On The Rebound: An Enemies-to-Lovers Sports Romance (Steinbeck U)

by L A Cotton

  “You—”

  “Don’t.” It was a rough bark.

  “You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to have me. Is that it? Well, newsflash, Zachary,” venom dripped from every syllable of my name, as she moved closer, “I’m not looking to play your game.” Calli shouldered past me and took off down the path.

  And for the second time in less than a week, I was left standing there wondering what the fuck had just happened.

  For as much as I never wanted basketball, there was something oddly settling about being on the court alone at night. I cradled the ball in my hand, bouncing it a couple of times to get a feel for the weight of it in my palm.

  It was after hours, but when your name was Messiah—my name literally meant savior, oh the fucking irony—it was like having the keys to the kingdom. I preferred to practice alone, but basketball was a team sport, and I was the Scorpions star point guard. I was expected to run the team’s offense, to control the ball, the plays, to create opportunities to score. I was their reluctant leader. Their general. Their king.

  And this was my kingdom.

  Darting forward, I dribbled the ball towards the top of the key before snatching it up and taking a three-point shot. The ball sailed through the hoop, like it did every eight out of ten times. Of course, the percentage dropped in games. But out here, on the empty court, I sank point after point.

  It was a strange thing, to be so good at the one thing you’d always hated. I could remember watching Declan as a kid. He was a couple years older than me and always had a ball in his hand. By the time he was eight, he could already run circles around most of the kids in junior high. I watched how proud my dad was, how much he doted on Declan, and instead of wanting that, inside of picking up a ball and trying to be like my big brother, I pulled away.

  I didn’t hate Declan, not by any means. I just didn’t want to be him.

  As the memories ran through my mind, I pumped my legs harder, switching between plays. I cut across the court, darting under the hoop and performed layup after layup, watching with bitter satisfaction as the ball bounced off the backboard and fell perfectly through the hoop.

  Memorizing the playbook was the first thing Coach Baxter had me do when I arrived at SU before the summer. The team was at breaking point. They’d suffered a grueling season after losing their number one point guard, Maverick Prince. My brother stepped into the position effortlessly and led the team straight into March Madness. But they didn’t quite have what it took to go all the way. Then the accident happened right after the tournament, and the team fell apart at the seams. They lost a lot of experienced senior players and their point guard.

  So when I turned up, with my brother’s name, the same dark blond hair, and a near perfect record playing for the San Diego Aztecs, it was like I was the second coming.

  The guy sent to help the Scorpions rise from the ashes.

  Their savior.

  Their messiah.

  I’d expected some resistance from them, some confusion over everything. But it had been the opposite. The team were happy to have me. Relieved, even. Now they could look forward. They could go on and play a killer season in honor of Declan... because what better way to do it than with his brother leading the show.

  Sweat trailed down my back and I jogged over to the bench to grab my towel. After wiping off, I chugged half a bottle of water, relishing the blast of icy cold liquid as it rushed through me.

  I’d been here almost two hours. One-hundred and twenty minutes of pushing my body to its limits. My arms ached and my legs burned. But it wasn’t enough. I needed more. I needed to push harder until the pain drowned out all the other bullshit.

  Declan.

  My parents.

  Victoria.

  Calli.

  Her name was like ash on my tongue, and I hadn’t even said it out loud. But the second I thought of her, I pictured those big whiskey eyes and pouty lips, her slim frame and pale skin. She looked fragile. Breakable. She looked like I could clench my hands around her bones and snap her clean in two. But she had more fight.

  I liked that.

  I wasn’t supposed to like it, but I did.

  It got me hard just thinking about it.

  Fuck.

  She wasn’t supposed to get me hard.

  But the harsh reality was, Calliope James was under my skin. She’d never left. But all the love I’d once felt for her was now something else entirely. Something darker and volatile. An unpredictable storm brewing beneath the surface.

  If she kept pushing me, I’d snap.

  And if I snapped then nothing good would happen…

  For either of us.

  Friday was a shit show. My mom called, upset that I’d refused to go with her and Victoria to the facility.

  I never went there.

  I couldn’t.

  But it didn’t stop her begging me to go next time, crying down the phone and making me feel like the worst son a parent could ask for. But my grief was my own and sitting next to Declan’s unresponsive body wasn’t going to change that. Besides, I was still too angry to be there. It was better I stayed away.

  That landed me with a less than pleasant voicemail from my old man. He was disappointed with me, but that was nothing new.

  I managed to get through two classes before bailing. After stopping at the store for supplies, I locked myself in my apartment and set to work on drinking my way through a bottle of vodka.

  Somewhere around half a bottle in, the door buzzer rang. I staggered to my feet, hitting answer. “Fuck off.”

  “Zach, it’s me....”

  I dropped my head to the wall and inhaled. “What do you want, Victoria?” It came out slurred.

  “Let me up, please.”

  I’d avoided her most of the week. After last weekend, when she’d tried to make a move, I’d closed down. I didn’t want to be that guy, no matter how much my dick protested.

  I was a fucking mess.

  “Zach,” her voice echoed through my skull. “Please.”

  My hand slammed against the buzzer and a minute later her gentle knock sounded at the door. Unlocking it, I pulled it open, and staggered over to the couch.

  “Jesus, this place smells worse than a bar after closing.” She loomed over me. “You’re drunk.”

  “And you sound like my mom.” She was so fucking righteous, standing there with her hand on her hip and disapproval shining in her eyes.

  “What happened?” Vic crouched down, placing her hands on my thighs.

  “You can suck it if you want,” my cloudy gaze dropped to my crotch and I palmed myself through my shorts, “although I’m not sure I can get it up right now.”

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.” She gave me a disapproving smirk. “Come on.” Vic grabbed my hand and started pulling. “You’ve had enough.”

  “Nah, I can still feel. I’ll know I’ve had enough when I can’t feel anything anymore.”

  “Zach,” she gritted out, “work with me here.”

  I managed to clamber to my feet, letting her take most of my weight.

  “Shower, then bed.” Vic marched me into my bedroom and shoved me toward the bathroom. “Think you can manage not to kill yourself?”

  “Maybe you should come with me. Just to make sure.” I grinned at her, but she rolled her eyes.

  “Go, you’re a mess.”

  I stumbled into my bathroom and began tearing off my clothes. The room was spinning, the vodka sloshing around in my stomach. Tomorrow was going to be hell unless I soaked up some of the liquor.

  “Hey, Vic,” I called, poking my head around the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing?” I could just make out her standing over my dresser, her hands on the top-drawer handles.

  “Nothing.” She smiled, pushing it shut. “Just cleaning up the place.”

  “Right.” She really was like my mom at times. No wonder Declan fell in love with her. “I’m gonna need some
carbs.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Vic went to leave my room, but I called after her.

  “And thanks, yeah, for everything.”

  She gave me a small nod. I probably should have apologized for being a dick earlier. But as I stepped into the shower, I figured we were even now.

  Calli

  It was Friday evening, and I was deep in course reading, when the door knocked. I’d become familiar with Josie’s knock over the last few days. If knocks had a sound, it was firm but gentle, which made me smile considering she’d explained to me how she had bad anxiety but also an over-confident personality.

  “Hey,” I said as it swung open.

  “You’re studying?” Her gaze landed on the pile of textbooks on my bed.

  “I want to get a head start.” I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell her that I needed to keep myself busy to avoid thinking about Mom... or my dad and brother... Joel... or Zach.

  Definitely not Zach.

  After our run-in Thursday, I’d managed to avoid him.

  I couldn’t believe him, acting like a jealous psycho-ex all because Joel and I were walking to lunch. He was infuriating. Cocky and smug and so damn full of himself.

  It made me wonder what I ever saw in him.

  But people changed.

  Still, I didn’t understand why he was acting all Neanderthal when he obviously hated me.

  Something was bugging me about the whole ordeal though. He’d brought up the party... purposefully insinuated to Joel that we’d met there.

  Why?

  “Josie,” I said, unable to let it go. “You know the party we went to at your brother’s house?”

  “Yeah...”

  “Who helped you carry me home?”

  Her brows furrowed. “We already went over this. It was Brad.” The words came out smooth, and well-rehearsed, but I saw the flash of guilt in her eyes.

  I narrowed my gaze. “Yeah, I know that’s what you told me... but I spoke to Zach yesterday—”

  “Hold up, you spoke to Zach and didn’t tell me?”

  “I needed time to process.”

  She kicked off her pumps and folded her legs onto the bed. “He really gets under your skin, huh?”

  “Honestly,” I let out a frustrated sigh, “I don’t think he ever left.”

  “Ready to tell me what happened?”

  “I...” Did I want to open the can of worms? It had taken me a long time to get over the heartache Zach had inflicted on me. I wasn’t really looking to go back to that place.

  But this was college. A chance to put the past behind you.

  Except my past was right here, and it felt like no matter where I turned, I couldn’t escape it.

  “Zach and I met the summer before I started junior high,” I took a deep breath, readying myself for the pain that remembering brought. “He and his family were new to the area. He found me down at the beach, crying. My parents were arguing a lot. Callum was already a local protégé. He and Zach’s brother became instant friends. They bonded over their love of basketball, and me and Zach bonded over our hate of it.”

  “I can’t imagine that...” She frowned.

  “It’s true. When I met him, Zach had zero interest in playing. We used to hang out in the treehouse at the bottom of his yard.”

  “Calli and Zach, kissing in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n—”

  “Really?” Disbelief clung to the word.

  “Sorry.” She ducked her head, fighting a smug smile, “continue.”

  “We were inseparable. Zach struggled to make friends, and I had none, so we just gravitated to each other. We had a secret club and everything.”

  “Shut up, you did not.”

  I nodded. “BHS, the basketball haters society. It was totally lame, but it made me feel a part of something.” My heart ached. “I’d never had that before.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “At the end of eighth grade, I found out my dad had been having an affair. He announced he was moving away... and Callum announced he wanted to go too. I was devastated.

  “My dad had never showed an ounce of interest in me growing up, but he was still my dad. We were still a family. I’ll never forget the look in my mom’s eyes when Callum told her. He was a junior, the star basketball player at our school, and he wanted to leave that all behind.”

  To leave me behind. That had taken some getting my head around.

  “He’d already been recruited by SU.”

  “I can’t believe Callum just left you.”

  “We were never really close. He loved basketball, and I hated it... but I was pissed he chose my dad, a liar and a cheat, over my mom.”

  “Yeah, that’s rough. So Callum and your dad left and you and your mom stayed?”

  I nodded again. “It was hard for her though, being a single parent, trying to balance work life and me.”

  “Didn’t she get a settlement?”

  “There wasn’t much. It had been a tough few years for them.” My dad had lost his job at the investment bank during the recession. He’d found something else, but with Callum’s training camps and personal trainers, it didn’t stretch far.

  “That summer, after they left, was hard. I cried... a lot. But Zach was right there to wipe away my tears.”

  If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the weight of his growing body curled around mine. I was only fourteen, Zach a year older, but I could remember being fascinated with his changing body. He’d shot up that summer, his arms became bulkier thanks to his father’s home gym, and his voice turned deeper.

  He was a boy on the edge of becoming a man, and there was something magical about witnessing that. Something powerful knowing he chose to let me be the one to witness it.

  By the time we started school again—me in ninth grade, and Zach in tenth—he had shed his lanky frame and grown into his body. I wasn’t the only girl to notice either. I spent my days watching as other girls, older girls, all tried to catch his attention. But he never once strayed from my side.

  We were best friends.

  Until one day, we became more.

  “You were childhood sweethearts,” Josie stated as if she’d gotten it all figured out.

  “I wish it were that simple,” I said around a sad smile. “We danced around each other for most of the year. I think Zach was worried because I was younger than him.”

  Josie let out a disapproving groan. “By a grade.”

  “Yeah but there’s almost two years age difference.”

  My birthday was June tenth, and Zach’s was late August. When you were barely fifteen, and the guy you were crushing on was almost seventeen, it seemed like a big deal.

  It was a big deal.

  “Everything changed the following summer.”

  “You had sex.”

  “Almost... we almost had sex.”

  We’d been fooling around all summer, learning each other’s bodies under the cover of darkness in the treehouse.

  “I wasn’t ready, and I knew Zach wanted to wait until I was a hundred-percent sure. It just didn’t feel right. We weren’t even an official couple.” Even though we spent all our time together. “Declan left for college that summer and Zach finally asked me to be his. I was so relieved.”

  I didn’t realize it then, but looking back, I think he’d been worried about what his brother would think. Even though Callum was gone, he and Declan were still friends. They were still our older and wiser brothers.

  “This is like a soap opera.” Josie had stretched onto her stomach, her chin propped up on her fists.

  “I’m glad you find my life so entertaining.”

  “One of us needs some drama, because lord knows I have none.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that given the way I constantly saw her watching Brad whenever he was around.

  “So you went public. You’re in tenth grade and Zach’s in junior year... then what?”

  “Everything was fine. I was blissfully happy.” One of those super annoyi
ng girls in love with her best friend.

  “So what happened?”

  “I wish I knew.” Dejection pulsed through me. “One minute everything was fine, and the next, I’m sitting in a school pep rally watching my boyfriend be announced as the new captain for the Bay View Vipers.”

  “Okay... back up, I thought he didn’t play basketball.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “And you knew nothing about it? Not even a hint that something was wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Tears pricked my eyes as I swallowed the ball of emotion lodged in my throat. “He’d asked me to Homecoming, and we’d gone as a couple. Afterward, we’d gone back to his place and...” My eyes widened.

  “Oh... oh, got it.” She grinned but it quickly died when I didn’t return it.

  I thought back to that week. After an amazing weekend, I’d been floating on cloud nine. Zach had taken a couple of days off school with a stomach flu, but he’d been okay. We’d still talked and texted the whole time. Then the pep rally rolled around, and my entire world went up in flames.

  “I can’t believe these things are still mandatory,” I grumbled to my best friend, Madison, as we filed into the gym.

  “It’s a pep rally, of course it’s mandatory. Besides, just because you hate all school spirit doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”

  Rolling my eyes, I flopped down on the bench beside her. We were packed into the gym like sardines, waiting for the team’s big arrival. I scanned the crowd for Zach. He was back in school today after a nasty stomach flu, but I hadn’t seen him yet as he was late getting in.

  I missed him so much. It had only been a few days, but it felt like lightyears. Maybe I was being slightly oversensitive, but after our amazing night together at Homecoming, it felt like there was an ocean between us.

  He was sick, I knew that. But it didn’t stop the little seed of doubt in my chest taking root.

  “Relax,” Madison nudged me as if she sensed my irrational thoughts. “He’ll be here.”

  “I know.” I smiled, discreetly checking my cell.

  Nothing.

  It wasn’t like Zach to go more than a few hours without texting me. But after I’d stopped by his house last night to see if he was okay, I’d only had one message, saying he’d see me today.