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Page 24 of Call the Shots (For The Arena #1)

JUNE

LIKE-LIKE

My new role with the Gladiators was making sure Montoya didn’t have a concussion.

In his bedroom, I bundled him up in blankets and we listened to a TV show because he wasn’t supposed to watch the screen.

He was given an all-clear from the clinic on campus, but his teammates called him Kid’s Toy for a reason.

He was so young. It worried me how easily he could get hurt.

I nudged him. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Eleven.” He grinned. “Two.”

“Eleventy-two sounds like a concussion to me.”

He laughed while I weaseled from our nest to fill up his water bottle. In the kitchen, my phone buzzed.

There was a notification.

Todd Vernon tagged in post:

THE GOOD OLD DAYS!!! LEELEE’S FIRST BIRTHDAY!!!

Huh. Quickly, I screenshot the notification and screwed the lid back on Montoya’s water bottle before I clicked to see what I was working with. Who was Leelee? Why was this the first thing on Vernon’s social media in a while?

It was gone.

I stared and went back to my alerts but that vanished too. Did I imagine that? Was I the one with the concussion? Nope, the screenshot was in my pictures.

Then…what happened to the post?

“Did he untag himself?” I realized.

Who the hell is Leelee?

A knock on the door stopped me from investigating further. No doubt, the visitor would be for Montoya. Denali, Fridge, Nick, and Sully already stopped by to check on him. Thinking about the mystery of Leelee, I opened the door and held back another sigh.

Bear.

He rested his arm on the wall, a boyish grin on his face. “Hey, killer.”

“What do you want?” I asked suspiciously.

“I didn’t come to fight. I came to see Montoya.”

Oh. I didn’t expect that. When he disregarded Montoya’s safety, that pissed me off, but maybe I jumped to conclusions. I relaxed my stance. “He’s in his room. I think he’s okay, but I don’t know. Montoya’s so…” I dropped my voice. “I don’t want to see him hurt. And I got this weird notification?—”

“I also came to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I want to stop playing games.”

“Bear…” I warned.

“You want to fuck, I want to fuck. The answer’s obvious. Let’s break the beds.” Bear dipped a little lower, his warm brown eyes trailing down my face. “If you want to do it on the rug, I’ll gladly take the rug burn. Scratch me, bite me, mark me?—”

My heart thudded, but I pushed past that. “Did you come to see if your teammate’s okay or to schedule sex?”

“What kind of man do you think I am?” He frowned. “Both.”

I slammed the door in his face and went for the water bottle, touching the cool granite of the counter to get some normalcy back. Just when I thought Bear was… Ugh. Sex with Bear would be fun, but would the pros outweigh the cons?

My phone buzzed in my back pocket again.

Another Vernon post?

king

We can do the fake relationship again i can do it now

I ran my thumb along the side of my phone. I’d asked King if we could return to the theatrics because it’d make my parents happy, it’d keep the hockey guys at bay, and I missed my friends in the Romans, especially him.

Yet…Bear and I had sex.

Which didn’t mean anything, I just wanted to get back at Xavier.

My eyes slid to the door, the hesitation settling. This was a good thing, right?

Being in the fake relationship was another step to the life I’d been ungrateful for, to the June before. Football girl, parties every night, close with her friends, attending all of her parents’ obligations, keeping the precarious balance in check.

My fingers hovered over the keys.

Type something. Even a thumbs-up.

Instead, I slipped my phone into my pocket and headed to Montoya’s room.

“Hey.” Montoya grinned. “Who was that?”

“Bear.” I got into the blankets with him. “He asked how you were doing.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“Immediate surgery. I’ve never operated before, so I’ll wear my lucky earrings.”

Montoya snickered and shifted down in bed, resting his head on my shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Do you like anyone on the team?”

“Do I…?”

“You know. Like-like.”

Oh, the seventeen-year-old. “Nope.”

“So, you don’t like Bear?”

“Um…” I cleared my throat. “Adults can do things and not?—”

“Because I think Bear likes you.”

A blush heated my cheeks. “What makes you say that?”

“In the movies, when characters like each other, they look when the other one’s not looking and look away really fast when they’re about to get caught. He does that a lot with you.” He shrugged. “Bear likes you. I shouldn’t say I think that. I know it.”

“Montoya?”

“Yeah?”

I hesitated. “This stays between us, okay?”

“Okay.”

“In my…relationship before King…” I trailed off, mentally prepping myself to avoid saying Xavier’s name. “That guy had a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor and sometimes he could be very, very mean.”

“Like Bear?”

“Like Bear.”

“I don’t think Bear does it to hurt people—” Montoya stopped himself. “I think Bear’s going through a hard time.”

“We’re all going through a hard time, Montoya.”

“I like Bear. He doesn’t call me Kid’s Toy. And he practices with me, he doesn’t clique up with the other guys.”

I took a few moments to figure out how to properly phrase what I wanted to say.

“When I was dating that guy, there was cattiness and cruel comments that I overlooked because I loved him. And with him, I could be mean, too. I wanted to match him because I thought it brought us closer.” I tugged up the blankets.

“It didn’t. It only made me feel worse. I wish I would’ve had a backbone and told him I didn’t like it.

I wish I would’ve left earlier.” I bit my lip.

“I don’t want to be that person anymore.

If I’m with someone, I want someone kind. And I want to be kind for someone.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, I don’t like the mean stuff and arguing either.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “My birthday’s coming up and I don’t want you and Bear to fight during it.”

I resisted that twinge in my chest. “Your eighteenth? What are we doing for it?”

“Promise not to get mad?”

“I promise.”

“I want to go out and get drunk, and after, I want to eat pancakes like in the movies when I’m still drunk, and I want to spend it with the guys, and King, and you.”

“ Wow. ” A little smile tugged up my lips. “Fancy.”

“You’re not going to talk me out of it?”

“Nope. I’d rather you get drunk with people you know instead of people you don’t.” I fluffed my pillow. “I’ll hit up the frats, see who’s partying for your birthday. We’ll make a night out of it.”

“Really?”

“You bet.”

“Thanks, June.” His smile widened. “For the record, you’re one of my favorite people on the team.”

I hugged him and pulled out my phone. I needed to send a screenshot of the notification to Cleo, go through Vernon’s pages to find who tagged him, and try to put the puzzle together, but I stalled at King’s message.

I had to remember why I signed with the Gladiators. The truth was, I didn’t want to be the old June. I wanted better than that. I wanted my family, my organizations, and my old friends, especially King. With a deep breath, I typed my reply to his message.

Me

thank you love you

fake relationship back on

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