Page 7

If only I didn’t love this sport so much. If only I didn’t give a full-blown shit about my team. So, I swallow my pride and do what the tyrannical prick says, change into my New Balances, and get my ass on the track.

I can’t run for shit with my phone on me, and my Bluetooth buds won’t work between my locker and the track, so the only thing I have keeping my mind company is my own grating inner voice. While I sweat my weight out and kill my calves on the packed dirt, I’m cursing McDonough’s life over and over and the lives of my so-called teammates who whistle at me as I loop the field, chanting “Run, Rowan, Run!” and “Faster, faster, faster!” Dumbfucks.

I run for an hour and then some, until my legs give out, and I scrape my knees and the heels of my hands on the dirt. My clothes are soaked through. My head is killing me under the high sun. What does McDonough do? Walks me over a plastic bottle of room temp water, then tells me to move my ass.

“Screw you,” I mutter, because I literally cannot keep it back to save my life.

“When’s the next party?”

I flip him off, grab the bottle and start on running again. I might feel half-dead, but I’m not dead yet. If Coach wants the death of a twenty-two-year-old on his hands, he’s going to have to wait a while longer.

What’s really unfair is that I didn’t even want to go to that party. When Levi and Raisel rolled up to my place, they said we were just going to play Madden at Zeke’s apartment. They didn’t mention the thirty odd other people who would be there acting foolish.

My lungs are burning to crisps, and for what? So I could drink trash beer around trash people and get a trash blowie from… What’s her name again? Anna-Maria? Margarita? I don’t know or care. I didn’t even want her on my dick at all, but she made a big show of fangirling all over me and not taking no for an answer. It started looking weird that I wasn’t jumping on the sure thing.

If I hadn’t downed three beers out of boredom alone, I probably could’ve come up with some excuse to stiff arm her, but I took the path of least resistance instead. Let her take me into a walk-in closet and fuck around with my dick while I imagined she was someone completely different.

All I wanted to do was play Madden, and now my muscles feel as battered as my face looks. Tommy really knows how to lay into a punch, that’s for sure. Not surprising given the mass of the dude. The Tommy Mathison who used to play against my team in high school was one step up from scrawny. I’ve noticed him around campus from time to time, and noticed his gains, but it’s different when he’s bumping those hard muscles into me with a purpose.

As big as he is, he’s good on his feet, and he’s fast in quick bursts. If he wasn’t so caught up hounding my ass, he might have been able to put those muscles to good use. Instead, I kicked his ass, and he settled for decking me in the face.

Got to admit, the fire in his eyes nearly got to me. If I thought his muscles weren’t all for show, I probably wouldn’t have ribbed him so bad. I assumed he was just there to play. Thought he wanted a challenge, and I was down to provide. I didn’t realize until it was too late that he was there to literally beat my ass.

No matter why Tommy came to McKinley last night, he played, and he played like it was his lifeblood, distracted or not.He’s rough, no doubt, but he’s better than most of our second stringers. Or he could be, if he evened out that gym rat bod and tempered his anger to a manageable simmer.

Coach’s whistle blows, and it wakes me from my plotting. He hollers at me to quit running, and he doesn’t have to tell me twice. I make it half a step onto the grass before I collapse onto my back. Starfished and heaving so hard I could puke, I stare up at the clear blue sky and wonder if Tommy really hates my guts now. He never seemed to be my biggest fan as teenagers, but sticking my dick in his girl’s mouth might have put me on his permanent shit list.

“Fuck!” I squirm away from the sudden downpour of water sluicing across my bruised face. I shield myself with my hands until it quits, then I swipe the water from my eyes to find Coach standing over me with an empty water bottle in his hand.

“Just making sure you’re still kicking,” he says.

“I’m gonna kick you!”

He chuckles at that. A fucking sadist in the body of an obscenely buff sixty-year-old. Man looks like an aging gay porn star, like he should be bottoming for hung twinks in his office between practices. The thought gives me shivers, and not the good kind. He crouches down next to me with his knees spread wide and his shorts stretched to the limit over whatever he’s got packing. I have to force myself not to look. I’m only human, designed to be curious, but the consequence of sating mycuriosity might just make me ill. It’s McDonough, after all.

“Seriously, you okay?” he asks.

Forcing my eyes above his dick print, I notice his whistle isn’t around his neck anymore. Coach-mode over.

“Peachy.”

“You get the shiner checked out?”

I scoff. “It’s a shiner. What’s there to check out?”

“You know, if you’d have shown up to a match like this, I’d have benched you.”

“I didn’t know the chick had a boyfriend! A boyfriend built like Thor, no less.”

“I’ll tell you what I tell my kids. Make better choices, and I won’t have to humiliate you in front of your friends.”

“Father of the year,” I mutter, but I take Coach’s hand when he offers it. Mostly because I’m not sure I can get up on my own even if I tried.

My trip back to the locker room is slow and limping. Each step feels like sticking my foot into a wood chipper, and I need a Gatorade out of the team fridge like I need air to breathe. I swear, the first sip of Cherry Gatorade fresh out of the door hits like an instant dopamine high. I need a shower, but our backup goalie, Malik, just came back from there with a towel around his waist, and I zero in on him.

“Yo.” I nod to him, making sure he knows I’m talking to him. “You went to Johnson, right?”

The fear flashing across his face is both comical and annoying. My tone wasn’t harsh, I’m just impatient, but Malik straightens up like I caught him texting during a huddle.