by Cathryn Fox
Turning everything and everyone out, I get my head into the game for the first play of the night. We huddle and get our play instructions. I take up position, ready to run it and run hard, because the ball is coming to me. The second the ball is in action, I cut down the line, turn to find it zinging my way. Fighting Anaheim’s defense, I jump, touch and run. The crowd goes crazy as I get twenty-four yards on a touch and run, scoring the first touchdown of the game.
I hold the ball up and do a little dance as I search and find Reagan and her father, both standing and clapping. I spot Miranda beside them and I’m glad douche bag is nowhere to be found. The ball is handed off to Spade for a conversion, and I stand back as he kicks it, getting us an extra point.
The Friday night lights shine down on us, on the field, our mood high as everyone slaps me on the back. Using our adrenaline rush, we reposition and continue our winning streak. The second half of the game, Anaheim comes back strong, but we end up winning twenty-one to seventeen.
The cheerleaders jump on our backs as we head into the locker rooms, and I’m hoping Reagan and her dad are headed to the Growler to celebrate our victory. Coach Myers gives us a talking to in the locker room, and we all hit the showers.
Alistair turns on the water beside me. “Nice moves out there, bro. You were playing like your life depends on it.”
“It kind of does, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I do. Just keep that head in the game.”
“Always.” I soap up and lift my face to the nozzle, letting the cool spray rush over my hot skin. My mind instantly goes back to Reagan’s shower, and how I warmed her body when she couldn’t get the chill from her bones. I quickly extinguish those thoughts. No need for a boner in a room full of men showering.
Alistair glances at me. “Hitting up the Growler?”
“You know it.”
“Is Reagan coming?”
I turn to him, water sluicing down my face. “I don’t know, why?”
“Just curious.” He puts his face under the spray. He gets it. I like her. “You coming to Dixon house later?”
“Dunno,” I say.
“You know what, buddy? You seem a bit tense. Maybe you need to get laid.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you really think?”
“You’re not ready for that.”
He’s probably right. I turn the shower off, and head to my locker. The guys are all razzing one another and talking about which girl they plan to ‘bag’ tonight. It’s kind of disgusting, but who am I to talk? Not that long ago, I would have joined in the conversation. Tonight, however, I’m not in the mood for it. We won the game, I played great, but I’m not much in the mood for partying, which is crazy. I put on a smile as the guys all rerun the plays, especially the killer one I ran during our first play.
We all dress and head outside, the night air warm on our faces as car horns blare going up and down the campus streets. Alistair catches up to me as we make our way to the bar, and two cheerleaders come up and jump on our backs.
“Let’s go, boys,” Melody says as she bucks against me, her body warm, and hot as she slides her arms around me.
I grip her legs, and Alistair grips Clara’s and we both take off, a running race to the Growler. It’s a fun game, one we play often, but Alistair, a crazy fast wide receiver, just can’t keep my pace. We’re all laughing by the time we reach the crowded bar, and I step inside, instantly looking for Reagan. My heart sinks a little when my search comes up empty.
I shake Melody off, and she disappears into the crowd. A cold beer is thrust into my hand and I take a long pull. Numerous girls come up to talk to me. A pretty usual occurrence after a kick-ass game, and while I should give them attention—fuck, I should take one of them to bed to help me get my mind off Reagan—I can’t seem to summon the enthusiasm. I spot Miranda, and push my way through the crowds.
“Hey,” I call to her and her eyes light up when she sees me.
“Hey,” she answers and throws her arms around me. Not in a sexual way, but in a friendship way. “Killer game, Rocco. You did good. Reagan and her dad were so impressed.”
“Yeah?” I ask, my chest swelling even though I wish I didn’t care so much and goddammit, there’s a little gleam in Miranda’s eyes as she watches me. I try to keep it cool, and lower my voice when I ask. “Have you seen them around?”
“She walked her dad back to his car at our place.” She checks her watch. “She’s there with him now and said she’d make her way over here afterward.”
I nod. “It’s dark. She shouldn’t be out walking alone.”
“Maybe you should go meet her, make sure she gets here safely.”
I nod and scrub my chin. “That’s a good idea. I have to watch out for my girls.” I say and give her chin a slight nudge.
My girls.
God, neither of them are my girls. Still, I don’t like Reagan walking alone at night. Especially on game night when everyone has been drinking. I make eye contact with Alistair, and gesture toward the door. Then I yell, “Back soon.” He nods, and I push my way outside as more and more people push in. I circle around and take a shortcut to her place, going through a wooded path that she should never take alone, but I want to get to her house quickly.
By the time I get home, the place is dark and locked up and her father is nowhere to be found. Shit, maybe I missed her. Maybe her father gave her a ride to the Growler. I jog back and pick up my pace. I enter the pub, glance around. My phone pings, and I snatch it from my pocket.
* * *
Reagan: Great game tonight.
* * *
Me: Where are you?
* * *
Reagan: Party at Wolf House.
* * *
What the fuck? Why is she going to Wolf House? Did she decide to go back to Cochrane after all? I can’t blame her. What I asked of her was wrong. That’s still not preventing me from losing my shit. I’m just about to when another text comes in.
* * *
Reagan: I’m just walking Miranda. I’m not going.
* * *
“Thank fuck,” I say out loud. I turn, about to bolt for the door when Jaclyn comes up to me a beer in her hand. She holds it out to me. “Great game, Roc,” she says.
“Thanks.” I accept the beer. She’s a nice girl and I don’t want to be rude to her.
“Are you okay?” She follows my gaze to the front door. “Are you waiting for someone?”
“No, there’s somewhere I have to be.” I take a big drink from the bottle and hand it to her. “Thanks for that. I needed it.”
She smiles. “You’re welcome. I hope to see you later tonight at Dixon House.”
“Not sure,” I say. I don’t want to lead her on. I don’t want to hurt her feelings either. “Talk soon, okay?”
“Okay.” She frowns, but she’ll be all right. I can already see my buddy Jared headed her way.
I head outdoors and pick up my pace, wanting to make sure Reagan doesn’t have an unwanted run-in with Dick. If he says one word to upset her, I’m going to introduce my fist to his face. Yeah, fighting can get me in trouble, and I have a scholarship to worry about, but I’m not going to stand back and let him hurt her more than he already has.
I’m winded by the time I reach Wolf House, and I spot Reagan and Miranda on the top step. I hurry up the stairs, and Reagan looks shocked.
Her big eyes are curious, wide with delight when she sees me and my pulse jumps a bit. “What are you doing here?”
“Out for a jog,” I say, playing it off. “Just happened to see you.”
She glances the length of me. I’m in my jeans, and my football jacket. “Jogging in your jeans now, are you?” She touches my coat. “Doesn’t this weigh you down?”
“I like to mix it up, and the extra weight is good for fitness.”
I catch Miranda grinning. “Enjoy the Growler, friends,” she says, accentuating the last word. What, does she think we’re more than friends? She opens the door, and beca
use of my height, I can see over her head. Miranda goes perfectly still, and she turns back to us so fast her head must be spinning. Her face is pale as she slams the door shut, blocking the image playing out before me. We both stare at one another, because we both saw the same thing.
Reagan looks back and forth between the two of us. “What?” she asks. “What’s with the secret messaging going on here?”
“Um…” Miranda stands there like a deer in the headlights.
“What’s going on, Miranda?” she asks, her voice a little less playful.
Miranda puts her hand on Reagan’s shoulders and is about to turn her. “We should get out of here.”
Reagan roots her feet, and reaches past Miranda for the doorknob. “Don’t go in there,” I bark, the force in my words stopping her cold.
“Rocco,” she whispers, angling her head to see me, reading the worry on my face. My heart jumps and all I want to do is pull her into my arms and protect her from the cruel world she’s not ever been a part of. But what she’s about to see will hurt her, and I’m not trying to get her out of here to protect Cochrane. I’m doing it for her. I reach for her, ready to take her back to her place, but my plan blows up when the front door is flung open and a drunk frat boy comes out to throw up in the bushes.
Reagan spins, and the second she spots Cochrane dry humping some girl on the sofa, his tongue halfway down her throat, she falters backward.
“I’ve got you.” I pull her to me, and Miranda reaches for the door to close it again when douche bag’s eyes open and stray our way. He jerks upright, knocking the girl from his lap, and swipes at his mouth as he adjusts his pants and screams at Reagan to wait.
She’s hurt and I hate that. “Let’s get out of here.” She nods, and I lead her down the steps and Miranda follows us. Cochrane bursts from the house, and in sock feet runs down the stairs and through the parking lot to catch up to us. I place a shaky Reagan behind my back as Miranda stands tall beside me.
Douche bag is breathing hard when he whines, “Reagan, wait, hear me out. It’s not what you think.”
Miranda folds her arms, and together we build an impenetrable wall—both of us protecting Reagan. “Go back inside, Cochrane.”
He tries to reach around me, but I shift to block him. “Get the fuck out of my way, Rocco.”
“Make me.”
“This isn’t a fight you want to take on.”
I shrug. “Try me.”
He glares at me, his nostrils flaring as sweat beads on his forehead. “Come on, Reagan. Let’s go inside and talk, buttercup. It’s not what you think.” His voice is softer now as he changes tactics. “You know you’re the only girl for me. We’re going to get married someday, remember. A power couple, like our parents. That girl, she’s nothing…random.”
Reagan tugs on my jacket. “I want to get out of here.”
I hold my hand up to suggest Dick back up. “We’re leaving, and don’t think about following us.”
He goes from pleading to angry in seconds flat. “This is all your fault,” he spits out and I go still, waiting to see where he’s going with this.
“My fault?”
“Yeah, your fault and you’re going to pay for this, asshole.”
“How is selling your girlfriend out in a card game my fault, and it wasn’t me with my tongue down the throat of some random girl.”
“It’s not like that. I wasn’t cheating…” He scratches his head, and struggles for something to say, to make this right for him. “We’re on a break, and she doesn’t fucking put out.” As Reagan gasps behind me, he points a finger at me. It takes all my strength not to snap it. “This is all on you.”
Rage wells up inside me and I don’t want to be standing here trading barbs with this asshole, not when Reagan needs me. “My responsibility is debatable, but the choices you made when you were on a break—very questionable, and disrespectful, don’t you think?”
He gets up in my face, and it takes everything not to knock his perfect fucking teeth out. “My choices are none of your business.”
I pull myself up to my full height and stare him down. “When they affect Reagan, they’re definitely my business.”
“She’s not your business.”
“She wasn’t, but Cochrane, you changed all that.” Reagan was never my business. Never. That didn’t stop me from lurking in the shadows to make sure she always made it home safely. Where the hell was her douche bag boyfriend then? He doesn’t deserve her. He never did. But I’m not involved in her choices. They’re hers and hers alone and I’ve made so many bad ones myself, who am I to judge?
“Let’s go,” Miranda begs and we both turn.
“He’s a fucking hood rat, Reagan. Trash. A goddamn low-life cockroach who doesn’t even deserve to be at this school.” None of us say anything, which pisses him off even more. “Fine then, go crawl into the gutter with him, see what life is going to be like without your parents’ support. It’s me they want you to marry. Rocco might be a star here on campus, but in the real world, he’ll fail and only drag you down with him. But go. Go have some fun with a gutter pig, and when you come crawling back to me, it better be on your knees. With your mouth open.”
Wow, just fucking wow. If Reagan didn’t need me right now, I’d tear Cochrane to shreds. Maybe that would prove I am gutter trash, from the wrong side of the tracks. An animal. But it’d be worth it.
I throw my arm around Reagan’s shoulder, and while she’s tiny, tonight she seems much smaller, more fragile. She’s strong, that much I know, but no one deserves any of the things her boyfriend has done to her and said to her, all in the span of a week.
We walk in silence, and every now and then she makes a tiny sobbing sound. We reach her house, and Miranda unlocks the door. Once inside, Reagan and I head to the living room.
Miranda hangs out by the archway as we make our way to the sofa. “I think we could all use a drink.”
She disappears and I gesture for Reagan to sit, but she stiffens and turns to me, a fierce determination on her face, and for a second, I think she’s going to rightfully kick me to the curb.
“I’m leaving,” she announces.
I gulp. “No, no. I’ll leave.”
She blinks at me several times, and I’m not sure my words are registering. “Reagan, I’ll leave. I’m making things worse for you. I never should have come here in the first place.”
“Why did you?”
Because I really like you.
“I don’t know.”
She steps up to me and takes my hand. “I’m leaving. I’m going to the cottage tonight, instead of next weekend. Dad invited you as well, remember?”
“I know, but what is it you want?”
“I want you to come with me.”
12
Reagan
My heart is lodged somewhere in my throat as I sit beside Rocco in the passenger seat of my Volkswagen. Rocco keeps casting me glances, and while I’m upset, it’s strange, because I’m not crushed, or broken-hearted. I care for Cochrane. We’ve been together for a long time. We planned to have a life, a family together. Now, well… now that dream has sailed, or rather, sank spectacularly. The question I keep asking myself, however, is why did it take seeing his tongue down another girl’s throat for me to realize we don’t belong together? Shouldn’t I have come to that conclusion after he sold me to Rocco? But it’s more than that. It’s the cruel things he said to Rocco. It showed me a part of him I’d never seen before. How could I possibly go back to a man like that?
In my peripheral version, I notice Rocco cast another anxious glance my way, and my pulse jumps a bit each time he does. He’s worried about me, and that fills me with a new kind of warmth.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” he jokes as he squirms a little in his seat. “I have a reputation, Reagan. I’d never live it down if one of the guys caught me driving this little ladybug.”
I laugh, and it brings a smile to
his face. He’s trying to cheer me up and I appreciate all his efforts.
“It’s a Volkswagen Beetle, not a ladybug. Besides, even if it was a ladybug, those things are fierce. They can bite, you know.”
He grins, slides his hand across the seat and captures my hand. He gives it a little squeeze and I rest my head against the headrest and close my eyes, a wave of exhaustion overcoming me. Must be the adrenaline dump.
“Normally I’d tell you to rest, but if you don’t give me directions, we might end up back in Chicago.”
I chuckle, and peel open my eyes. “Just get us on the highway, and then we can go from there.” There’s a moment of silence and then I break it. “Rocco.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being here tonight, and for…freshman year. Why did you follow me home like that?”
“The campus isn’t safe for a girl walking alone, especially at night.”
I consider that. “Did you follow all the single girls home?”
A little shiver goes through me and he turns the heat on, which I greatly appreciate. I love that he notices all the little things.
He jabs his thumb into his chest. “Let’s just say campus security should have been paying me.”
I laugh at that. “Kingston is lucky to have a guy like you.”
I’m lucky to have a guy like him.
“If you’re trying to sweet talk your way into my pants, it’s working,” he says, his voice low and teasing, but there’s something else there—a truth beneath his words? Does Rocco want to sleep with me? God, I really shouldn’t be so happy about that. “You’re the sweet talker, not me.” I go quiet again. After a beat, I whisper, “I’m sorry.”
