Until today, that is. When someone filled me in that the blond girl who’d crashed my naked thinking session last night is one of Patricia’s girls, I set my plan in motion.
Because I go after a conquest like a dog with a bone … until I got my bone, that is.
As I walk in, the scent of coffee, metal, and something I can’t place all hit my nose. And then, it’s the explosion of color. I’ve forgotten what this building contains, as I haven’t been here in so long. Rolls and rolls of material line the walls, with sewing stations dotting the open-concept floor plan. The hum of machines vibrate in the air, and Rogue FC gear hangs from every available surface. It’s actually quite an enterprise … and one the owners are smart to keep on premises.
“Blimey! Good morning, Mr. Davies.” Patricia, the old woman who has run the sew shop since before I arrived at the academy, is visibly shocked as I walk into the room.
“Good day, ladies.” I wink at the three women who occupy the room.
There is Patricia, who I recognize because she’s basically as permanent as the tall oak trees that dot the campus quad. Another woman, mid-thirties maybe if I had to guess? But she looks older, and I’ve seen her try to cozy up to a number of my teammates.
And then, there is the blonde. The one with the husky, silky voice that seemed to stroke right down my cock as she belted at the top of her lungs in the locker room last night. Right now, she’s staring at me with those big hazel eyes, the ones I haven’t been able to get the long, thorough look I want at.
Without further ado, I walk lazily over to her station, and I don’t miss how her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip.
“Long time, no see, love.” I sit down across from her on a rickety stool.
She has a pile of fabric in front of her, but I can see the way her hands nervously flick over the button she is sewing on a trainer’s polo shirt. Her hands may be dodgy, but when my eyes scan her face, it’s scolding.
“Do you need something?” The tone in her voice, like that of an annoyed mum, has me smiling.
“I’m Jude, by the way.” I stick my hand out cheekily for her to shake.
She just eyes it, as if my fingers hold some wonky disease. “I have work to do.”
The older girl, the one who is boring holes into my jaw like she wants to take a bite, answers the silent question I posed at the blonde. “Her name is Aria. And I’m Louisa, nice to meet you.”
Yeah, I can tell she thinks it’s nice to meet me. She’d probably let me bang her on top of her sewing station while these two watched if I asked her to. But I’m not interested. First off, she’s too old for my taste … eight years my senior? Nah, mate. Plus, her makeup is caked across her skin and she’s wearing clothes made for a girl fifteen years younger than her.
I might not care much about who occupies my bed, but I don’t shag desperate, tasteless women … which Louisa over there clearly is. Might be harsh, but at least I have some kind of standard.
Also, since our shower encounter yesterday, Aria, whose name I’ve finally learned, is the only target I’m homed in on at this moment. Once she relents and falls into my bed—because let’s face it, that’s how this is going to end—I’ll be instantly bored and abandon ever seeking her out again. But until that moment, I will pursue her with the strength of a Spartan warrior.
Turning my body away from Louisa, even though I can feel her and Patricia’s eyes on my back, I lower my voice so they can’t hear our conversation over the whir of the sewing needles.
“So, Aria, are you in the men’s locker room every night?” The whisper accompanies my raised brow.
She sucks in a sharp breath, and I notice the small gap between her front teeth … the flaw makes her more attractive. They’re pearly white, as is her milky skin. But her cheeks, just round enough to make her look innocent while the rest of her body is sinful, are a subtle shade of pink. Her eyes aren’t just hazel, either. They’re flecked with olive and gold, a kaleidoscope of colors that have me staring deeper into their hypnotizing allure.
“Only on Fridays, when it’s my shift to clean them,” Aria answers, the air between us crackling.
Something about her answer, truthful and to the point, has me wanting to dig deeper. While she may be stunned, she’s not stuttering. Or flattering me. Those are typically the two responses I’m most rewarded with.
“And do you usually serenade the laundry and the toilets?” Because I’m genuinely curious.
Her voice is good. No, not good. Its professional-singer level great. She could be doing something with it … I’ve been around enough aspiring models, singers, and actresses to know that she possesses a voice better than any of those amateurs peddling their audition tapes around. Why is she here, slaving away at Rogue day after day?
“Keep your voice down,” she hisses, and I lean back on the stool, impressed she has the bollocks to tell me off.
“Hiding something, Aria? I like a girl with a secret.” She just made things way more interesting.
Seeming to remember herself, and our rank in this setting, Aria straightens. My eyes flick to her chest, the one she’s trying to hide under a baggy grey sweater. But the article of clothing doesn’t fool me. I can make out the swell of her tits, can practically feel how round and firm they’d be in my palm. Are her nipples pert and pink, like the shade of her cheeks? Are they full and a deep rose color, ready to be sucked?
Blimey, wouldn’t I like to know.
“Unless there is something you are in dire need of, I really do need to get back to work.”
Okay, I get the message. I’ll let her get back to it. For now.
Standing, I slap the tabletop of her station lightly with my open hand. “It was good to learn your name, Aria. You know where to find me if you want to learn more. Or … I guess I should say, I know where to find you.”
Her eyes go as wide as the saucer under a teacup, and I leave her sitting there boring holes into my back as I walk away. Just like she did to me last night.
6
Jude
Being the three best prospects at Rogue Academy comes with advantages.
For starters, we are always served first in the cafeteria. I always get the best pick of the day’s courses, and Kingston, Vance, and I are always reserved the best table. Being the best also means passing grades from teachers, preferential practice, and weight room times, extra massages from the physical therapist, and first dibs at new gear.
But the most rewarding perk we receive? The best dorm room.
Vance, Kingston, and I split a three-room suite on the top floor of the most central building on campus. That means our own spaces, even if we do have to share a bathroom. It has roof access, an entry point which is banned to students but we abuse anyway, and a service staircase that is essential to sneaking girls in. Our suite is also the only one with a big enough common room to fit a sofa in, and we’ve hosted many late-night drinking sessions that Coach Gerard would not be pleased about if he were to find out.
Kingston is lying on said sofa, a blue velvet sectional picked out by his interior designer mother, when he begins to whine.
“Let’s go do something fun. Come on, it’s Friday night. We should be out in London or something.”
“Or at least down at the local pub.” I nod in agreement, bored myself as I swipe through a dating app.
My body is draped over one of the puffy leather armchairs his parents sent, and Vance is making an imprint in the beanbag chair he brought back from home last Christmas. Our suite is a mish-mosh of upscale designer furniture from the Phillips residence, and mine and Vance’s piss-poor homes.
Most of the girls on here have either been rejected on sight by me and the guys or passed through our suite at some point. Clavering isn’t a big town, nor are the others surrounding it. The girls out here are slim pickings, and with London an hour and change away, the chances of some good female company tonight isn’t looking promising.
I begin to wonder if Aria is on any of thes
e apps. Or if I could find her on Facebook or Instagram. Without knowing the girl from a hole in the wall, something makes me think she probably isn’t easy to seek out on the Internet.
“Clive would tell Coach Gerard, and then we’d be sat from tomorrow’s friendly,” Vance reminds us.
He’s right. Clive, the owner of the Clavering Ale House, might like us enough. We’ve frequented his bar since we turned the legal drinking age of eighteen since it is the only establishment in twenty miles that served a pint. But he likes Gerard better and would tattle that we’d been out the night before a game.
“It’s a bloody friendly, who cares?” Kingston whines.
Vance shoots him a death glare. “I care. I haven’t been in goal for five weeks. I want at least some sort of competition, even if it’s only against Haverforth.”
Our mate has it tough. He’s usually never called up, what with Remus Bayern being the goalie of RFC. Remus is an impenetrable force, he has five clean sheets this year already. While Vance is an excellent goalie, too, Remus is only twenty-five. He won’t be leaving the net anytime soon … which means Vance won’t be called up. More likely, he’ll be sold before he sees any playing time. It’s just fate’s nasty luck of the draw.
“Haverforth’s academy is rubbish. A bunch of gits who can barely tie their boots. We could outscore them by five goals with three pints in us each.” Kingston rolls his eyes.
He isn’t wrong, Haverforth is a second-rate academy. The annual friendly between the schools is a tradition, if not a mean one. We gutted them year after year.
“So, like I was saying, let’s cause some madness.” That evil glint he got takes up residence in his eyes.
“Like what?” Vance asks, and I can see him start to relent.
Pranks and high jinks are our favorite pastime. Hanging the headmaster’s extra suit from the flagpole? That had been us as thirteen-year-olds. Stealing Coach Gerard’s nineteen forty-two bottle of rare batch scotch out of his desk drawer? We’d all had our first tumbler at fifteen and proceeded to wretch for hours afterward. Once we’d all lost our virginities, the prank always consisted of sneaking girls in.
“I downloaded some new porn. We could break into the main server room and stick a flash drive into the cable router? BAM! Bird-on-bird action for every lonely bloke tonight.” Kingston grins.
For being a plonker when it came to basic math, our friend is surprisingly useful with technology.
And while it sounds like a hilarious plot, the threats stacking up against my future give me pause.
“I don’t know …”
My best friends went silent and turn to stare at me.
“This is worse than last summer, isn’t it?” Vance asks, his eyes studying me.
No one in the room says what we’re all thinking about. My DUI, the one I got last summer after a crazy night after leaving a club in London. It was my rock bottom, a stunt pulled on the anniversary of my parent’s death that resulted in my face being splashed across the media for months. I had to go to court, where the worst that the judge had doled out was a bollocks ton of community service hours.
The public had vilified me for weeks, tweeting and commenting on every part of my life. Saying that I should go to jail, that I’d only gotten a slap on the wrist because I was a celebrity. Having to tell Niles Harrington had been akin to castrating myself. Having to tell my little brothers? That was a thousand times worse.
When I’d gotten into that car, I’d barely known my own surname. Thinking back, it was the worst decision I’d ever made … but I was too much of a wanker to admit that to the public. So instead, I’ve been running amuck ever since. This was the time to be a plonker, wasn’t it?
Apparently not. The conversation with Coach Gerard warred with the mischievous devil who’d always resided in my gut.
“I’m afraid so, mate.”
Kingston shakes his head, throwing his hands up. “This is crap! You’re the best player this country has ever seen. The second coming of Killian Ramsey! Shite, you’re better than Killian. No offense to the god on earth who won us a World Cup. But come on, they can’t do this to you!”
Rearranging, I swing around to sit with my elbows on my knees, facing them. “Thanks for your passionate support, brother. You’re right, of course, but nothing I can do. You know the sacrifice, playing for my country, and we all know none of us would make it.”
“So you’re sidelined, essentially,” Vance says carefully.
“When it comes to debauchery, yes.” I hang my head.
Although, just as the words leave my lips, an idea sparks. I may not be able to get into my usual brand of trouble.
But there is another flavor of tumult I could dip my wick into.
7
Aria
“Dad? I have your dinner out here, please come eat.”
My voice hollers up the narrow staircase of our row home, the walls practically vibrating with my words. They’re so threadbare, I can hardly believe they still stand day after day.
As I wait for him to slowly make his way down, I survey my work. His plate, set out on the table next to his armchair, in front of the TV. Healthy, yet tolerable food that hopefully he’ll choke down and keep down … at least until I’m home and can clean up any sickness that might occur. The remote, a glass of water, his crossword book, and cell phone sit beside the plate, all within his reach. The heat is turned on as high as I’m allowed to crank it without going over this month’s allowance for our utility bill. The washing machine is whirring in the background, counters have been wiped down, the porch light is on so that I’m not spooked when I have to fish my keys out at midnight.
All in all, it took me less time today to set up for the next day than it did yesterday. That’s something, right? All of this work means I’ll have half an hour to relax in bed with my headphones in, listening to the newest Khalid album, before I pass out and start it all over again tomorrow.
“I could have popped a microwave meal in, you know.” Dad’s gruff but weak tone has me turning as he walks into our tiny living room.
“And I tell you every day, those contain way too much sodium. The doctor said lean proteins, vegetables, and healthy carbs. The best way to get you through this round of chemo is to give your body the best kind of fuel.”
I may be speaking to him like a frustrated teacher, but it’s only because I’ve told him this at least twenty times in the last month. He’s on his fourth week of an eight-week chemo round, and it’s been brutal.
Actually, the last two years have been a cruel kind of torture. When my dad got sick halfway through my third year of secondary school, it was as if my world stopped. The man who has sacrificed so much for me, who worked sixty-hour weeks in the steel factory near our house, who raised me single-handedly after my mother ran out on us, was diagnosed with lung cancer. I dropped everything; all of my activities, my friends, my boyfriend, none of it mattered anymore. The only thing in my line of vision was getting him healthy again.
Dad has been through a period of treating the cancer with medication, false remission news by a hack doctor we dumped days later, three rounds of chemo, more radiation than one body can handle, and a bunch of other procedures my brain wishes to forget. We’ve been in and out of hospitals, sat in more doctors’ offices than one person should in a lifetime. While the medical bills might be covered, the rest of the expenses of life are not. And trying to keep up with them as a teenager, it was outrageous.
Is it any wonder I work myself into the ground? I’m trying to save my father’s life. I’m trying to keep us afloat and pay the mortgage on this dingy, minuscule row home because he’s been without work since he got sick. He took care of me by himself for years, busting his arse. It’s only fair that I return the favor, now that he’s the one with his back against the proverbial ropes.
“Rubbish … can’t a dying man get a steak? Or a Cadbury bar?” His thin, greying eyebrows raise in humor.
I point a finger in his face. “Don’
t you even joke about that.”
“Come on, Ari dear, if you can’t laugh at cancer, what can you laugh at?” He smirks, sitting down with a grimace in his old, plaid armchair.
My gut twists, because I know he’s in so much pain. He went in for a dose today, and he hasn’t puked yet, but we both know it’s coming.
Choosing to ignore his dark humor, I sling my purse over my shoulder and slide my feet into the comfortable cleaning shoes I wear for my night shift. “All right, I have to go to work. You’re going to be okay? Anything else you need?”
He crooks his finger at me, and I know he wants me to bend to him. My heart melts as I do because he places a chaste kiss on my cheek.
“You’re an angel, my love. I’m going to be just fine. Now go, I don’t want you to be late.”
And I don’t want to leave him, period. It has been far too long since I’ve been able to just sit and watch the telly with my father, to just enjoy his company without worry. How much longer can it go on like this? Are his treatments working? Is working myself to the bone eventually going to pay off? Will this be my life for the foreseeable future?
All the questions swim around in my head as they usually do, and it takes a look at the clock to shut them down. I’ll have to sprint to the Rogue Academy if I am going to finish my tidying work at a decent hour.
I arrive at the athletic facilities winded and a little disoriented. With no money for a car, the insurance on it, or gas, I’m at least lucky that my workplace is only fifteen minutes up the road. But to get all of my duties done, I’m going to have to rush tonight.
The Second Coming: Rogue Academy, Book One Page 3
