Page 45 of Touchdown, Tennessee

A tight feeling settled on my throat. “One other. Two, if you count the time we got the weird suspicious package on the doorstep.”

“For fuck’s sake. Who has it out for the TNU Tempests? Or is it just for the fraternity in general?”

I narrowed my eyes, glancing over at the guys standing on the edge of the lawn.

Their evening had been ruined.

Again.

Guilt pooled in my chest, like rising bile.

“Not the Tempests, or the frat. It’s because of me.”

Gray shifted in the driver’s seat. I could tell he was looking at me but I didn’t meet his eyes.

“Someone is threatening you, Andrew?”

I shook my head. “It’s all childish bullshit. There’s never anyrealthreat. It’s all just to scare me and inconvenience the other guys. I’ve never been scared for a fucking second of any of it. It’s just idiots from the internet.”

“Calling in fake threats to your house?”

“There are some members of the college football community who really fucking hate that I’m out and proud, Gray. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the message forums online.”

“No, I haven’t.”

I turned to face him.

His brow was furrowed.

I hated the look of serious concern on his face, because I hated the idea that these stupid pranks could ever affect my life at all.

“Well,nowI’m sure you’ll look them up, and I’m sure you’ll find a way to stuff it into your goddamn article somehow,” I said. “Because you’re like a bloodhound, and the rest of the college football community seems to find them eventually.”

Anger was rising through my body more quickly than I could control.

“What are people saying about you online, Andrew?” Gray asked.

He sounded sweet and kind, for once, which somehow only made things worse.

I was being a dick.

And Gray was taking this seriously, which nobody else usually did.

“There are just online gossip forums where people can post anonymously. They mostly talk about football rivalries, but sometimes, the gossip gets personal. And when it’s about me,mostpeople defend me, but there are a few bad apples.”

“Bad apples whocall in fucking bomb threats to your frat house,” Gray repeated, like he was trying to hammer home how serious it was.

I pulled in a breath and let out a heavy sigh.

“The police aren’t going to find any threat in the house. But itisgoing to take them at least a couple of hours to search the place, because it’s big. Last time it took more like three. So now I can’t go in my own fucking home, and neither can any of the other guys.”

A sliver of my guilt disappeared when I saw the guys on the front lawn, McDaniels and Henderson, heading over to one of the frat houses down the road. They had friends there, and hopefully they could chill there until the cops were done at our place.

“You can come with me,” Gray said, pulling on the gear shift of his car and taking it out of park.

“Thought you said you had shit to do.”

“I do,” he said, glancing behind him before making a U-turn on the street.