Heart in the Game, page 1
Heart in the Game
A Game Day College Football Romance
Lily Cahill
Nameless Shameless Women
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Nameless Shameless Women, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Contents
1. CHAPTER ONE
2. CHAPTER TWO
3. CHAPTER THREE
4. CHAPTER FOUR
5. CHAPTER FIVE
6. CHAPTER SIX
7. CHAPTER SEVEN
8. CHAPTER EIGHT
9. CHAPTER NINE
10. CHAPTER TEN
11. CHAPTER ELEVEN
12. CHAPTER TWELVE
13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
14. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
17. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
18. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
19. CHAPTER NINETEEN
20. CHAPTER TWENTY
21. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
22. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
23. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
24. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
26. CHAPTER ONE
27. CHAPTER TWO
More By This Author
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Megan
I nudge my way through a mass of bodies, yelling over the noise to Chloe. “Why did I let you talk me into coming here?”
“Because if I didn’t talk you into going places, you’d never leave the apartment,” Chloe yells back over her shoulder. She grabs my arm and pulls me through the throng, bodies bump into me without looking to see what they’re hitting or apologize.
The party thrums with bass-heavy pop music streaming through the speakers, some unknowable female voice. Over the music, the chant “CHUG IT, CHUG IT” bellows in beat. I look over toward the commotion to see Dwayne Sheehan pouring Jack Daniel’s into a beer bong. Reggie Davis is on the other end of the bong, drinking down the whiskey like it’s water. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. It irritates me that someone so cute is also so dumb—such a waste of all that hotness.
The whiskey drains from the bong in record speed, and my stomach churns watching Reggie and Dwayne. Even if they’re both well over six feet tall and packing two hundred and fifty pounds, the idea of that much liquor just doesn’t seem possible. The bottle empties out, and Reggie flings the defeated bong across the room—flexing his arms and high-fiving everyone within arm’s reach. Why Reggie Davis feels the need to draw all eyes to him, when his looks alone will do that, is beyond me.
I force my eyes back to Chloe. I don’t want to lose her in this crowd, she’s my lifeline of sanity in the midst of crazy.
We make it out to the backyard, where the air is cooler and the kegs are set up on the deck. The house is big for Granite, Colorado, a college town where tiny bungalows and rickety Victorians dominate. In this part of town, the wear and tear of college students on these old homes makes most of them seem like they should be condemned. But even with its unusually large size, the party easily fills this house to bursting.
I breathe in deep, letting my lungs fill back with air. “How can anyone breathe in there?”
“Like this.” Chloe takes a deep breath and lets it out with a smile and a wave of her hand as she walks backward, like a school tour guide, so she can face me while still angling us toward the kegs.“It’s got to be easier than breathing on the top of one of those fourteen thousand foot mountains you love so much,” she chides.
Mountains are one of the best things about Colorado. You can climb to the summit of one and feel like you’re on top of the world. “Thinner air, more space,” I say back, even though her comment was rhetorical.
Expertly, she holds two cups in one hand and tilts them to the tap, letting the beer flow. Frothy yellow liquid fills up the red plastic cups, and even I have to admit it looks good. Cold and refreshing.
“One beer,” I say, taking the cup from Chloe.
“We’ll start with one and see where the night takes us.” She has a devilish smirk on her face. The smirk makes her right eyebrow raise and makes me bite the inside of my cheek. That smirk always seems to get us into trouble.
“Do you have ulterior motives for the evening?” I gulp down a sip of beer, afraid of her answer.
“Who, me?” She puts her free hand to her chest and drops her mouth open in mock surprise. “I would never.” Her eyes float past me as she sips her beer, scanning the deck for something she hasn’t quite divulged to me yet.
She leans in close as she decides to confide her secret. “Okay, I’ll admit it. I heard that Jake was going to be here, and I didn’t think you’d come if I told you.” Her voice goes up an octave. “Please don’t be mad.”
My lips twist into a scowl, and I have to press them together not to spit out something hateful.
“He’s not all bad,” Chloe says quickly, speaking over me. “You just haven’t seen his good side.”
“I’m not judging.” I’m totally judging. And she’s right, I definitely would not have agreed to come if I had known that we were going to a football party just so she could hang all over her cheating bastard of an ex-boyfriend.
Her eyes suddenly dart beyond me, and her body straightens. “He’s here.” She wrenches my arm as I turn to look and hisses, “Don’t look.”
Chloe shakes her fingers through her hair, trying to amplify the bounce of her curls. “How do I look?”
“Like you’re too good for him.”
She gives me a sideways glance. “I thought you said you weren’t judging.”
“Okay. You look smoking hot and too good for any guy at this party.”
“Thanks, babe.” She slaps my ass as she skips across the deck, leaving me solo by the keg.
I stare into my beer cup. The bubbles have deflated and it looks less appealing to me now that I’m drinking alone. I discreetly check my watch, wondering how long I have to stay. Would it make me a bad wingman if I just leave?
In all fairness, she led me here under false pretenses, just so she didn’t have to walk into the party alone. But now I’m going to be the one who’s alone for the rest of the night, standing awkwardly on the outskirts of the party and pretending someone is texting me so I look busy and not pathetic.
No, screw this. My wingman duties officially ended when Chloe flew off on a solo mission.
I take a deep breath as I mentally prepare myself to fight back through the house and out the front door, when a cluster of huge football players—Reggie Davis, Riley Brulotte, Weston Sawyer, Dean Cabrera, and Dwayne Sheehan—fly out the door I was headed in and crowd around the keg. West looks on in amusement as the other three fill up glass boots that look like they could hold a gallon of beer.
I try to edge around them, but feel the mass of one bump me into the railing that surrounds the porch. Reggie Davis turns, his dreadlocks swinging behind him as he catches the side of my arm. My heart stops as his firm fingers wrap around my arm. He feels so strong, and he’s barely touching me.
“Sorry,” he starts, but then his glassy amber eyes snap into focus. “Hey … I know you.”
Reggie should know me. All of the football players should know me, since I’m one of their student sports therapists. We’re on the sidelines with them every week, but it feels like we fade into the background, as noticeable as one of the towels they wipe their faces with.
I like the anonymity, honestly. We get our jobs done and don’t get involved with them. If Chloe hadn’t insisted on coming to this party, I wouldn’t have had to see the players chugging alcohol like it was Gatorade. I wouldn’t have to look at them at tomorrow’s practice and wonder if they’re moving sluggishly because they’re hungover. If one of them gets injured on a sloppy play, I won’t be able to stop myself from judging, and it’s best not to judge. It’s easier to live by the Hippocratic Oath that way. And like Chloe pointed out earlier, you’re less likely to judge if you don’t see someone’s bad side.
Reggie wavers a little on his feet. It looks like the Jack Daniel’s and gallon of beer are working their particular brand of magic on him.
He puts his arm on the banister behind me, stabilizing himself. But the move shifts him so close to me, I can smell the booze on his breath, feel it against my skin.
By all rights I should be grossed out, but Reggie Davis has a bizarre effect on me. Well, I guess it’s not bizarre if half the girls in the school feel the same way.
“No, you don’t know me,” I say, trying to push past him.
“You’re the hot sports therapy girl.” He carefully enunciates each syllable, looking like he's proud he got the whole phrase out.
I freeze, heat creeping up my cheeks. Did he just call me hot? I glance behind me, thinking he might be talking about someone else, and realize my back is right up against the railing. There is no one behind me.
I don’t think Reggie Davis and I have ever spoken before. He’s never fallen to me in rotation. He’s clearly drunk, but he’s staring at me with such intensity that I wouldn’t know he was intoxicated if he didn’t smell like a still. I try to duck away, but his massive frame makes me feel trapped. He is a mountain, and the only way around him is climbing over. And that is not going to happen.
“When’s the library
“Huh?”
Reggie fingers a button on my cardigan, the tough pad of his finger grazing against the skin of my clavicle. His warmth in the cool night air sends a shiver down my spine and I swallow hard—trying to look unaffected by his touch.
“The sweater. You look like a hot librarian instead of a hot sports therapist.” He slurs on the word librarian, and I wince at the comment. Why does he keep calling me hot? I suddenly feel hot, flushing in the cool night air.
Being a student therapist isn’t exactly the same thing as being someone’s doctor, but there’s still a line of professionalism that Reggie is clearly crossing. “I was just leaving,” I say, trying again to duck my way around him.
“No, wait.” His eyebrows knit together and he looks genuinely disappointed. The alcohol must be making him feel more sentimental than he would be sober. “I can get us good stuff. Not this crap.” He indicates his beer and sloshes a wave of amber liquid over the side of the glass. “Whatever you want, vanilla vodka, peach schnapps, hard lemonade. I can get it. I’m kind of a big deal here.”
“Is that what you're drinking?” I don’t know why I challenged him. I should have just said no thank you and left, but something about the way he laughs makes me want to do it again.
"You want some of this?" He swings the beer in my direction, and I have to scoot closer to him to avoid the splash zone. With his eyes on mine, he takes a big sip from his glass, smiling around the rim.
He hands the giant glass to me. It's heavy and slick, and I have to use two hands to hold it. I take a sip, uncomfortably aware that my lips are touching something that his lips have touched. Then I set it on the rail, purposely out of his reach.
I shouldn't care whether Reggie drinks himself into a stupor. But I keep envisioning him on the football field the next day for a practice scrimmage, going up against non-hungover players and getting injured. After the rape scandal that gutted the team last year, the program can't afford to have any players out of commission. I don't want to see Reggie hurt, even if he is being an ass.
A completely hot ass, I think as he smiles at me again.
“Hey,” he says suddenly, pulling away from me a little. “Can I show you something?”
What could Reggie Davis possibly want to show me? I don’t have time to protest, because Reggie is pulling his shirt up. “I have this really nasty bruise.”
For a moment, my eyes snag on his washboard abs. Then I notice the purple marring his dark skin around his hip. "Did this happen the other day when you got sacked in practice?"
"I think so," he says, stumbling a little as he looks down at his own stomach. "You've been paying attention to my plays?"
"It's my job," I say with a roll of my eyes. Reggie is a flamboyant and talented player, of course I watch him.
"So, you are the hot sports therapy girl!"
He points at me, eyebrows up. I have to actively push down the sides of my mouth to keep my smiling. "How much pain is this causing you?"
"No pain, no gain."
"Don't be an idiot." The light isn't great, and I find myself bending in to see better. I run my fingers over his sculpted oblique muscles, checking for tenderness.
He sucks in a breath, but doesn't wince. When I look up at him, there's something intense in his eyes, but it doesn't look like pain.
The sound of the party swirling around us fades. I suddenly realize that my hand is on his naked stomach, and I'm pinned between him and the rail. His muscular arms are giving me plenty of room, but I can practically feel the heat of his body. The tip of his tongue appears between his generous lips, as if he's wetting them in anticipation of kissing me.
"It goes all the way down to my thigh," he says, his voice deeper than usual. "Do you want to see?"
I’ve touched a lot of athletes in places that would normally make me blush. These guys are all in peak condition, but I've never been distracted by a player's physique during an examination.
But that’s on the field, in the therapy room … not on a porch in the middle of a party. Suddenly, my fingers want to explore his abdomen, but not checking for injuries. Reggie's body is a work of art, and its gorgeous contours deserve to be touched.
Without my permission, my hand slips down his flank. Reggie's head tips forward, his dreadlocks swinging over his shoulder. He hooks one hand in the waistband of his shorts, sliding them down on one side.
Riley Brulotte swoops in out of nowhere and grabs Reggie by the arm. “Whoa, Reg,” Riley laughs, but it sounds false. “Nobody wants to see that."
He hooks one large arm around Reggie’s shoulders and practically drags him away.
“Hey, Megan, are you okay?” Weston Sawyer, the quarterback, touches my arm.
“Yeah, sure. I’m fine.” I'm surprised he knows my name, but West seems like the sort of person who makes a point of remembering names.
“He wasn’t being too aggressive, was he?”
“No,” I force a laugh, like I’m totally casual, and try hard not to blush, which is next to impossible. "It's cool."
“It’s totally not cool,” West says, very sincere. “We do not tolerate sexual harassment.”
“West, it’s fine." Whatever had just happened between Reggie made me feel weird, but not because I didn't like it.
Because I did.
And Reggie probably won't even remember it in the morning. "He was just asking me about an injury. It's cool, West. No problems here."
"If you start to feel differently, let someone know, okay?" West says with his worried smile.
"Will do," I say, giving him a weird little salute that immediately makes me feel like an idiot.
When he goes after his teammates, I'm left standing alone by the rail again. I look around for Chloe. When I spot her making out with Jake, I know it's time for me to go. I send her a quick text reminding her to get an STI test if she sleeps with his cheating ass. That's when I notice that Reggie’s boot glass is still sitting on the rail beside me. I pick it up and look closer, realizing that his name and jersey number are etched into the glass.
I bite my lip. He’ll want this back. If I leave it here, one of these frat guys will probably claim it for his own drinking stein. With a sigh, I dump the remaining beer into the grass and tuck it under my arm.
Another great party in the books. If I hurry, I can make it home in time to watch a couple of episodes of that travel show with Zach Ephron. With that in mind, I duck through the crowd, protecting Reggie's beer glass by holding it close to my body until I'm out on the street and walking home.
He probably won’t even remember talking to me. Or telling me I’m hot. I’m no troll, but someone like Reggie Davis probably wouldn’t look twice at a girl like me if he wasn’t black-out drunk.
The image of Reggie’s partially naked torso creeps into my mind. His finger hooked into his shorts, the edge of his hip bone exposed. If I let my mind go, I can imagine him taking those shorts the rest of the way down … or better yet, doing it for him. My pale hands on his dark skin, feeling the contours of all those thick, hard muscles—
I blink, realizing that I've made it all the way back to Peak Towers, the off-campus apartment complex where Chloe and I live, on autopilot. I shake my head at my own foolishness as I let myself into our place. I don’t want to be attracted to Reggie Davis. He’s an arrogant, boozy party animal who doesn’t care about anything but playing center for the Mountain State Mustangs. Totally not what I’m looking for in a guy.
Not that I’m even looking for a guy.
It’s just that he’s so damn hot, with that hard, muscled body and warm amber eyes and amazing smile.
Whatever. It doesn't matter. Reggie was probably too drunk to know what he was doing. If I pretend it never happened, he'll probably forget about it completely.
Satisfied with my plan, I wash the beery boot-shaped glass in the sink and curl up with Netflix on my laptop.
I fall asleep watching Zach Ephron swimming in the Caribbean. But it's Reggie's body that flashes in my mind the second before I fall asleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Reggie
The pounding on my door wakes me up. The harsh sunlight streaming through my window makes my head throb. My shirt sticks to my body through a layer of sweat that smells like the alcohol I drank the night before.
