blasting and the fuck yeah, fuck yeah, fuck yeah, let’s do this Coach T had egged me on with, and I guess he’d been pushing me hard all week, I’d just been going so hard already I’d barely noticed. “The one with the cones, where you go back and forth on the yard lines,” I added for him, in case he didn’t remember.

There were no basic drills this week, just super everything, Coach T stacking speed on top of agility and agility on top of stamina. My favorite drills were usually whatever I was best at, but this time it was where I felt the most improvement.

Dodging cones was always my thing, and maybe we wouldn’t dwell so much on why I was so good at dodging things. But I was always used to seeing spots by the halfway mark, I didn’t finish barely winded, looking for more like I had today. My stamina… I didn’t know how to measure it, but it was off the charts these days. Like all my workouts were actually building me up instead of draining everything I had.

“Those look hard,” Caleb told me. “Sometimes you get so low to the ground I don’t know how you keep standing. You tangle your feet together and… you’re just so athletic,” he finished, and that would sound so bullshit coming from someone else, but there was legit awe in his voice when he said it, and I got a little warmer in spite of the ice. His nerdy jock-worshiping comments were real confidence boosters for sure.

“They’re not easy,” I admitted. “But I don’t like easy.”

“Oh, I know,” he smirked, dragging his fingers along my calf, and I shivered.

He leaned a little closer and reached out with his huge hand and long fingers, trailed them so lightly from the side of my neck, over my shoulder, and up and down my chest and stomach. I knew he was tracing the patterns of all my scrapes and bruises, cataloging like he did every night, making sure I stayed within some acceptable range of beat up, I guess.

Was pretty obvious he liked the battle scars even if he hated them too. There wasn’t anything weird about it in my opinion, it was a selling feature, right along with the uniform. Even in the locker room, it was a constant contest to see who wore the most damage. Hell, it wasn’t even a football thing, cheerleaders did it too. That time Ally fell doing a hot dog back flip off the bleachers and bruised her leg so hard it was black, she showed it off for weeks and Riggs bragged about it like it was his. Athletes were fucking masochists, for real.

“How do you do this every year?” Caleb asked, looking back at my ankle and then at my shoulder again, where he stroked the bruises gently. “Just go to school and… You’re all walking around destroyed like this for months and nobody notices.”

“Nobody cares as much as you do,” I promised him. “You just get used to it. Walk it off. Whatever.”

“You walk off too much,” he said grimly. “And you don’t sleep enough. You’re always so tired.”

I laughed, not trying to be mean about it, but he was just so off base.

“Dude, this is the most rest I’ve ever had during fall. I’m exhausted, yeah, but good exhausted. Usually, I’m dragging around like a zombie, I don’t even talk to anyone I’m so miserable. This is so much better.”

He still looked skeptical, but he nodded slowly, like he was gradually accepting the answer.

I let him pity me with his worried eyes a minute before I reassured him again. “It’s just football season. It’s hard. It’s a lot of work. You’re sore and tired all the time and everyone hates you because you act like a pumped up asshole because you’re spiking and crashing all week, that’s just the deal.”

He nodded again, did better with longer explanations, more facts to process, and he rubbed my shoulder gently, filing my words away in his mental library. “Is there anything we can do to make it better?” he finally asked me.

“I mean, isn’t that what you’re doing right now?”

“Well, maybe I can do a little more,” he told me, giving me a soft, possessive look that started on my eyes and drifted to my lips and then all the way down my body. Gently, he put the ice to the side and moved my ankle off the pillow, spreading my legs a little wider and moving closer to me.

“Okay?” he asked, glancing down at my ankle, and I nodded.

“Fine. Good. Green,” I added in a hurry, and he grinned.

“Alright.” He reached out to run his hand up the inside of my thigh, and I gasped when he touched me and it was ice cold— because he was holding a fucking ice cube in his hand.

“Oh, fuck.” My breath came out short and shuddery and I’d legit meant to call him an asshole, except halfway to cursing it stopped feeling so cold and started feeling really fucking good as he rolled it around on my thigh, which I did not expect.

He smiled, slow and a little evil, looking at me curiously. “You like that?”

“Yeah. I guess. Maybe a little,” I said, underselling it as my chest jerked and my legs shook and my dick got harder. Seriously, what the fuck.

He rolled it around a little more before he started to work it up my body, over my ribs, across my chest, in a figure eight until he was circling right over my nipples, making them diamond hard. I groaned as it melted and trickled down my stomach in tiny streams. Groaned louder when he shifted on the bed and leaned over me, started licking the water off with long strokes of his tongue across my skin, hot after cold. I grabbed the back of his head and held him tight to me as I reached out and tangled one leg around his, keeping him there.

It was a lot, so intense, and I had no idea why. God knows we’d done a million kinkier things than messing around with ice cubes, but I was into it. Normally, cold water was absolutely not something I’d put on my enjoy list, but when there was a warm hand and a warm mouth involved, I guess it hit different.

He kissed across my chest, soft and slow, a little at a time as I gradually let go of the death grip I had on his hair, and I knew even without opening my eyes that the asshole would be looking smug as hell. I would be too if I were him, let’s be real. He could break me down practically instantly, barely had to try before my dick was turned all the way up, ready to blow.

“You’re so sensitive tonight, baby,” he murmured as his lips moved lower just a little at a time, soft kisses across and back, inching down my stomach. “Just gonna come apart in my hands, aren’t you, tough guy?”

Jesus, I loved when he talked that way, mocking me, but also… not. It was embarrassing how well he knew me, everything he saw without me realizing I was showing it. I needed him to tell me I was tough, I was strong, I was good, and then let me know it didn’t matter. That whether I was or not, he was going to take care of me.

“Your poor sore spots,” he murmured, bending down close enough to brush his lips against the big bruise on my thigh, and I didn’t feel the pain, but I felt the heat of his breath on my skin. “I like being the one who makes you sore.”

I pulled my shoulders up and squirmed through his whispers. I fucking loved when he turned my face red with his dirty talk, embarrassing me with his rough sweetness and making me blush even though no one else could hear.

“You’re the best at it,” I told him. “Even though you’ve been going so easy on me.”

The kisses stopped, and he pulled back and looked up at me. “You think I’m going easy on you?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“Well… yeah. You haven’t… you know. Made me sore all week.” I shrugged, biting on my bottom lip, feeling my face turn redder. “It’s okay to be rough, even during football season. Maybe especially during football season. I kinda need it, I think. To help me be not so wound up or whatever.”

“Baby,” he said, laughing softly, and fuck, the way that word rolled off his tongue felt so right, made my heart beat faster without him needing to do anything at all. “I’m not going easy on you. Well, I’m not trying to. You just barely make it through dinner these days without passing out.”

“Oh,” I finally said, feeling like an idiot because yeah, okay. That was spot on truth. “I thought you were… backing off a little. Because I’m so beat up.” I pressed my lips together and stared up at the ceiling, shaking my head and rolling my eyes at myself. “I would have had a fucking cup of coffee if I knew that’s where the issue was,” I finally laughed.

He shook his head. “You don’t need to be staying up later, you need to be sleeping more. And if something’s happening that you don’t like, all you have to do is tell me and we’ll fix it. If you’re not getting enough attention, that’s a problem I’m happy to address,” he said, his voice getting lower and hella promising. “What I don’t want is for you to get in the habit of ignoring things that are bothering you,” he added. “I’m here to make things better. I just need to know what those things are.”

I really wished he would stop poking at my conscience, or that I’d stop reading into what he was saying like somehow he knew I was stashing a little stress on the side, but I was just going to keep shoving the conversation back down because I only had so much energy to give and right now it was focused elsewhere. So, I just nodded.

“Okay.”

“Now. Why don’t you switch spots with me. Can you do that? Are you too sore to go over my knee?”

I shook my head hard, sitting up straighter. He really was a problem solver, got right to the point with no hesitation, and damn did I love that.

“Well, then, get where you belong, baby,” he said, his voice getting a little rougher as he bent down to kiss me and fondle me through my shorts. His hand was still cold, just enough to make me jump and squirm, and he held me in place, teasing me just a little longer with his palm and his tongue before he let me go.

He slid back on the pillows, punching them up, getting comfortable and stretching his long ass legs out, patting his lap. His bed was so fucking big I could stretch across any direction and still have plenty of room, and that was great for sleeping, even better for fooling around, accessing any position we could dream up. But just melting out over his lap, taking up the whole bed, made me feel so outrageously spoiled, and I slid into place across his thighs, sighing as he adjusted me just how he liked, which was just how I liked, lucky enough.

“Look at that naughty little boy,” he said, his voice already turning rough, and I stared at our reflection in the closet doors— him still fully dressed, rocking my favorite of all his gray sweaters, and me naked except for my ass absolutely slamming in tight white shorts. Seeing myself like that made me feel so vulnerable, and when it was just us, just him, safe with no one around, it turned out I liked that feeling a lot.

“You wound up, baby?” he asked, and I watched his reflection as he ate me up. Even from across the room, the greedy, possessive way his eyes were shining was so clear. “Need to get some of that aggression out?”

“Yeah. Jesus, fuck yeah.” I didn’t expect to sound so intense about it, but my chest was suddenly filled with growls, bursting with the need to get rough a different way, one I couldn’t work through on the field. I needed to be owned.

“Gotta tell me, okay? Any time you’re not getting what you need, you come to me, baby. Nothing I love more than taking care of you.”

I moaned and nodded, exhaling a shuddery breath as he cupped his palm around one cheek and then the other, just caressing and lightly squeezing, and then suddenly his long fingers were inside my shorts, yanking them down to my knees, and fuck yeah, that was what I’d been missing.

I drew in a hard breath, waiting for his hand to fall, crack across the bottom of my cheeks, all my sensitive spots just right there for him. But instead, he ran his hand up the length of my back and squeezed my neck that intimate, affectionate, reassuring way I loved, then all the way back down to the tops of my thighs to lay down ticklish little strokes with his nails before he started to rub soft little circles on my ass cheeks in a way that was somehow massively embarrassing and really fucking hot. I watched him in the reflection, and the way he looked at me when he touched me was so focused, so completely, obsessively, all about me I could hardly breathe.

The teasing was so intense I rubbed up against his thigh, my dick desperate for some relief, and that finally earned me the swat on the ass I was aching for so bad. It wasn’t a cute one either, it was a spank. It was when his strength caught me off guard that it startled me, reminded me that even if he dressed in gray sweaters and looked like a super hot nerd, he was someone to take seriously.

He landed another one, and satisfaction finally started to bust through my frustration as he gave me exactly what I wanted and nowhere near what I wanted, all at the same time. His huge hands left a fucking impression for sure, but I needed more.

“Any time you feel like you’re not getting enough attention, you let me know. That’s a rule now, and don’t you break it. I will bare your ass and give you exactly what you need.” He slapped again, so fucking meaty and firm and jiggly, and so fucking loud, and my dick was already right there, because that was perfection.

Sometimes it wasn’t exactly punishment or discipline or even sex I was craving, I just needed the regimen. The maintenance and routine, the authority and the loving, mechanical way he could take me apart just by giving me the same thing again and again, stability when I needed it, even if that stability made me horny as fuck.

“More,” I ground out through my teeth, rocking against his leg a little harder. I could already see my ass starting to hold some color, and fuck I loved watching him spank me. But I swear the way it overloaded my senses made me need extra.

“More what?”

I grunted into my arms, spreading my legs, tired of talking, just wanting him to make me scream. “Come on fucker, you know what I like.”

He slapped me hard on one cheek and then the other, then gave me a few sharp cracks across the center, and I grinned and moaned, the heat bursting through me, needed and welcome. He knew what I liked, and I knew what he liked too— me begging him, desperate for him, was high on the list.

We both wanted to be wanted so badly, and the push and pull of it lit me on fire no matter which way we leaned. Making him feel needed was a fucking turn on for me, made my bullshit feel so necessary, made me want to be more of a tease, more of a pain in the ass so he could put in work making me behave. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard.

I tested his grip around me, squirming and kicking and generally pretending I didn’t want to be spanked just for the optics, and he held me tight while he rubbed his hand across my ass.

“If you’re gonna squirm around so much you’re gonna have to give me a color, baby. This too much or is this what you want?”

“Perfect. Green. Gray. Fuck, I want it, I really want it. Please. Jesus, Beast, quit fucking around.”

Want was the truth, I was a total slut for it, was happy to beg. But need was the real word. He had the power in his hands and his words to soothe me down to nothing, turn the heat in my brain all the way off so I could think. Breathe. Exist.

“You’re being awfully mouthy. You know how bratty jocks get treated around here. Is that what you want?”

Christ, his scolding made my nipples hard. “Is that not fucking obvious?”

I saw his reflection smirk in the mirror, then suddenly my ass was burning as he slapped hard and fast down across both cheeks, no sweet warm up shit, just diving in, and I was so ready for it. He put a fucking shine on my ass swatting those cheeks, and I squirmed around some more, wearing myself out fake-fighting him when he barely had to put in effort to hold me in place.

I felt completely powerless and so fucking small when I wriggled around over his knee, and god, for whatever reason I really needed that. It was also the perfect fucking position for me to rub my junk up against his thigh just slightly every time I rocked my hips and every time he smacked my ass.

I whimpered when he landed an especially hard slap, and then ran his palm gently over my cheeks, soothing as much as teasing because my skin was on fire and that gentle touch felt good but was fucking brutal at the same time, making me tremble and sweat and leak precum on his lap as he repeated the cycle again and again, paddling hard for a while and then groping my ass with soft fingers, torturing until I was moan-sobbing into my arms, not crying-crying, but I didn’t know what else to call it.

Gradually the spanking got lighter, until it was just firm enough to nudge me across his lap with every swat, hard enough to make my eyes water every time, until I had nothing left, was just breathing hard and crying and whining every time he swatted my swollen ass, and I was so blissed out I couldn’t even function, just stuck on the precipice of coming and not even that ready to jump. The agony of being so damn close was just incredible.

When he slid a half melted ice cube from the small of my back, down across my cheeks, I should have expected it, but I didn’t. I buried my face in my arms and hissed, shivers rolling all through me as he added cold to hot and got goosebumps, swirling it across my skin until it was gone.

“Like that?” he asked me softly, and I nodded, breathing hard.

The next time I heard it as he rustled the ice pack, and then he was sliding another piece down along my crack, this time making it to my hole before it melted, swirling it around the rim, letting cold water drip down the back of my balls, and I groaned and squirmed around, wanting more. I couldn’t believe it felt so good, that my dick was so hard over fucking cold water, but really, what didn’t I like that he pulled out of his bag of tricks. He bent low to kiss the dip in my back, the cleft of my ass, and then followed the trail of ice with his fingers until he got to my hole, circling with his fingertip, and I rocked hard against his lap, impatient.

The next time I lifted my hips, he reached underneath with his other hand and grabbed my dick right around the base, sliding slow and steady up and down, just barely stroking the achy, most desperate part that made my balls fucking throb I was so close to the goddamn edge.

“You’re gonna come on my lap,” he told me, swatting me and then running his fingers up and down my crack, teasing the tip of his finger around my hole while he jerked me off, and then swatted me again. “I don’t care if it’s from getting spanked, or from getting jerked off, or if this big thick finger I’m about to put up your ass is what does it, but you’re not getting up until you’re empty.”

My panting edged into whimpering, and my face was so fucking hot. “Jesus Christ, Beast.”

He swatted the very bottom of my ass, right above my thighs, and his other hand squeezed tighter with every spank, as the jolt forward slid my dick deeper into his fist.

I lifted my head out of my arms just enough to watch as he reached one of his long arms over to the nightstand, sliding the drawer out and pulling out the bottle of lube. I was practically drooling as he popped the cap and positioned it over my hole, and then he noticed me in the mirror’s reflection just as he was about to squeeze it out onto me.

He grinned slowly at me in the mirror, and then drizzled so much goddamn lube I could drown in it, holding my eyes as he teased one of his thick fingers up against my hole, pushing in just enough to feel frustrating, and I spread my legs wider, forcing the angle I wanted. He smacked my ass hard with his other hand, sliding in a little further as he did.

I groaned, thrusting back again and getting another smack along with a more determined thrust of his finger, filling a little more but still not enough. I knew exactly where his fingers were going and I wanted them there now, not when he felt like it.

“Come on Beast, you fucking dick, stop teasing.”

He laughed, that dark, deep laugh that came out when we were fucking around, that turned me on so goddamn much. “Oh my god, that mouth. You don’t think you’re getting away with talking like that, do you?”

He held me tight as his finger worked in deeper, rubbing gently along my insides as he inched it up toward that sweet spot, then took it away, all gentle teasing and soft stroking, and Jesus, it was so goddamn good, too good, and when he finally decided to drive his finger home, pressing slow and easy against that little piece of heaven up my ass, I came so hard it was almost instant, over as soon as it started as I clenched around his finger, unloading on his lap and making all the sobbing, moaning sounds I never knew I was capable of before him.

He kept teasing his finger inside me, pushing me past pleasure into something else, some wispy, smoky, invisible kind of fantasy-bliss-torture that was like gasps echoing in my lungs, and I whined and squealed into the sheets, so sensitive everywhere I could barely exist, like every cell in my body was clinging together in a fucking hurricane and the fact I was still in one piece was just dumb luck. I’d never had a fucking orgasm like that before, and I was suddenly beyond exhausted, all my muscles and bones and brain cells completely wiped out.

Fat tears rolled down my face and I didn’t even bother to hide them because I wasn’t ashamed of them. I’d worked for those tears and that pain and pleasure and overwhelm. It was mine. And so was he.

* * *

“How do you feel about hotels?” Caleb asked me a while later when I was cuddled up against him, so relaxed I was half asleep. I woke myself up all the way so I could lift off his chest and look at him.

“In what context?” I had a lot of feelings about hotels, but I was guessing they weren’t relative here.

“How do you feel about spending the night in hotels?” he clarified. “Is that too many germs?”

“Depends on the hotel, I guess,” I said truthfully, even though I still got embarrassed when he made a big deal out of my inconsistent fear of… well, everything.

“Okay. So how about after your game tomorrow, instead of that long, exhausting bus ride home, we spend the night in a hotel. A really clean hotel with a giant bed and room service, and I’ll spoil the hell out of you until you pass out.”

“That’s what you do anyway,” I pointed out.

Jesus, that actually sounded so fucking amazing though. Even after a win, the bus home was rough. The seats weren’t built for comfort and Westchester was a long fucking ride, he was right about that. Still.

“Yeah, but not in a hotel. What do you think?”

“You wanna stay in a hotel thirty minutes from your house?” I asked him instead of answering, because my answer would have been some version of who the fuck wastes money like that, and that was pretty fucking rude, so I held back.

“You don’t wanna stay in a hotel with me?” he asked, grinning a little, and you know what, he was pretty damn good at changing my mind and quick. Because just one sentence later it sounded a lot less stupid.

The truth was, I was embarrassingly into fancy hotels even though I’d never stayed in one— the kinds of places that put flowers in your room and mints on your pillows and had a big sunny view of the pool, and I literally did not even think about flowers or mints or pools otherwise, so who the fuck knew why I went so hard on those things when you moved them into a hotel, but I did.

“Coach T doesn’t really like it when you don’t ride the game bus home,” I said, but it wasn’t really that serious. I’d get some shit about it, sure, but it would be worth the payoff, and the way I figured it, Coach owed me a night to get my head on straight after fucking with it. Also, Caleb wasn’t really feeling my excuses.

“Is there any real reason you don’t want to?” he asked me. “Or are you just grumbling?”

I blushed, getting called out hard. “Grumbling, I guess,” I muttered.

“Okay, then. Hotels are fun. And relaxing. If anyone needs that, it’s you.”

I wanted to argue, but my mouth quirked up instead. “Fun, huh? Fun like reading? Or fun like homework? Or fun like reading homework?”

“Say yes and find out, brat.”

That was pretty much the opposite of how I was built, but there was a lot of rebuilding going on, inside and out. So much that when I opened my mouth, Yes was the only word waiting there.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Back me up here, Press.”

“On what?” I sat down across from Ellis, and he grabbed a handful of fries off my stacked up tray. Once Caleb had handed me a full up cafe card— and thoroughly beat my ass when I kept it in my pocket and kept eating shitty hot lunch the first week I had it— my days of soggy nuggets and canned pears were over, and I ate my literal limit in the cafeteria. Which was way fucking higher than I even could have imagined, my stomach seemed actually bottomless. But I let Ellis take the fries anyway.

“Tell Walker it’s not bad luck to plan a victory party before the victory.”

“Of course it’s bad luck.”

Ellis sighed, rolling his eyes. “It’s called manifesting, you assholes. You think yourself a victory by celebrating before it happens. Don’t you ever watch the videos I send you?” he demanded, nudging Walker.

Walker looked up from the Geography he was cramming in before next period, everybody running a little short on study time these days. “The porn? No.”

“Why would I send you porn? You have thumbs, you can find your own porn.”

“Why do I need thumbs for that?”

“To type sexy nurse into the search bar.”

“Why would you type when you can just manifest a sexy nurse? Anyway, who types with their thumbs?”

“Guys who don’t sit around with them up their ass when they could be planning victory parties. Start sending out invites, it’s how this shit works. What’s Beast’s number?” he asked me, pulling out his phone, and I choked through my bite of burger.

“Yeah, I’m thinking he doesn’t want you sending him sexy nurse porn all day.”

“Whatever. You can just drag him along then.”

“I don’t know how to make it more clear, dude. I am not having a party, victory or not,” Walker told him, getting annoyed.

“Well damn, you don’t have to be a dick about it.”

“We won’t be around anyway,” I told them, and then wished I hadn’t. But they’d find out when I didn’t take the bus back, not like I could hide it.

“What do you mean? Where are you gonna be?”

There was no way I was not catching shit for a hotel room, and I so did not even care, I was looking forward to it so much. I shrugged like it was no big deal, even though they were definitely going to make it one. “We’re staying in Westchester after.”

“What for? If you’re rumbling, I want in.”

I snorted. “Just… to chill.”

“Chill where? Is there a party? I want in on that too.”

“Nah, Caleb just…” I looked around like somebody might be eavesdropping, but I wasn’t sure who I thought that might be. “He doesn’t know football season like we do. It stresses him out seeing me all tired and beat up. So, we…” I shrugged, impatient for the jokes to start so I could get them over with. “Got a hotel. To relax or whatever. I don’t know.”

“Damn, you got a hell of a sugar daddy, Press,” Ellis finally said after a beat of silence that felt a lot longer. He legit seemed more serious than joking.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Ally used to worry when she saw me all tired and beat up,” Riggs said, finally joining in the conversation, drowning his sorrows in a tray full of chocolate milks which was so wholesome it was mostly hilarious, just like his end-of-the-world whining, like breaking up even meant anything anymore. Walker had won five bucks after all.

“Dude, would you suck it up? This happens every year. Shit, this happens every week. It’s break up season. Chapman and Jen, Rex and Casey, Mandy and Mia…” Ellis counted out split up couples on his fingers. “Everybody wants to stroke the abs, nobody wants a date who falls asleep at six-thirty.”

“Okay, it was at least eight-thirty, and fuck you,” Riggs muttered. “That’s not even what she got mad about.”

Walker rolled his eyes, closing his book and giving up on his homework. “Fine. Roast yourself, what’d you do?”

“Nothing. She and Jen are in a fight again and she wanted me to be mad about it, but I can’t say anything because tomorrow they’ll be best friends again and then she’ll be pissed at me for talking shit about her.”

We all looked at each other, and finally laughed when the irony never landed for him. “Uh, yeah. We’re familiar with how that works.”

He rolled his eyes and nodded. “Very funny. Thanks, guys.”

“Maybe if you took her to fancy hotels and shit like Caleb,” Walker said, making fun of both of us at once.

“Yo, Coach is gonna be pissed if you don’t take the bus back so he can yell at you.”

“I thought we were manifesting a win,” Walker said, rolling his eyes.

“He yells when we win too, smart ass,” Ellis pointed out, and Walker shrugged, conceding.

I’d definitely half expected Coach to shoot me down or at least give me shit about it— he always got pissed when guys didn’t ride the bus home and get the full team experience. But apparently, it was something I could get away with this time with a little truth finessing.

“I told him I needed some downtime after the game to think over all his D1 bullshit, and he said I was good to go.”

That was a little bit of a stretch and not really what I planned to be doing in that hotel room, but he’d seemed to think me needing time away from Maddox to clear my head was a good enough reason to skip the team-building just this once. Pretty sure he still felt guilty enough over what happened in York’s office that day to cut me a little slack. I didn’t love pulling the trauma card, but I did what I had to do.

“What D1 bullshit?” Riggs asked, perking up a little and leaning forward instead of slouching over his milk.

“Coach is hyping him up. He thinks Logan’s ass has more potential these days,” Ellis said, filling him in.

“More potential to knock people over,” Riggs said, and they all thought that was fucking hilarious. ”What are you, decommitting?’ he asked me seriously.

“Fuck no. He just… was talking about upgrades. Showing out at Donovan, catching attention.”

Riggs nodded, getting excited. “Alexi’s been talking to OSU.”

“Get the fuck out,” Walker said, shocked. “Big Riggs is leaving Donovan?”

Riggs shrugged. “Just talking for now. But he hustles. Got the no shame email game locked down tight. Even if nobody plucks him, he’s making a lot of friends,” he laughed. “Guys from Donovan get picked up all the time though. A few a year at least, they’ve got eyes. It’s not impossible.”

All it took was talking about his brother to cheer Riggs up. Alexi was a couple years older than us, and Riggs followed him around like a puppy, just turned pure sheepdog when he talked about him, even looked like one, getting so excited he bounced in his seat and his shaggy hair fell over his face. As far as older brothers went, Alexi seemed like a good one, always getting us beer and telling us which teachers to avoid and how to stay off Coach’s bad side.

It was tragic when he left for college last year, even just as far as Donovan. None of us had brothers, so we hadn’t been prepared when Riggs took it so hard, slid into a little mini depression only Ally could get him out of. He had three other older brothers even though we called Alexi Big Riggs, but they’d all moved out before he moved to Maddox. I felt bad for him if it had been that hard every time, but his family was kind of like that, all emotional and close. It was always hard to be around, honestly, I never really got how you could care that much, but I guess I felt different now.

“What are you gonna do if he transfers?” I asked him, because thinking about him going all dark again sucked, but Riggs just shrugged, like it was whatever.

“Guess I’ll be heading to OSU. Bounce just like you. Not passing up playing with my brother.”

“Got nothing to do with Ally going to Michigan, right?” Ellis asked, grabbing one of Riggs’ empty milk cartons and tossing it across the cafeteria and into the trash, hooting and slamming on the table when it tipped in.

“I can’t help it if the states are close together. I didn’t invent the map.” Riggs leaned across the table, closer to me, looking serious a minute. “Dude, if you get pulled aside by Coach, that’s no fucking joke. You know he doesn’t do that to just anyone. I’m looking at the same path you are. He’s not offering me extra time.”

“I think he feels guilty or something,” I muttered, shrugging it off.

Walker laughed so loud it didn’t even sound like a laugh and we all looked over. “I mean, we are talking about the same person, right? Guilty? Nah.”

“Seriously,” Ellis agreed. “You know how many times he’s called me a fucking dumb ass? Nine hundred thousand. Think he feels guilty for any of those? Stop being a fucking dumb ass.”

“I’m not being a dumb ass.”

“Yes, you are. Remember Jason Hunter? Coach went all fall harvest on him, and he plays for LSU now.”

“That’s not—” I shook my head, annoyed. “I’m not gonna play for fucking LSU just because I throw in a couple extra practices a week.”

“Nobody said you’d play there tomorrow,” Riggs said. “But Press, you’re a psychotic player. And now that you’re… stable or whatever with Caleb, don’t quit. Don’t not even try, that’s a weak move and you’re not weak.”

“What’d Caleb say about it?” Walker asked, and I got a sharp pain in my stomach I couldn’t brush off as hunger when I was sitting there stuffing my face.

“Nothing. I didn’t tell him.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s just… whatever. Telling him makes it… real, I don’t know.”

“It is real, dumb ass,” Ellis told me.

“Fuck you. I’m gonna tell him tonight. After the game. I don’t know…”

“You don’t know what? If you wanna stop being a loser? What’s your problem? Coach is trying to hand you generational wealth and you’re all nah, lemme think about it.”

“It’s not all that.”

“Yeah, not if you don’t do anything about it.”

“You’re being a real dick about this,” Walker said, surprising everyone by siding with Ellis. “Wise up and shoot your shot. You don’t get unlimited lives.”

“Exactly,” Ellis agreed. “Take the chance. Kiss the girl. Throw the victory party.”

Walker snorted and rubbed his eyes. “I swear to fucking god, Ellis.”

“What if it’s just me? One man party. And your booze. And your hot tub. You can be around or not, just leave the key under the mat.”

“You wanna just move into my house?”

“I would like that, yes.”

I shook my head and concentrated harder on my burger. Honestly, taking extra practice wasn’t even that big of a decision, it was a no harm no foul situation for the most part, wasn’t like I actually had to commit to anything but pushing harder and exhausting myself more. It would be easier to just say fine, whatever than to keep blowing it off.

I just couldn’t seem to get my mouth to line up with where my head was at.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Maddox poured all their money into football, sure. Ask the art kids and band kids how much athletes went without when the fundraiser dollars got split up. But Westchester Wildcats were a big city team, living a whole different lifestyle, and their athletic building spelled that out in giant letters— and a giant Wolves mural along the whole outside wall.

Their weight room was next level, they had flat screens everywhere, and the benches in their locker rooms were fucking padded. Which, to be real, was a perk I would have enjoyed at home. No other team we played had a stadium as big or grass as green, and I’d be lying if I said I hated taking warm ups on their field, but goddamn did I hate the Wolves and all the top tier shit they got handed just because they lived in the right zip code.

Lucky for everybody, I played best when I had a chip on my shoulder, and my shoulders felt especially wide and that chip felt especially heavy.

It was always a little jarring stepping out on Westchester’s field, the amount of people they packed into their stands, what a difference that made, the distraction and anticipation and overwhelm that came with so much crowd noise. It was one of those things I could never fully decide if I loved or hated.

Some people had no problem figuring it out.

“Look at this fucking show,” Ellis screamed at me, spinning around and launching, banging his helmet on my pads and then grabbing me around the neck, pulling me forehead to forehead. Even that close, I could barely hear him when he said, “Just keep him upright, I got this.”

I nodded and he shook me hard by the shoulders before he turned and bolted out of the pack, ready to tear shit up. I took a deep breath and scanned the crowd, needing that little something extra, needing all the extra and knowing exactly where to find it.

At home in familiar territory and with fewer seats, it was dead easy to spot Caleb. Know where he was all game so I could look over and reorient myself every time I got up from a hard hit, let him see that I was okay. Away games were harder, but him being a head taller than just about everyone on the planet made it a lot easier to track him and I got lucky with my first quick sweep and saw him standing up a few rows back around the thirty-yard line.

He was too far away to make real eye contact, but I knew he was watching me. And that was all I really needed to get that extra jolt of steam. I wanted this game— needed it in a way I couldn’t really explain. Coach T was packing a grudge, but I was dealing with something else. Some need to prove myself, push myself, some gut feeling that I was steps away from something falling into place in my head.

I spotted Walker as Coach T gave him a pat on the back, shoving him toward the field, and I jogged over to grab him.

“You good?” I asked him, holding onto both his biceps hard to ground him in the pregame, looking at him close. He had big brown eyes you couldn’t miss normally, but before a game they got rounder, I swear it was true. He did this jumpy, swooping thing with them like he was just continuously scanning the field, and maybe that was just a QB thing, but it was kind of freaky.

I was all in for kinda freaky though if that meant he was seeing things clearly. I squeezed his arms hard, still looking for an answer, pulling his eyes from somewhere past me to on me, and he licked his lips and nodded.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“I got you. They gotta come through me to get to you and that’s not happening. We all got you. Do your thing.”

He nodded again, doing a quick 360 of the crowd that thought they were at a fucking bowl game. Westchester turned out, credit where it was due. There was a lot more gold than blue out there and that motivated me, slapping guys around on their home turf, but I didn’t know what it was doing for him. Time to find out.

* * *

Sometimes the sidelines just felt too far apart, the dirt felt off, the sky smelled weird… some nights were just no good, and there wasn’t much you could do. But some nights, especially once fall buckled in for real and the ground got hard and the night air got cold and it hurt to breathe when you got overheated, some nights moved in slow motion and lock-in came to you on a silver platter. Friday night at Westchester, the lights so bright they blinded you if you took off your helmet without squinting, was one of those nights.

Maybe it was physical, maybe it was mental, but when they came for Walker off the block, my focus narrowed so tight there was almost no vision left. I knew I was throwing my weight around a way that felt right. I put all my trust in the game, fucking became the game a way I hadn’t in so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to dissolve into the noise.

Rage drove me, and bitterness and resentment— the kind of ugly feelings that always gave me bite. But underneath that, pounding away and adding fuel to my fire was something I was entirely unfamiliar with. The idea that something came next. That what I was capable of might not be all I was capable of. If I could wipe the floor with these rich pricks— and the shuffling and shouldering and flapjack style blocks I kept handing out said I could— why couldn’t I walk through a door that was suddenly unlocked? Especially if someone was there to cheer me on, whether they understood football or not.

Tad Carver was Wolves’ star TD, a big barrel-shaped guy with a face full of helmet rash and a goatee that looked like a Halloween gag. He was hella agile for his size and it hurt like a motherfucker when he fell on you. Somehow, he’d figured out how to turn dislocating shoulders into an art form, and he’d had a hard on for Walker for years. When he came for him off Grossi’s snap, acting like he could step over me to do it, my heart rate spiked so high only dogs could hear it.

I burst from low and went high, bodyslamming with every cubic inch of strength I had, quick and on point and solid. I wasn’t scraping moves together, I wasn’t making up for what I didn’t have, I wasn’t thinking at all. I just threw my whole body out there, expecting it to be enough somehow, and it was. He spun hard and tipped over, landing in an ugly pile, and I scrambled up in time to see Walker throw the tightest pass I’d seen in a month and Ellis catch it soft-hands like a baby, skipping right into the end zone asshole-style.

I was too out of breath to scream, and Walker wouldn’t have heard me anyway because you better believe a quick 6-0 made that crowd noise shift, and suddenly Maddox showed up. I jumped at him instead, drumming on his helmet, feeling like Ellis as I bounced around like a bunny, grappling out my intensity. On the side, Coach T was tearing his hair out the good way, throwing his fists in the air, which you did not see over one TD, unless it was us breaking the seal against Westchester.

And then my eyes drifted up to the thirty, could see Caleb standing up, screaming something into the noise with his hands cupped around his mouth, and at the very least, I knew he understood touchdowns and could read the scoreboard. Honestly, it wouldn’t have mattered if he couldn’t. He showed up for me. Every time. And that unlatched part of me, made me wonder if maybe I was ready to show up for myself.

* * *

For better or worse, our line fed off the crowd. Off Coach and each other and Perry drilling home the extra point, and when the rhythm was clicking, we were a different team. I still remembered when Wolves Field got its overhaul in middle school, put up their giant eyesore scoreboard twice as big as anyone else’s, just another level of extra for no reason that pissed me off. But glancing up quarter after quarter at that Away:7, Home:0 standing nice and tall, it suddenly seemed like one of those extras that was necessary after all.

The one place Westchester was weak was receivers— Bennett was riding the bench with a broken arm since August and no one they slotted in had half his stuff. Their running plays were good, but not as good as our defense, and we kept them scoreless until the last five minutes when they finally busted through the end zone and our mood.

We barely had time to huddle and prep for two before they were lining up for the extra kick instead, and why they made that call, I couldn’t even guess, aside from Worthy not missing a kick in years and us having a question mark reputation this season, so I guess there were reasons. But when Worthy sailed cartoonishly wide on a gimmie and the overtime clouds rolling in rolled right back out, those reasons didn’t mean jack shit.

Shock hit harder on the field than in the stands because seriously it was nobody’s birthday so why the surprise party. Maddox finally stopped chewing their nails and fucking woke up, cheering louder for a missed extra point than a fucking touchdown, but noise was noise, and a minute later it was all over. You got one of those wins, maybe, a season. It was a getting lucky kind of night.

* * *

7-6 was about the luckiest, ugliest win you could get, but I didn’t really care, I was feeling unleashed, like I’d held back an eighteen-wheeler all by my fucking self and I was ready to do it again. Well, until I sat down on one of those padded benches in the locker room and wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stand up again. I was a head-to-toe bruise, no other way to say it. Every inch of me was maxed out.

“Sick block,” Riggs said, coming up behind me and drumrolling across my shoulders. “Carver’s gonna be feeling that with interest.”

I nodded, hunching over and unscrewing my water, swallowing until it hurt. I was gonna be replaying that one for a while.

“Yeah, you really did have me. You all did,” Walker said, coming up and grabbing us both on the collars, tugging and letting go and then slapping us on the back like his hands weren’t sure what to do post game, and I felt that. I was still trembling all over with stun, shaking legs, shaking tongue, the whole bit. It felt more like a blowout than a squeaker, and not just because things had been so shaky lately. They might have handed us the finale, but we fought before that. Played like winners.

“Hey, listen up,” Coach T shouted out over the noise, clapping his hands together hard until we all shut up. “That was…” Everyone waited to see how pissed he was going to be about a barely-win against a team he hated. “Not the game I expected to see,” he finally said. “I know none of us came here expecting a gift. And you all know we do not celebrate luck in our locker room.” We all nodded, easing off the gas, getting ready for the beatdown, and then his mouth twitched as he gestured around at the giant lockers and the ugly yellow tile. “But this is not our locker room, so you all can celebrate for a second.”

We went a little wild, hooting and cheering and banging on lockers and helmets and each other, letting off steam until he brought us back down.

“This was not an easy win,” he said, being serious. “And our stars lined up for us. But I saw improvement this week. Walker. Auggie. Prescott.” He nodded towards us, coming close to dishing out compliments, but not quite, and I nodded too, feeling it.

“Yo, what about me, Coach?” Ellis asked him, and everyone laughed. “You know I did catch that touchdown, I don’t know if you saw that.”

“Bet you manifested it,” Riggs said, and got another round of laughs from everyone Ellis was sending videos to, I guess, but Ellis just tightened his jaw and made a jerk off motion.

“I saw it,” Coach told him. “And I saw you showboating into the end zone which you can knock the fuck off. But nice catch,” he conceded, and Ellis finally got some half mocking applause. “You guys put in the work, and you got your reward, luck or not. So, we keep. Doing. The fucking. Work. Right?”

“Yes, Coach,” we all barked out, because when he put that many periods in his sentence, you’d better fucking respond that way.

“Alright. Get your shit and move out. Bus leaves in fifteen. Be on it or walk home,” he said, the high pep speech over almost before it started, but it wasn’t nothing. Watching Coach Dallas hand himself an L on a dumb ass play was a cherry on top of a hard fought game, and he was feeling himself like the rest of us were, vocal or not.

Guys started packing up and making plans and I was plus-one glad I didn’t have to rush because I was not ready to move yet. I dumped the rest of my water down my back and pitched it in the trash. Even their fucking trash cans were bright Wolves yellow, and it was not a chill color— we had that on their lockers at least.

“Who you chatting?” Ellis asked Riggs, knocking him in the shoulder as Riggs speed-typed into his phone. “Beast texting you too now?”

“Ally,” he said, waving Ellis off. “She and Jen made up, so I’m off the hook.” He looked up, searching out Coach, over on the other end, talking to Howser. “Hey, Coach, I’m gonna catch a ride home.”

“Bus time is game time,” Coach T said, blowing him off with the same motto he always used that barely made sense.

“Press isn’t riding,” Riggs pointed out, which, okay, fair, but also uncool.

“Logan cleared it with me ahead of time,” he said, walking back our way. “And he’s gonna make up for it by leading film class on Monday.”

“What?” That was news to me, and I scowled at Riggs, even though I didn’t really hate leading film class. It got me seeing things differently when I talked them through out loud than when I just watched footage by myself. Probably some kind of alternate education thing I’d have to remember to tell Caleb about. “Thanks a lot.”

“I’ll do it,” Riggs offered, still making deals, and he had a way of getting people to do what he wanted just by generally being a good guy. Even me, usually. “We’ll co-lead it,” he said, leaning over to slap me on the back, and Coach rolled his eyes.

“Fine. Whatever,” he said, giving in a lot faster after a win than he would have, then turning to the rest of the guys, making sure we didn’t feel like we got off too easy. “Anybody else want to blow off mandatory team bus to hang out with their girlfriend? Or boyfriend?” he added, making sure the mocking was balanced.

Nobody did, not even Ellis, and normally this would have been when he said What about to hang out with Logan’s mom? or some shit, but he didn’t do that anymore. He seemed to legit hear it that night we’d point blank told him he was being a terrible person. Which seemed kind of harsh now.

“Logan.” Coach jerked his head as he walked away, and I followed him, turning back to point at Riggs.

“You’re leading film, asshole.”

He held his hands up, nodding and looking sheepish. “Totally. No problem.”

Coach turned the corner toward the Wolves’ coaches lounge, which was a big space full of couches and another flat screen and a soda machine before you even hit the offices, a huge step up from his dingy, crowded spot at Maddox, and I could see how much this place was worthy of a grudge.

“I’m gonna give you your five minutes,” he told me, turning around so abrupt I almost ran into him. “You get your head on straight, do what you have to do. But I saw you out there tonight, tossing guys around. And you can’t tell me you don’t wanna play this game as long as your body will let you. So, you come in on Sunday ready to work or with a damn good reason why not.”

I swallowed, slapped in the face with his intensity, a different kind than he usually wore. Thing was, he was right.

I was tired and sore as hell, but if someone had dialed up a night game right now, I’d have been first on the field. My adrenaline was still pumping so hard I could taste it, all coppery in my mouth. But that just wasn’t where I wanted my head or my energy right now— I could shove it back down for one more day at least.

But he wanted some kind of answer, so I nodded. “Got it, Coach.”

* * *

“So, you’re seriously just ducking out to a hotel to fuck while we take the funk bus back to Maddox?” Ellis demanded when I came back out, punching his cleats into the padded bench seat as he stretched out his hamstrings. “How many beds you got in that room?”

I snorted. “Forget it.”

“They probably got the honeymoon suite. With a heart shaped bed and rose petals on the floor and shit. Beast looks like a go-all-out guy,” Walker said, pulling his pads off and hanging them over his helmet. “Yo, take your fucking pads off,” he told Ellis, knocking him in the shoulder.

“Why?”

“Because it’s a pain in the ass on the bus.”

“Don’t sit with me, then.”

They started dodging and weaving as Walker tried to grab for his jersey, scrambling around until they slammed into the lockers with a giant bang and stared at each other, cracking up. It’d been awhile since I’d seen Walk loosen up, and it would be fucking great if it stayed that way, with us one game closer to playoffs.

“Ten minutes, I’m not fucking kidding,” Coach T shouted from the other side of the locker room, and they pulled themselves apart.

“If I was you, I’d fucking sleep in that big rose petal bed,” Ellis told me, picking up his helmet and pointing it at me for emphasis. “Because you know nobody around here is gonna be getting sleep for a while. Give Beast a big sloppy kiss for me, huh?”

I shook my head and sat there rolling my neck around, listening to the locker room empty, all the echoes making it sound like we had twice as many players until they all rattled out and it was quiet.

Then I fished my phone out of the end of my duffel and swiped it open, grinning when I saw Caleb’s post game text.

Your ass looked great out there, Prescott.

Fuck yeah, it did. And if he enjoyed that show, I was about to make his goddamn day.

Think you can find the locker room?

CHAPTER NINE

One thing Caleb was exceptionally good at was following directions. Maps, recipes, where I wanted his fingers— the guy was detail oriented. He found his way to the locker room with no trouble at all.

I was still sitting on the bench when he walked in, and I watched him take a curious look around at the pennants lined up on the wall and the framed playoff articles, and the trophy case full of brags that really belonged in the main hall so they could at least pretend they cared about sharing them with gen pop, but I guess they had enough trinkets they could spread them around.

And then I watched his mind get fully blown when I finally pushed myself off the bench, all creaky and noisy, still in full dress like I was heading back out on the field. Part of me was truly itching to do just that. But that part could shut the fuck up awhile, because this was the action I wanted.

“Well, fuck,” he finally said after a minute of staring, and he laughed a little, swallowed so hard I could see it, and then laughed again. “Fuck, Logan.”

“Well, are you gonna keep standing over there, or are you gonna come get some of this?” I asked him, and he finally shook off the daze and walked over, slow and deliberate, taking me apart with his eyes every step, and by the time he was standing in front of me, I was ready to tear him up.

He reached out and stroked the front of my jersey, obsessed with the shiny fabric the way I was obsessed with clean tshirts, and I couldn’t even feel his fingers through my gear, but just watching him touch me made me shiver anyway.

“Hey,” he finally said, reaching up to touch my face, cup my jaw in his giant hand, and my whole body sighed.

“Hey.”

“Good game.”

I busted a grin. “Thanks.”

“You’re like a big star. With that block.”

I raised my eyebrows at him using words correctly, and he tilted his mouth the way he did when he got embarrassed.

“People around me were talking about you. Apparently, you’re very intimidating.”

“Yeah? Is that what you think?”

He knocked on the top of my shoulder pads, pulling his hand back like the sound startled him and then doing it again. “You are a little scary with these on.”

“Sure scary’s the word you’re looking for?”

He shook his head, just looking, soaking up my filthy uniform, shoulders to cleats, definitely imagining past that to what was underneath. “Fuck, you look so good in that.”

“No shit. Why do you think I wanted you back here?”

His eyes opened wider, and he looked around. We’d fucked around at school significantly. In the corner of the library and in assorted study rooms and almost in the weight room once before Riggs decided to stay late too. But never in the locker room. He would, I was sure of that, but it was a lot easier to pull that shit off earlier in the season when guys weren’t putting in extra workouts constantly.

“It’s empty,” I assured him. “And you’ve got about ten minutes before they start locking up. “So, whatever you want to do to me, you’d better do it quick.”

For a second, he just looked stunned. “In here?” he finally asked. “You’re sure?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never dreamed about putting a big bad jock on his knees in the fucking locker room.”

He growled and leaned close, nipping at the side of my neck. “Just you, Prescott.”

I didn’t know until he said it, but that was the right answer.

He moved so fast I was startled by it, and when he pushed me back against the lockers, he stroked a hand down the side of my face gently, then cupped the other side too, kissing so fucking softly I answered back with an embarrassing whimper. Without breaking the kiss off for even a second, he braced one arm on the locker beside me and reached up under my jersey with his other hand, his palm gliding across my sweaty skin, and then grabbing, rough. I could feel the obsession in his hands, like every fingertip was branding me as they dragged down my side, and he kissed harder, really making me feel it.

Not gonna lie, it was a side of him I didn’t get to see often enough. I thought a hell of a lot about that afternoon in the equipment shed, what a jock slut he was, desperate for me all sweaty in uniform. Hopefully, Westchester wasn’t going to be the last time I could pull him into an empty locker room, but just in case, I was going to make it memorable.

I reached out and grabbed his dick through his jeans, pulling a low moan from deep in his chest. He was as hard as I’d expected him to be, and I squeezed a little tighter, enjoying the girth in my palm, how his breathing picked up when I rubbed him through his clothes with the heel of my hand.

He sighed so hard I could feel his body shake as I sank down onto my knees on the tile, all cushioned with kneepads and everything like that’s what they were made for. Took effort getting down there, full dress after a hard game, but the way he watched me, like he was memorizing every move, made it worth it.

His legs were so fucking long, and being on my knees in front of him was always a trip, realizing how big he really was, that I was legit the small guy in the relationship. I had a real toxic kind of jealousy about those inches he had on me, but at the same time, it was so damn hot. Especially like this.

He smiled down at me and put a hand on each of my shoulders, resting his palms on my pads in a way that was… respectful, almost. He really was a uniform guy. “God, I fucking love you,” he whispered, and I grinned and blushed, expecting dirty, not sweet.

“Punt bunny.”

He snorted, shaking his head. “Stop calling me that. It doesn’t even make sense.”

“Jock slut,” I said, and he smirked.

“Closer.”

I worked his pants open and his zipper down, and for a second, when I curled my fingers over the waistband of his shorts, I could feel his whole body get stiff, like maybe he wasn’t as prepared as he thought to be naked in a strange locker room, and I glanced up. “You sure?” I asked him, and he took my chin in his hand and pressed his thumb between my lips. I ran my tongue across it, and he grunted softly.

“Very.”

“Good. Because I’m gonna make you come in about four seconds, Beast.”

I yanked his clothes down far enough for his dick to pop out, all horny and swollen and already wet at the tip, and then all my thoughts went flying out of my head as I devoured him, filled my whole damn mouth with him, stuffing him down my throat like I wanted to swallow him whole. He kept his hands resting on my shoulders a minute, but then he slid his hands gently around the back of my neck, his long thick fingers combing up through my sweaty hair, cradling the back of my head as he thrust his hips slow and steady.

I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, so fucking eager to choke on him it was ridiculous. The guy knew how to own me exactly how I liked, the only way I liked. He made me feel so fucking good when feeling good was never on the agenda before.

I could feel his thighs shaking as he clenched his core, keeping himself under control as I sucked hard, reaching up and shoving my hands under his sweater, grabbing and clawing at his abs, his ribs, his sides, groping and stroking and doing my best to pull him closer. I swallowed on repeat and got rough with my tongue, swiping under his shaft, along his head, putting pressure on his slit as I sucked his precum onto my taste buds, whimpering because I was so hungry, so ready, so desperate for more.

“Baby.”

Caleb’s voice broke through my brain fog and when he brought one hand to my cheek, his fingers spanning the whole length of my jaw, he tilted my head back and I blinked up at him. His face was soft and serious, and I suffocated in his eyes a little as I worked him deeper in my throat and he groaned quietly.

“Look at me,” he told me. “I want all of you, baby, not just your mouth.”

I felt my face get hot, and the sides of my neck, as he turned a quick locker room fuck into something else, another snapshot moment I cut out of my brain and threw in an evidence file, something I could pull up to feel loved over and over.

It was hard to look up at him and choke on his dick at the same time, but I did my best because I knew what he needed to see. How much I wanted him. How real this was, even if it didn’t feel like it possibly could be. I swallowed and tasted his precum again, sticky and sweet, and gave him all of me, everything through my eyes. Whoever I was, whoever I would be, could be, might be, I was always his.

Maybe it was a little more than four seconds before he was unloading down my throat, all warm and salty as he breathed hard and choked back his moans as best he could. But not much.

I lapped him up rough, licking and sucking like a real asshole until he whimpered from all the stimulation, and then I shoved him back into his shorts, tucking him away when there were about fifty other things I’d prefer to be doing, most of them involving me getting fucked to hell in my jock. But I didn’t have the kind of coordination with all my muscles still shaking and depleted, and we didn’t have that kind of time, either.

After a minute of heavy breathing, he reached down and grabbed me, helping me back up on my feet and pulling me close, half holding me and half leaning against me as he pulled himself together.

“What am I going to do with you?” he whispered hoarsely, laughing, but in the slightly shocked way he did when I’d dragged him outside his nerd comfort zone.

“I feel like I remember you saying something once about peeling my uniform off piece by piece. If only there was somewhere we could go to make all your dreams come true…”

He laughed a low gravelly laugh this time and shook his head, reaching down for my hand. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

CHAPTER TEN

“You gotta be fucking kidding me. When you said hotel, I thought you meant…”

When I thought of hotels, I thought of the kind that had caution tape out in front so often you could always find curled up edges of it kicking around the parking lot when you walked the length looking for rocks and quarters and not going inside. I hadn’t expected Caleb to take me anywhere like that, but one more time, reality seemed way out of whack because who the fuck was even coming to Westchester to stay in a place as upscale as what I was looking at?

“They’re not gonna let me in dressed like this,” I told him, looking down at myself and cringing.

Funny, because for a long time, I’d have said my uniform was the only thing I wore that I wasn’t embarrassed about, that except for having the cheapest cleats and undershirts, I looked like everybody else on the team, could pass for not just scraping by. But that was before The Beast stealth replaced most of my side of the closet, just checking out what I had and adding something the same but better every time he swung around doing Sunday chores while I was at practice. Filling me up one more way, like a wardrobe Santa Claus or whatever.

Not saying I would have felt like I belonged here in jeans and a hoodie either, but there were levels.

“Of course they will,” he told me, putting a hand on my thigh, rubbing his thumb over a giant grass stain that streaked up half my leg. “But we don’t have to see anyone anyway. We’re already checked in, I have the room key, we can just go straight to the elevator and upstairs. If anyone tries to look at you, I’ll go all bodyguard and block you so they can’t see.”

I snorted and shook my head, knowing he was teasing but also completely for real.

“Or.” He shrugged. “You can change. Or we can go. Somewhere else, home, anything you want. This is supposed to be a good time, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable about anything.”

I was up for a good time, definitely, and he was pretty good at twisting my arm without even trying. Still. “You sure it’s okay?” I asked him, looking toward the front doors, all the fancy lights and plants and gold everything, and seriously, where had this hotel even come from? “I smell like a fucking locker room. And I look ridiculous.”

“You look amazing. Like a smoking hot hardcore jock who just kicked ass on the field, and I can’t get enough of it. And no one will ever bother you when you’re with me.”

I fucking believed that.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

* * *

The elevator was four mirrored walls with a gold bar all around, like a tiny little ballet studio, and my reflection shocked me a little. I didn’t do a lot of post game time in front of the mirror, and I vaguely knew how I looked after, but literally staring at my full length reflection, wrinkled and dirty and casually out in the world that way was more reality that didn’t seem real. It wasn’t like going out for pizza in your little league uniform, this was just bizarre.

The mirrors though, they just straight up turned me on now, like instinctually, and I couldn’t wait the thirty seconds it probably took to get to our floor, I had to have my hands on him the second the doors closed. I put my palms on his chest, pushing him up against the wall so hard the mirror wobbled, and we both froze, holding our breath as it settled down.

“Logan…” he scolded me, grinning and reaching around my waist to yank me closer. “You’d better settle down and behave.”

“Way too late for that,” I told him, sliding my arms between the sliver of space between us, grabbing the front of his sweater and pushing him back again, gentler this time, more bark than bite, just pinning him lightly as I kissed him hard.

His hands slid a little lower, grabbing my ass, laughing against my lips when he struggled to find me through all the padding, finally getting a good handful, and lifting me up on my toes. Goddamn did I hate when he did that, except no I didn’t. He was allowed to make me feel like I wasn’t the strongest guy in the room. Just him. And when he kissed me, really kissed me, reality didn’t even matter anymore because everything else faded to black.

* * *

Like, there was zero reason to check into a hotel half an hour away from your own house, except okay, maybe I was wrong. The reasons stacked up next to twinkly lights and round ice cubes and protein shakes— not a real necessity, not even close, but holy shit did it look nice and make me feel good.

Not even joking when I say he slipped his card into the lock and opened the door, and I felt like I was staring at a brochure, an example of a hotel, it just seemed so unrealistically staged and perfect. I didn’t even want to think about how much he must have paid for the huge bed and the giant wraparound sofa that would probably hold ten people each, and the room was beyond what I knew nice could be, especially so close to Maddox where there was nothing like this. Fucking Westchester, Jesus Christ.

But all that faded almost right away because the view sucked up all the attention, pulling me over like a magnet in the dark room. Hell, I didn’t even know Westchester had a view, but I couldn’t deny it. It wasn’t a postcard skyline, but the gist was there, big buildings lit up further than I could see. It really did make it seem like we were far away from home.

“You’re fucking ridiculous,” I told him as I stared out the massive window at the night sky and the bright lights, and life just seemed so big when I knew it was barely getting started.

He came up from behind and wrapped his arms around me, resting his chin on my shoulder pads and inching my collar to the side to kiss my neck, generously taking my grumbling for the thank you it was. “I know. But you deserve this. You deserve everything.”

He said that so often, and I wondered what would happen if the words ever started to sink in instead of bouncing off. If I deserved good things, maybe I wouldn’t feel like an asshole for wanting them. For trying and fighting for them. I was so deeply programmed to be ashamed of wanting all the things I’d never had, all the big expensive fancy shit I never believed would be on my list of options. Just imagining more than I had always made me pissed off and guilty and nauseous.

But something around that part of me was changing, melting away drop by drop like a little round ice cube, and I knew it was because of the way he loved me. Always making me feel like I was already enough, even when he claimed I deserved so much more.

I could see him in the reflection of the glass, could tell he wasn’t even looking out of the window god knows he paid extra for, his eyes latched onto me instead, like he couldn’t get this just as easily at home. I turned around so at least he could get a better look, and when he pressed his lips to my forehead, tension poured out of me like sweat down my back.

“Thank you,” I said quietly, and he kissed me again, not making it a big deal, but I knew inside he was glowing because I was so goddamn bad at being genuine when I was having so many good emotions, but for him, I’d push through anyway.

“No thanks necessary.”

“This room is… really fucking nice,” I told him, looking past him a minute to the truly Beast-sized furniture, all the soft lighting and nice paintings, and I guess really it looked like maybe a more grown up version of his apartment.

“Wouldn’t know. All I see is Logan fucking Prescott in a football uniform. I might have to pinch you to make sure this isn’t a dream.”

I smirked, blushing, because damn he had a way of making me feel so much bigger than I was. “Don’t think that’s how that works.”

“That’s okay. Pinching isn’t really what I had in mind anyway.”

“You gonna peel all this off me or what?” I asked him, gesturing down at myself, watching his eyes light up even more, and he grabbed the hem of my jersey, peeling it up, and I almost laughed, feeling kind of bad as he struggled to get it off over my pads, probably not exactly what he’d fantasized about, but it was pretty funny.

He finally got it off with some assistance, and he covered his eyes with his hand, shaking his head as he tossed it on the floor. “Are you seduced yet?” he laughed, and I nodded, grinning.

“Definitely getting there.”

The thing was, I wasn’t lying. Shit was just so comfortable with him, we could screw around a way I never really had with anyone else, even stupid awkward shit was fun, and when that jock/nerd division really came into play, like when he couldn’t learn a sport or take off a jersey without completely screwing it up and then laughing at himself anyway, it was like all my organs unclenched, it made everything feel the opposite of stressful.

It didn’t take long for the laughing to stop though, because he had a real thing for shoulder pads, and as I stood there, I could see his brain whirring behind his eyes as he checked out the straps, poked at different spots on the armor, traced his fingers down the sides of my compression shirt, dragged them along the waistband of my pants, and fucking hell, had I really let my ignorant fear of strangers staring keep me from seeing the starstruck expression on his face? Fuck me for real.

“These are different than your practice clothes,” he finally said, and I nodded.

“A little.” Not that anyone who hadn’t undressed me both ways would notice.

He slipped one finger under the underarm strap, and even that tiny brush of his hand made me hot. Those curious eyes, though, so hungry and so sweet at the same time, completely sold on me being the most interesting thing in the world, that feeling was so good I almost choked on it.

“How do you put all this on?” he asked me, tilting his head and looking closer. “By yourself?”

I laughed a little. “Yeah. It’s a struggle the first couple of times, but you get used to it quick. It’s easier to put on than it is to take off. But it’s still a pain in the ass. You put the jersey on the pads first,” I added, because I knew how hard he devoured extra explanations of things he didn’t understand, collecting more and more pieces until it finally clicked. “You know, like you’re dressing a mannequin or whatever. Then you just pull it all on like a shirt. You don’t ever really undress one piece at a time. Unless your boyfriend’s trying to fuck you.”

He looked up at me and grinned. “I appreciate you making an exception for me.”

“Any time.”

He ran his hands over me again and I started breathing harder, leaning back against the cold window glass to keep from overheating. I loved being touched like this, when he went into deep exploratory mode, teasing and stroking an inch at a time, like every tiny piece of me might have a different reaction— and he wasn’t actually wrong.

Finally, when he reached the bottom of my shirt, he shoved it up, tucking it tight under my pads and putting one of his huge hands in the middle of my chest, pinning me against the window. I inhaled a sharp breath when it chilled my back again, bare skin this time.

I heated right back up though, when he bent his head down and licked straight across my chest like I was a fucking ice cream cone, lapping at my sticky skin, all clammy and chalky with sweat, and Christ, he didn’t blink getting all up in there, was seriously, intensely into the jock shit, sucking my nipples and grabbing my pads, obsessing over me, and god he made me feel so goddamn desirable. Not just hot, like any idiot could see, but essential, and fuck, that was a good feeling when you’d spent your whole life feeling discarded. No guy had ever made me feel all big-emotions just by licking my pecs, but he wasn’t just any guy.

He slid his hand up the inside of my thigh, pulling another shaky breath out of me, and then instead of getting down on his knees like I expected, he stood up and took a few steps back, looking me over again like he was plotting his next move, rubbing his hand over his face.

“God, you were made to play football.”

It was just a simple sentence, just an easy compliment, but it hit hard somewhere it wasn’t meant to, and out of nowhere my eyes filled up and I blinked, airdropping tears on the rug as my throat pinched shut.

His expression crashed from awe to anxious, and he reached out to brush my cheeks dry with his thumbs, tilting my face up, my all time favorite move. “Hey. What is it? What’s wrong? Did I do something?”

I shook my head hard. “I need to…” I winced when my voice barely choked out sound. “I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “It’s okay. Take a breath.”

“I should have told you yesterday. I know I should have. But I didn’t think it was a big deal, or I didn’t think it… Fuck. It is though. It was. I don’t…”

“Take a breath,” he said again, firm and slow this time, wrapping his hands around my biceps and squeezing a little as he looked at me, and I did what he told me to, instantly feeling better, probably half from the breath and half from following orders. “Good boy,” he said, squeezing again. “You just tell me now, whatever it is, and when you do, I’ll listen and we’ll talk about it, and that’s gonna make it feel a lot less overwhelming, okay?”

I nodded, and that was literally so fucking obvious when he said it, I just didn’t know why it was so easy for him to convince me of things I couldn’t convince myself of.

“Now, show me how to take these shoulder pads off so I can fucking hug you for real.”

* * *

My hands were shaking and so were my lungs as I showed him how to undo the straps and helped him lift the pads up off me. He dropped them on the floor and wrapped his arms around me, and fuck, every time I underestimated how much affection could make any difference, I got burned so hard.

He grabbed me by the back of the head and pulled me up against his chest, which it seemed like I was into, because I snuggled right up there. “Poor baby.”

Yep, that did it for me too, pathetic or not. I didn’t get to be a poor baby, I got to be a suck it up and shut your goddamn mouth before somebody hears you. I liked poor baby a lot better, even if it felt like taking sympathy I didn’t deserve.

I nodded anyway, and for awhile I just breathed slower and slower while he rubbed the back of my head, rocking me, almost. It felt so goddamn good.

After a few minutes, he led me over to the couch, sitting down beside me and taking my hand, and we probably looked like a clip from some melodramatic soap opera, all serious discussion framed in front of a skyline window backdrop, and literally was anything ever going to feel real again?

He stroked my palm with his thumb, waiting me out, and finally my brain got its way, and I started talking.

“Coach T pulled me in his office yesterday after practice.”

It was a strong start, but a quick fumble as I tried to talk it through in my head and had no idea where to go next or how to explain this without actually seeming like a lying, spoiled fucking dumb ass.

“Okay. About what?” he asked, prodding me gently after a long silence.

“I put on weight. You probably noticed that. Everyone has, apparently,” I started again, just babbling, really, feeling like an idiot, like I should have kept my mouth shut, but it was too late now.

“You look amazing,” he told me, vicious almost, not really understanding the context because I wasn’t adding it.

“I know. I feel amazing. You fucking… fuck, you changed my whole life. Coach T wanted… The way I… I’m different now. With you. I’m better. And he thinks if I keep putting on weight and playing up and start taking all these extra practices… that I might get looked at. That I could play a different kind of ball, up my skills, get checked out by bigger schools. He thinks… I don’t know what he thinks,” I finished, sort of, still not able to bring myself to say go pro or anything like it because it was just too ridiculous.

“That seems… exciting?” Caleb said carefully, the way he did about anything football related, like not understanding the game might make him not understand other things. Not that I was helping by being entirely unclear.

I shook my head. He wasn’t wrong, but exciting wasn’t even making the top ten right now. It was still rage mostly, and denial, and I knew that was absurd, I wasn’t experiencing fucking grief here, but I couldn’t seem to get out from under the stages of it.

“But I don’t even… like what the fuck do I know about anything? I don’t even know how the fuck I’m going to show up at Donovan, how would I ever go to a bigger school? Or a bigger city? Like why would I want that much pressure?”

The words came rushing out, all the stuff I couldn’t say to Coach T or to Ellis or Walker or even myself. But Caleb was so fucking good at listening, at hearing and seeing and knowing me, and it felt so good just to not have all that inside me anymore, even if it splattered out in a tangled mess.

He nodded like he understood, but there was just no way that was possible. “Is that not what you want? Not the pressure part, but the football part?”

“No,.” I snapped, and then relented a little because I sounded like a dick. “I mean… when I was a kid, sure, but it was just never in the cards for real. Even Coach said that. But now… You changed shit so drastically for me that I… might get a do-over at the buzzer. If I take advantage of my new opportunities.” I spit the word out and it was bitter on my tongue, and clearly my shovel had hit bedrock.

“You deserve a do-over,” Caleb said simply, like he hadn’t even heard the last part. But I knew he had, he literally listened to every word I said, no matter how chaotic or asinine it was.

“I don’t though. I worked so hard and made a future happen. On my own. It took everything I had. All of it. And now I get offered a chance to level up without doing anything to earn it?”

“Hey.” He looked confused, but also a little angry. “You don’t have to earn good things. You’re allowed to have them just happen sometimes, just like they do to everybody else. You finally level the playing field a little and all your potential shines through? You deserve that. Everyone deserves that. But just so we’re clear, you have earned this. You’re the one who’s been on the field all these years. Putting in work when you didn’t have anything to give. Don’t ever say you didn’t earn this.”

I shrugged, all the praise heavy on my shoulders, but like a blanket instead of a burden. “It’s not like it even matters. I’m not looking to transfer. No way am I getting a D1 offer, that’s fucking dreamland.”

“You wouldn’t transfer if a better school gave you a better offer?”

“Why? So I…”

“So you what?”

“Football’s a way out, it’s not… a way forward. Like, it’s not my future.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it’s just not. I’m not that guy.”

“What does that mean? You don’t ever dream about the NFL? At all?”

“Like point zero zero zero percent of guys who play high school ball go to the NFL. I don’t dream like that. Those kinds of stats don’t happen to me.”

“But you’re good. Everyone knows that. Even I know that. Strangers in the bleachers know that. Coach Travis knows more about football than anybody else I can think of, and if he’s making a point to tell you that… I don’t think he’s lying to you.”

“I’m good for high school. Maybe college. But I’m not built for the long haul, I’m too much of a fuck up.”

“Hey.” One hand landed on my thigh, squeezing just a little and then a little more, a hot little warning that I felt all through me, made me feel safe in a way that made me wonder if that’s what warnings were supposed to make you feel.

“You know what I mean.”

“I know there’s no reason to think about yourself that way. You are not a fuck up, Logan. You just had so much damage in your life you could never get out from under it all. But look what you made happen, even with all that on your shoulders. Imagine what you’re actually capable of without so much weighing you down. It’s okay to let yourself think about that. It’s safe, I promise it is.”

I shook my head. “My imagination… it’s meant for dirty stuff, not five year plans. I’m not trying to be an asshole. Lucky breaks just aren’t for me. I can’t handle them.”

“It’s not a lucky break if you work hard for it. It’s you getting what you deserve for once. You are allowed to want things. I know that’s a struggle for you, I know it’s scary to say that stuff out loud. But I’m here. You don’t have to do it by yourself,” he told me, slamming right into another issue that made me nauseous.

“Okay, well, what if I do all this and it really works exactly how Coach T says it might. Some other school comes calling and wants me somewhere else. Wants me to transfer. To some other state or something.”

There was a long pause that almost killed me when I felt him thinking about it. “Well, that was always a possibility, right?” he finally asked, cautious again. “You’re an incredible athlete. With a football scholarship. I’m at least reasonably aware of what that could mean.” There was another long pause, and what I was really pointing out finally sank in. “You know I would go anywhere with you.” He looked at me with that curious tilt of his head, the way he did on the rare occasion he couldn’t seem to read my mind. “I mean… you know that. Right?”

A full on tidal wave of acid poured into my chest, equal parts guilt and relief swirling around making me lightheaded and sick. “You shouldn’t disrupt your life for me,” some voice said flatly, and it was mine, I guess.

He snorted. “Oh, fuck that. You think my life wouldn’t be disrupted if you suddenly weren’t in it every day? Not happening.” I opened my mouth to protest, and for once he steamrolled right over me without letting me talk. “Logan, listen. I’m lucky. I know that. I get to do what I want. And I just want to…” He shrugged. “Figure life out, you know? Experience things. All of it. I have no idea what I want to do, I just know I love learning and watching and….” He clenched and flexed his hands, and I’d never seen anyone so passionate about not knowing what they wanted. Like he was actually excited about having no direction. “I’m hungry for college, yeah. But Donovan is just a name on the side of a building, and I don’t care what that name is. I just want… I just want to absorb everything. But I can do that anywhere. Everywhere.”

“So, you… don’t know what you’re doing?”

He laughed. “No. Not really. But that’s okay. I know what’s important to me. And mostly that’s just finding out what makes me happy and making sure I have all those things in my life. But I’m not… I know it probably seems like I’m obsessed with lists and routines and all those kinds of things, and I am, but because it makes me feel good, not because I’m immovable. My parents…” I listened close because he rarely ever started a sentence that way, had plenty of his own baggage he didn’t unzip. “They never did anything but work,” he finally said, and I suspected there was bitterness there, but whatever he felt had been carefully removed from his voice. “Like hundred hour weeks every week, I’m not even kidding. They were hyperfocused, they never turned off. And they actually loved their jobs, I think. But they were so stressed out. And they fought constantly. With each other, with everybody. It was like they loved that too. And I was so…”

“Trapped,” I said, filling in the blank I hadn’t seen before, but it was so obvious now.

“Yeah. Exactly. And now I’m not. Now I’m out of that, and I just want to be happy. And you make me happy. Taking care of you makes me happy. I’m not bullshitting when I say that.” He leaned a little closer, made sure I was paying attention before he continued, making the words gentle and firm and clear. “And I fucking love you, you brat. Nothing as simple as college is going to keep me from spending every second I possibly can with you. You are mine. And you are going to have everything you want. Everything you deserve. We both are. And we’re going to do it together.”

I nodded, breathing harder at the way his eyes lit up when he used the word mine. This was everything I wanted to hear, it was just so hard to hear it.

“And you,” he added, dropping his voice into that low register that meant the conversation was far from over. “Are going to do some serious work on your communication skills. Because you sat on this and let it eat at you since yesterday instead of coming to me and talking it out. You need to stop making things harder on yourself. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m here to help you with. But you have to talk to me. Keeping things like this from me isn’t cool, okay?”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why didn’t we have this conversation last night? I asked you about practice, and you specifically left all that out.”

“I know,” I said again. “I just…” I shrugged and spread my hands out, making all the helpless gestures I could, but he wasn’t buying it.

“Well, think it over,” he said, not letting me off the hook. “You probably know at least some of why you didn’t, so let’s talk about it.”

I growled in my chest, irritated, but I spit out what I could, whatever my brain would let me. “It just seemed stupid. All of it. Like the whole idea… It’s ridiculous thinking I could… like, even if I could improve that much, I’m still behind. I’m still not… I don’t have… It’s easier to just take what I have and be grateful, you know? Instead of hyping myself up like a sucker and falling on my face. And I knew you’d tell me… all this. To try hard and I deserve things and I just don’t like hearing all that. It’s just all a waste of time, all this attention on me is a waste of time.”

“It is absolutely not,” he said firmly. “And pretending things aren’t happening doesn’t make them go away.” He paused, looking at me thoughtfully. “But I can understand why it’s easier for you to deal with things that way. That doesn’t make it okay, but I get why avoiding reality is your comfort zone. You can always talk to me, though. And I’m not going to stop encouraging you, but I’m capable of just listening if that’s all you need sometimes.”

I nodded.

“Do you need me to just listen?” he asked me softly, and I wasn’t expecting that, being invited up on a quiet stage after I’d just spilled my guts all over, and I thought I was empty, but I wasn’t.

“I’m so fucking scared,” I whispered, and I swear I was more surprised than he was when the words came out. “I’m so fucking scared to try to get something out of life and be legit. I just…” I rubbed at my eyes and Jesus, I was full on crying out of nowhere. “I know I’m going to look like an idiot. And a fraud. I don’t know why I’m like this. I know it’s stupid.”

He sat there a minute, his jaw getting tighter and tighter until I thought his molars might turn to dust in the back of his mouth, and finally he burst and reached out, grabbing my face and wiping my tears and then pulling me close until I was practically in his lap.

“I’m sorry, this is a total fail at the just listening thing, I promise I’ll do better,” he apologized, and I laughed through my sniffles. “But it’s not stupid. It’s a lot to ask for you to keep trying when it never made a difference before. And you get to decide how much work you’re willing to commit to, not anybody else. But don’t give up on yourself. If there’s a part of you that likes the idea of pushing yourself harder and going farther, I’m telling you it’s okay to try. It might hurt, and it might be hard and scary, but I’ll help you. I’ll make sure you get everything you need. Motivation, stability, discipline… You deserve everything, Logan. Whatever it is you want, I am with you. All in. Whatever that means, wherever that means. I’m Team Logan forever.”

Whatever the opposite of heartbreak is, I think it happened then. Broken pieces just sliding back into place, that premonition I’d had on the field actually happening, in the only other place I’d ever felt like I belonged, and I leaned against his shoulder, feeling some kind of peace.

“I want this,” I whispered into the sweater that had heard so many of my secrets, caught so many of my tears, and god, I didn’t know you could love a piece of clothing almost as much as you loved a person.

“Then you’re going to have it,” he promised, so harsh it sounded like he was swearing. “And I’m going to be with you every day, every step, to listen and help you and remind you how much you deserve it. Because that’s exactly where I want to be. Whether that means Donovan, or another school, or anywhere else you end up.” He pulled away and moved me directly into his sight line, making sure I saw how serious he was. “But there will be no more lying, young man. That includes keeping things from me you know you shouldn’t,” he stopped me, when I opened my mouth to plead my case. “When you’re going through something like this, when it’s twisting you up inside, that’s when you need to talk to me about it. No more hiding things. No more holding back because you think it isn’t important. I don’t care if you’re the MVP of the NFL, if I catch you keeping things from me, I will put you over my knee and spank you like a lying little boy.”

I swallowed, turned on in that full body, full head, not-a-turn-on-but-still-a-turn-on kind of way I loved more than anything. “Do you promise?”

He laughed a little, not in a mean way, but like it wasn’t even a question. “Do I promise? Yeah, I promise. You went without a Daddy for a long time, Logan, when you needed one so badly. But I’m here now, and I am not going to let you jeopardize everything you’ve worked for because you can’t stop being stubborn and get out of your own way. And you’re going to learn how serious I am about that right here and now.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As I stood in front of the giant sofa and he tugged me in between his legs by my belt loops, nothing about it seemed remotely real. It felt like a dream, a play, a game with sets and costumes, and honestly, I was okay with that for once, because a new reality was building in the back of my mind and I was cool with the rest of me being offline for the update.

But when he unsnapped my pants, tugged them down to my knees, pads and all, and I stood there in front of him in just my jock with my bare ass hanging out, things suddenly felt a lot more real.

He eyed my jock and looked up at me. “How comfortable is that?” he asked me, and I shrugged.

“It’s a jockstrap. As comfortable as a jockstrap.”

The look on his face had me sure I was about to get smacked, but he held back. “Are you going to be in pain if I pull you over my knee while you’re wearing that?”

The smart ass answer was right there, and any other time I would have grabbed for it, but this time I didn’t. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you say if it starts to hurt?”

“Red.”

He nodded. “Good boy.” He grabbed for my hands, holding them tight, looking at them a minute before he looked up at me. “I know things can be complicated. Rules aren’t always clear, and things change when you don’t expect it, but here’s something I promise will not change. It doesn’t matter how big you get or how big your life gets, you will never be too big for your Daddy to spank. I will always be here to make sure your life is under control.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so embarrassed, at least not this kind of embarrassment, the kind that made me feel hot and sticky and loved instead of dead and flat and empty. My whole body was burning, and I couldn’t even look at him, but I closed my eyes and saved the words for later. He said so many great things I wanted to play on repeat, and not all of them were filthy. Sometimes he just made me feel fucking special.

“Okay,” I managed to say, even though my throat was melted shut, and he tugged me forward, guiding me down over his lap, and thank god because football pants and pads tangled around your knees did not have a lot of give, and I’d have fallen on my face otherwise.

After all that gentle talk, he wasn’t especially gentle as he rearranged me on his lap, shoving my pants down a little more, spreading his legs to give me more room, pulling me close against him with his arm across my back, pinning me in place. I didn’t get a ton of punishment spankings, but when I did the vibe was a lot different. This was that vibe times ten.

It felt like I’d had an hour long lecture already, and maybe he felt that way too, because there wasn’t any more talking. His hand came down hard, and the loud, sharp sound of his palm on my bare ass filled the room up quick, getting right to the point.

He hadn’t left any marks on me the night before, but there was still an ache under my skin that came right up to the surface as he lit me up again, spanking so hard he grunted from the exertion, and I swear the whole fucking city must have heard it. I honestly didn’t care.

I’d always imagined getting punished in my uniform would be hot as hell— and it was. But this wasn’t how I’d imagined it, a very real, very serious spanking from my Daddy. I felt like I could channel every version of me who’d ever worn this uniform, from the obnoxious grade school bully to the potential stand up player with thirty more pounds of muscle and an official number on my back. It filled me with a puffed up aggressive kind of feeling I couldn’t really explain. Like somehow I was proud of being a grown ass man giving myself up to him, letting him discipline that part of me that was hurt and confused and didn’t know how to deal with the simplest things, even something as basic as facing reality.

The pain was sharp and the humiliation was sweet, and for a while, I just rode that, falling deep inside, and floating above, and living everywhere but the surface. But eventually, the barrier broke. It was too much mentally and physically to avoid, and I got louder, my whines too big for my throat. I reached out, grabbing at a pillow and shoving my face into it, and as soon as I had something soft to cry into, the tears came with the screams, frustrated at first, mad at everything that was unfair, mad at myself, mad at Coach T, mad at the past and the future, just mad.

I was shocked by how much it spiraled out, how much hurt and rage was still inside me kicking around when I’d thought I’d emptied it all. I took my fury out on the sofa and on Caleb, kicking like crazy and growling and screaming through my teeth and generally acting like the most obnoxious brat on the planet, the kind you just want to hold tighter and spank ten times harder, and that’s exactly what he did, trusting me to throw out a fucking safe word if I really didn’t want more, trusting me to take as much as I needed until I truly wore myself out, finally reaching a place where the kicking and squirming was more of a performance loop I was stuck in than anything else.

“Settle,” he told me firmly, giving me a few more hard spanks and then grabbing the back of my thighs and pinning my legs to the couch. I listened because I was still wearing my fucking cleats and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, and because I was completely wrung out in every way possible, and I just wanted to behave for him.

“Yes, Daddy,” I whispered, and fuck, that word broke me every time, just calling him that made me desperate to be good, made me so fucking hungry for that unconditional, domestic kind of love I used to mock with my whole chest because it hurt so much to think about. It still hurt, just in a different way, like hunger pains— something temporary that went away every time he filled me up with this kind of love.

This whole Daddy thing had ended up being a lot more than just the sex thing I’d originally thought it was, and so much more than just a protective, comforting thing. It was a fucking stability, safety, trust thing, and all his patient lessons teaching me how to be better and do better, I swear it felt like it was really recreating me sometimes, like it was patching up spots I’d always been lacking and leveling me up all through. No fucking way could I live without this now that I’d had it. But if I didn’t have to worry about that… maybe it was like Coach T said— there was a new version of me underneath who could have it all.

“Logan Prescott, listen to me,” he said, dipping his voice low down in that dangerous Daddy territory that said I’d better fucking listen. “I know it’s scary and uncomfortable, but it’s time to open yourself up to the idea that you’re bigger and better than you ever realized. You need to get ready to hear that. Because it’s true.”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t—”

“It’s true,” he repeated. “I think maybe it feels like you’re being overloaded with things right now because you’re starting to relax a little bit. You’ve got space to hear things and feel things a little more. And I understand it’s a lot. It’s perfectly reasonable that you’d be feeling a little raw and overwhelmed when so much is changing all at once. But you are so fucking strong. And you deserve every bit of happiness and success that comes your way. Hear me?”

That question was mostly rhetorical, just to make sure I was listening, but I did hear him. I felt every part of me opening up, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-quick, letting the words in. Maybe not believing, not completely, not yet, but willing to trust him enough to listen.

I nodded, turning my head and staring out the window, zoning in on the outrageous view and on his hand stroking my thigh, and this was reality, improbable as it was. I was pretty sure it was happiness, actually.

“Yes, Daddy.”

* * *

“How uncomfortable are you right now?” Caleb asked me, brushing his fingers through my hair, and I could hear the soft, lazy smile in his voice, the one he always got after he spanked me hard, a satisfied, job-well-done kind of high that I really liked. It was like a jock high, to be real, and I’d tell him that one day, that spanking was his sport, as soon as I could make sentences again.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, shifting around on his lap, legs still trapped in my pants, my cup pressed against his thigh, my undershirt shoved halfway up my back and stuck to me with sweat.

“That can not be true.”

“Okay, okay, maybe not fine,” I said, throwing my hand back to cover my ass, and he laughed. “I’d feel better with a dick in me, honestly,” I told him, and he laughed again.

“Seriously? After all that?”

“Especially after all that. Don’t act like you’re not hard as fuck. I know it was a real punishment, but that was hot as hell.”

“You are unbelievable,” he told me, and I rolled over on my back, grinning up at him. That was a mistake, my ass was absolutely on fire, I almost choked on the pain now that the euphoria was fading. But it was a mistake I’d make again a thousand times to catch him looking at me that way, almost dreamy with love that I felt so much.

“Thank you,” I said, and it was meant to be a joke, but it ended up meaning so much more when the words actually came out.

He stroked my cheek with his thumb, and then my lips, had so much incredible real estate to put his eyes on, but he just kept them on my face. “Thank you,” he finally said. “I know that was a lot. I know it’s still a lot. But thank you for trusting me to carry it with you. I promise everything will work out.”

I believed that, completely, just one hundred percent trust, and it was such a big feeling welling up inside me, making me feel so whole I was afraid I might cry again, so I dodged it, because I’d cried enough for one night, seriously. As good as it felt, that wasn’t what fucking hotel rooms were for.

“So, where are we at with that dick in me situation?”

He snorted and patted me on the cheek. “I think I can help you out with that.”

Carefully, he untangled himself from me, and then went across the room to unzip the suitcase I hadn’t even noticed. I got up too, kicking off my cleats, pulling off my undershirt and shaking my arms out, letting my pants drop and getting rid of those too, stretching my legs as I strutted over to the window in just my jock, letting him enjoy both views at once. My ass throbbed, molten lava hot, I was probably glowing brighter than the city lights of Westchester, and fucking good for me. I earned it.

“That’s yours,” he said quietly, coming back to the window, and as I felt his naked body behind me, warm and hard, fucking heaven when he pressed up against me, I was thinking The Beast had some exhibitionist in him for real, just like I did.

“What is?” I asked him, hissing when he grabbed my ass and squeezed, and I turned my head, blinking up at him through my red eyes.

“All of it,” he said, nodding out the window. “The whole world. It all belongs to you. Whatever you want out there, it’s yours. I’ll make sure of it.”

“What I want is in here,” I told him, and he smiled.

“Me too.” He slid his arms around me, turning me to face him and he kissed my forehead, then moved on to my eyelids, and then my cheeks, tasting my tears, wiping it all away before he got to my mouth, kissing me so long and hard it left me breathless. Now that was what hotel rooms were for.

“Sorry I screwed up your whole uniform fantasy,” I murmured, and he laughed, pulling back to look at me.

“Who said that?” he asked, spinning me back around, pushing me up against the window and spreading my cheeks as he rubbed his finger over my hole. I gasped, pressing my palms flat against the glass, arching my back and sticking my ass out, making sure he knew as fast as possible that wow, I was fucking on board with this. “A jock’s part of your uniform, right?” he asked, like he was just making conversation as he slapped a finger full of lube over me, and I moaned, coming apart right in front of the whole world.

“Right,” I managed to say, and he snapped the straps of my jock against my ass, my whimpers echoing through the room as the pain sliced across my cheeks, fresh and red and fuck did I not want to be the guy that came from having his jock snapped, but there were definitely worse things. Like having my dick still trapped in my cup instead of in his hand.

When his finger slid up inside me, nice and easy like nothing at all, I had no complaints, and when he added another, started pumping hard, I didn’t have any words at all, just grunts and groans as I held myself against the window, waiting for his dick to join the party.

It didn’t take long.

He pulled his fingers back and a minute later he was lined up against me, spreading me and teasing my rim with the tip of his cock, just kissing up against me and pulling away until I would have been sobbing if I’d had any tears left.

“You’re the fantasy, Logan,” he whispered, kissing my neck, tickling my ear, bending me forward just a little more. “The uniform is just a sexy as fuck bonus. It’s always been you.”

He slid in, slow and easy, filling me up until I was sure there was no more, and then thrusting just a little harder, like this position fed me his whole length in a way nothing else ever quite had. I was so full of him, so owned, and he jerked his hips, slamming into me that possessive way I loved, kissing my back and my neck, pinching my nipples, and finally reaching into my jock, wrapping his hand around me and giving my dick a warm, firm squeeze, and I whimpered, feeling precum spill all down his hand as I shuddered.

I just wasn’t as good at the sweet dirty talk, or at talking at all when I was getting fucked, but I managed to knock out a few thousand fuck pleases and don’t stops to show my appreciation for his perfect dick, rocking back into him and taking every inch as hard as I could until my legs were shaking so hard I had a real fear of collapsing.

“I know you’re close,” he whispered. “So, let’s get it just right. You tell me what feels best. You like it like this…” He shifted slightly. “Or like this…”

“This. Fuck. That. Don’t stop, just like that.” Whatever he was doing, it was exactly right, he was all up in my guts in the best way, filling me up so completely, and he grabbed my wrists and pinned my hands to the glass, holding me steady while he kept me angled just like that and fucked.

I stared out the window, seeing everything and nothing as all my opportunities and options and future paths swirled through me, pain and promises and so much I couldn’t even dream up yet. All mine, all his, all ours. I came hard in his hand, exploding at the same time he groaned my name, sucking hard on my neck as he unloaded inside me, and no dream in the world could take me higher than this reality.

It turned out getting everything I wanted didn’t feel so bad at all.

EPILOGUE

“Like this? Or thicker?” I held out a slice of zucchini and showed Caleb the edge. I really had no idea how thick half an inch was. I thought in yards.

He looked over from filling the pasta water, turning off the faucet and lifting the pot onto the stove while I watched his forearms. He pushed his sleeves up just to torture me, I knew he did. I loved that smooth wiry muscle leading up to his elbow that popped out when he lifted something heavy— like me. When he gripped me hard and held me down, the force came from that spot. I loved that spot.

“Yeah, that’s good,” he told me, brushing my shoulder with his as he leaned in to kiss the side of my head. “Perfect.”

I scoffed and he kissed the same spot, lingering a little longer, his lips and his breath soft on my ear.

“It doesn’t have to be exact. As long as they’re mostly the same size. So they cook evenly.”

“If they don’t have to be exact, how can they be perfect?”

“Because you’re perfect.”

I scoffed again, rolling my eyes, but kept cutting them into slices with my so-so knife skills. I liked vegetables, and I liked cooking, but I wasn’t well trained in either. That was clearly going to change though, with a whole fridge full of green things and a spreadsheet of proteins and portions and mealtimes stuck to the front with a bunch of alphabet magnets. Coach T wasn’t messing around when he loaded me up with a whole folder full of paperwork to go with my new practice schedule, and Caleb latched onto that thing like it was a fucking bible. Honestly, that was the best thing I could have asked for, because no way could I have figured out how to do all this shit myself.

But why would I even want to?

I watched Caleb move my zucchini slices from the cutting board to the cookie tray and line them up in neat rows before he did the drizzly olive oil part. Extremely neat fucking rows, and I stopped chopping to watch him be all anal with the spacing, same way he was with note cards, same way he was with everything. I didn’t know what the hell it was about that kind of shit that did it for me, but it really did.

“Draw a Nineback,” I told him, and he glanced over at me and then back at the pan, twisting his pouty mouth, not looking so confident anymore.

“Nineback…” he muttered, looking down at his neat, straight rows of vegetables and then shoving them all off to the side, plucking out one and then another. “Okay, this is Walker,” he said, putting the green chunk down in the middle of the tray, always his opening move. “Nineback,” he said again, under his breath. “Is that the criss-cross thing?” he asked me, looking up helplessly, and I shook my head.

“Nope. That’s the Backbreaker.” I stepped behind him, reaching my arms under his and wrapping them around him, building a line out of little green slices while he watched my hands, grunting when he recognized what I was doing.

“Why would you name them such similar things?” he complained. “And why do they all sound like wrestling moves?”

“What do you know about wrestling moves?” I asked him, pressing a little closer, making sure he felt my dick up against his hip as I dropped the rest of the pieces into place on the pan.

“More than you’d think,” he told me, growling and spinning and diving for my neck as he grabbed my ass, practically tossing me the couple of steps onto the kitchen table. The extra pounds I was packing on didn’t slow him down at all, but the table made a lot of noise skidding against the floor when it moved.

It surprised me so much I laughed out loud and groaned at the same time when I landed hard. I’d spent most of the weekend bent over for one reason or another, and I felt it. I squirmed around, getting comfortable on the edge, as he crowded in between my legs, grabbing the whole fucking table and yanking it back into place, bringing me with it, and damn.

I swallowed hard, my breath getting caught in my throat when he braced his hands on both sides of me and leaned in close. “You’re gonna break your fucking furniture,” I told him.

“Fuck the furniture,” he murmured, kissing the side of my neck deep and slow and hard enough to leave a bruise, claiming me. I tilted back and begged for more, nodding and agreeing.

He ran his hands up the sides of my thighs, then back around to grab my ass, and I whined, leaning forward into his chest, not getting enough of what I wanted sitting on the table.

“How sore are you?” he asked, letting his fingertips over me, my thighs, my arms, and then back down my sides where he knew every inch, every scrape and scratch, every knot that got so tight my eyes watered when he dug his thumb into the muscle.

“So sore,” I told him, fresh off a long painful lesson about telling the truth and I was pretty on board now that things were clearer. No lie, things were always clearer when my ass was aching.

“Must be all the extra practice.”

“Must be,” I agreed, leaning back on my hands, flattening my palms on the tabletop and wrapping my legs around him, pulling him closer.

He ran his thumb over my chin, made a scratching sound against the stubble I’d been too tired to shave the last few mornings, and then tilted my head the way he wanted it to kiss me softly.

“If I’m doing extra practice, you should too,” I told him.

He looked back at the zucchini we’d left scattered on the tray. “You want me to study football plays?”

“Nah. You can just study me.” I squeezed him tighter with my thighs, feeling the ache of all the extra reps on the leg press, and I knew he felt it too.

“My favorite subject,” he told me.

I shook my head. “Corny.”

“True though.”

“Wanna put a pause on dinner?” I asked, glancing past him toward the bedroom. “Just a little short break.”

“I believe that’s called halftime.”

I snorted when he pretended to school me, always willing to go for the dopey joke to make me laugh. “What we’re looking for here is something called scoring position.”

“And I’m the corny one?” he demanded, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re the only one,” I said, reaching out to touch his face, smiling when he kissed my hand. “You’re everything.”

He leaned in and slid his hands under me, grabbing my ass and lifting me like I didn’t weigh a thing, and that was never going to get old. I was never going to get tired of a damn thing.

“Right back at you, Prescott.”

_____

AFTERWORD

Thanks so much for indulging in Logan and Caleb’s epic romance. We’ll see these guys again in the future, but first, more Maddox Sharks will be getting their HEAs. You won’t want to miss what happens next!

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MISHA HORNE

SEXY, SNARKY, SPANKY MM ROMANCE

Misha Horne is an over-caffeinated, antisocial author who loves staying inside, never answering the phone, and forgetting the entire world exists while they write.

Misha writes about kinky, complicated guys who overthink everything, make lots of bad decisions anyway, and fall in love in spite of themselves— because that’s the kind of representation they want to see in romance. (And it’s pretty much the only stuff they know anything about lol.)

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