The Hot Shots: Prequel (Indiana Panthers Book 0)

by K. M. Bishop

  The Hot Shots

  Prequel of

  Indiana Panthers

  By

  K.M. Bishop

  Prequel to “Indiana Panthers” Series

  “The Hot Shots” is the prequel to the steamy contemporary romance series, “INDIANA PANTHERS”.

  This series is one heck of a ride that take’s you into the journey of 6 HOT Guys who want to become a pro in their careers.

  And to achieve that,

  All they want to focus on is their GAME.

  But, will the end goal be ahead of what their heart truly desires?

  INDEX

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 1

  Chance

  I slung my body under the bar and took a deep breath. Then I pressed upwards and braced myself as the weight came pushing down on me and I struggled against it. I lowered the body to just above my chest and then moved it back up.

  My body wanted to give up; it wanted to let the weight just fall on top of me and crush me to pieces. It would be ok. I’d worked hard enough in my life and now it felt that my journey was starting all over again. I was in fact, just starting out.

  And that was depressing. Since I was twelve years old, I had eaten, slept, breathed, and ate football. My father drilled it into my head from a very young age that I would carry on the family legacy of successful Quarterbacks for the Indiana Panthers. I was not going to let him down. It wasn’t just his dream; it was mine, too. Since before that, as long as I could remember it was all I’d wanted to do. Yet, I kept the dream a secret. I’m not sure if it was because I was a small child, or that I was shy. I eventually hit a growth spurt in junior high and then the weight training had helped me fill out and develop my athletic potential. After these successes my personality started to come out of its shell a bit. And now, I was the starting quarterback for the Indiana Panthers as a junior.

  It was at mind trip.

  “Nice set.”

  I eased the bar back onto the rack after finishing my twelfth rep and then swung out from under it. I was staring into the face of Joey Coughman, our wide receiver. Joey was a good guy. I’d played with him since freshman year and we just kind of hit it off right away. We had the same sense of humor and the same work ethic.

  And we were not after each other’s jobs. That was important.

  “Hey, man,” I said slapping him a high five. “How are you?”

  Joey sat down at the weight bench beside mine. “Good, man. Just arriving on the scene to get that blood flowing.”

  “Ah, you having some trouble with… blood flow?” I teased.

  Joey’s eyes lit up as he got my occasionally crude sense of humor. “Funny. Well, we got to get all that out of our system before the start of the season, right? First practice is tomorrow. Wow, I can’t believe it. I feel like I just sat my pads down a week ago.”

  “Yeah, the off season does not last long enough sometimes, does it?” I asked.

  Joey shook his head. “How was your summer?”

  “Good. I spent most of it with my girlfriend, Lucinda.”

  “Ah, how’s that going? Does she go here?”

  “No, she goes to Pitt. But, it was really just a summer thing. Nothing serious. We both agreed to stay friends, but aren’t even going to try the long distance thing.”

  “Ah, I get it. How did you meet her?”

  “She’s actually a friend of my cousin,” I said. “They went to the same high school.”

  “It’s probably for the best. You got to stay single and free for all the girls who are about to start worshipping us, right?”

  I laughed. “Even then. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I really think that this year I want to focus only on the game and give up women.”

  Joey’s mouth dropped open in total shock. “No way. Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “I never thought I’d see that day,” Joey laughed.

  “Why? Because you didn’t think I could do that? Or because you know you never could?”

  “Both actually.”

  Joey slid under the bar and worked out a warmup set. I waited until he was finished and then asked him, “Seriously, why don’t we give it a shot. We are both trying to go pro, right? This is our season. I can feel it.”

  “If you were to get offered a pro contract, would you even finish out your senior year?”

  I thought a moment. “No. If they want me next year then they can have me. I’m not going to ask them to wait a year. That isn’t happening. And it’s not like they are going to stop having colleges.”

  “You making some good points. Now as far as women, I don’t know. I might try it, but I get lonely.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, me too. But I’m just tired of having random sexual encounters. I think I’ve moved past that. One day I want to find that one special girl, you know? And until I can deliver all of myself and my attention to her, I don’t think it’s fair to string someone along. Right now, I have to be a bit selfish and just work on me and my career. So, that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Right on,” Joey said. “By the way, I just broke up with my girlfriend.”

  “What? I didn’t know you were even dating anyone seriously.”

  “Yeah, a girl from back home. We knew each other in high school and last summer we got serious again. But we kind of realized the long distance thing wasn’t working for us. It’s so hard to keep that spark alive between two people who never see each other.”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s part of it. So, what do you think the new coach will be like?”

  “Oh, man. I’ve heard he is a hard ass, hard as they come. You know he is called up from Toledo. From what I heard from some of the guys I know from high school who now go to Toledo, the guy was an absolute nightmare.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Just the kind of crap we need when we are rebuilding a team.”

  We’d lost several of our best players after last season due to graduation. We had a team mostly of juniors and sophomores, with a few freshmen. That was never an ideal situation. But I was determined to be one of the leaders that the team needed. I’d finally been given my shot at head quarterback and I wasn’t going to waste it. I was going to utilize my experience to lead the team on the field.

  A control freak coach who would rather dominate his players and make them obey his will instead of actually work as part of the team, was going to create a lot of drama in the team that didn’t need to be there.

  “Yeah,” Joey said. “I guess it is what it is and we will have to deal with it.”

  “Right,” I replied.

  I did one more set on the bench press and then went to hit the showers. Afterwards I walked home back to the dorm room I shared with Jacob Wynn. He was an outstanding running back for our team and an all-around good guy. But he could be too much of a clown sometimes, as if he was trying to make sure that everyone knew he was there and that he was a great guy.

  Or maybe that was just my impression of him. Everybody liked him and he seemed to do crazy well with women.

  When I came into the room he was heating up some leftover pizza in the microwave. He looked as if he had just woke up.

  “Hey,” I said. “We missed you down at the weight room.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I went yesterday.”

  “You are never going to dominate in the running back position if you neglect your weight training.”

  Jacob rolled his eyes. “So, sue me. I’ll be fine. I’m exhausted. And I think I have a back injury.”

  I sat my bag down an
d slumped down on the couch. “What? Seriously?”

  “Yeah. It’s probably nothing, maybe a muscle pull. I was hitting the lat machine heavy the other day when I was in the gym by myself.”

  “Why do you work out by yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” Jacob said. “I just like it. There is something about being by myself, just one with the weights and no one else around. I love that.”

  “Ok, and that is why you get injured so much. You don’t have anyone to spot you on anything or tell you when your form is way off because you’re using too much weight.”

  Jacob was a macho type of guy sometimes. He was always trying to prove he could go beyond his physical limitations. It had more than once gotten him in trouble.

  “You should be watching it with the weights,” Jacob said. “You are our star quarterback now. You should be making sure that you don’t overstress your joints and keep that throwing arm in tip top condition.”

  I smiled. “Don’t try to put this back on me. I was down there working out with Joey.”

  “How’s he doing? I haven’t had a chance to talk much with him since he got back.”

  “He’s not bad,” I said. “I do get the feeling that he is really wound up about the season. He is scared.”

  “Scared? About what?”

  “Well, the new coach for one thing.”

  Jacob’s eyes lit up. “Oh, man. I was doing some research on him. You should see some of the forums that exist online from former players about how much of a jerk this new coach is. I swear if he gets on my case, I’ll belt his ass.”

  “Right. You are going to get kicked off the team, possibly get kicked out of school, and risk losing the shot at going pro.”

  “If I want to go pro!” Jacob said with a shrug.

  “Why wouldn’t you? The shot is there for you.”

  “I know,” he said. “I just think sometimes it’s too much pressure. Besides I’m a bit down at the moment.”

  I looked over at him, trying to see how serious he was. It was Jacob, after all. The guy was the biggest clown I knew. He was hilarious. But I could see he was really hurting.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Jacob sighed. “It’s alright. I don’t want to get into it.”

  I didn’t speak for a moment. I hoped that Jacob would get his thoughts together and try again.

  “Ok, but if you want to get something off your chest…”I said.

  That was all it took.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad recently,” Jacob said.

  I nodded. I didn’t want to interrupt him. Jacob’s dad died suddenly of a cardiac arrest about seven months before. It was devastating for Jacob. He and his dad were very close. It happened right after the season ended, and since then it had been kind of up in the air whether Jacob was going to play this season or not. But recently he’d seemed very excited about getting back on the field again. He had dated a few girls briefly, and he had been back to his normal self.

  But I could see that a lot of what we considered to be his normal self as of late, was really fake. He was hurting and trying to cover it up.

  Jacob continued. “I just think that without his motivation and without knowing that he is there watching me, I don’t have the drive to do this anymore.”

  I sighed. “Well, it’s all up to you. But you have to ask yourself if this is important to do for you or if it was always more important to him. And you also have to ask whether or not you want to go out there each and every time in his memory and remind yourself of how proud he would be to see you do it.”

  Jacob smiled. “You are wise beyond your years,”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or being serious. Most likely, it was a little bit of both. That was Jacob’s style. But that was good news.

  Jacob took his pizza out of the microwave as it beeped and sat down at the little table to eat it. I glanced over at the junk he was feeding himself with growing disgust. My diet had never been that great, but as potential pro athletes we all needed to start feeding our bodies better.

  I got a text message as I headed towards my bedroom. I was hoping to do some of my summer reading for the English Lit class I was taking this semester. There were six books that I was supposed to read over the summer and I was only on book number four. I had some catching up to do.

  I glanced at my phone and my heart sank. It was Lucinda. Damn. I had broken up with her a week ago and she had continued to text me. Why wasn’t she getting the message?

  “Hey, babe. I’ve been thinking we should get together and talk. Can you meet me outside the library in ten minutes?”

  I read the text twice. Wait… what?

  I texted back. “What are you talking about? The library at my school?”

  A moment later her text response came through. “No. The library at our school.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  What was happening here?

  My phone rang just then. It was her.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Lucinda giggled. “Babe. I’ve decided we can’t be apart any longer. I transferred to Indiana. We are going to be going to the same school so we can see each other all the time.”

  “What the hell? You have to be joking. Lucinda, we broke up.”

  She scoffed. “Oh, that. It was just a little disagreement. It’s ok. If you want me to just come to your dorm, I can do that instead.”

  “No. I’ll meet you there.”

  I ended the call and jammed the phone in my pocket. Was this woman completely crazy? Why in the hell was she here?

  A few minutes later I was with Lucinda standing in front of the library. She tried to greet me with a hug. I ducked and moved away from her.

  “What’s going on?” Lucinda asked me.

  I glared at her. “What in the world do you think is going on? We dated briefly and then we ended it. We are done. Why did you transfer here?”

  “They have a better engineering department,” Lucinda said. “And I don’t know why you are saying that you broke up with me. I understood all of that to be a stupid fight. You need to chill out.”

  I felt like ripping my hair out.

  “Lucinda, I need you to listen carefully. I do not want to date you anymore. You need to leave me alone. I’m not playing this weird game of yours.”

  I walked away angrily. I took several breaths trying to get myself to calm down, but the fact that Lucinda had actually transferred to my school to be near me was like stalker behavior. Had I stepped into some kind of a fatal attraction? This sounded more like a nightmare all the time.

  I wished I’d never met her.

  CHAPTER 2

  Chance

  I dropped back from the line and caught the snap in my hands. Going into my stance, my eyes scanned the field for my receiver. I found Ricky Johnson wide open. I cocked my arm and released a perfect spiral right to him. I watched the ball fly through the air quickly and land in his hands.

  Then it fell right between them to the ground for an incomplete pass. Ricky threw a fist into the air and then glared over at me. “What the hell? I was wide open. You don’t have to burn it in when we are that close.”

  What in the hell was he talking about? He was about twenty yards away and I hardly burned it in. The man was wide open. He’d made a high school error. It was ludicrous and now he was trying to blame me.

  “Atkins!” Coach Smith screamed. “I didn’t see any fire near you. What was the damn hurry? Take your time and survey the situation next time. Hell!”

  I clenched my hand into a fist and thought about walking over to fat Coach Smith and punching him right in his fat gut. I wondered if he would sink to the ground like the guy in those old boxing games I played in high school. It was a fun thought.

  A bump to my chest sent me staggering back a few steps. I looked up into the bald head of Mark Davies. The guy was a defensive tackle. He was about six foot five, and weighed three hundred and thirty pound
s. Most of it was muscle. He was built like a freight train and twice as mean. He was fast, strong, and dangerous.

  And he was about to piss me off.

  “You got something to say?” I asked stepping into his personal space.

  He smiled. “What if I do? You had better shape up. Everyone knows you got this job on your knees. Ricky would be twice the quarterback you are. You’re a joke Atkins.”

  “It’s a good thing they don’t let people with one brain cell make important decisions. Get back to the line. That’s an order from your captain.”

  Mark stepped closer and pushed me. I pushed him back hard. He staggered a few steps and I caught the fear in his eyes for a second. He was a hundred and thirty pounds heavier than me and probably wasn’t used to anyone standing up to him or pushing him anywhere.

  “You little shit!” Mark said. He was coming for me.

  “KNOCK IT OFF!”

  The coach’s voice bellowed across the field. Oh, yeah. He was there. This was probably a bad idea if we valued our football careers.

  “GET BACK TO THE LINE, THE BOTH OF YOU! WE WILL RUN THIS AGAIN!”

  Mark stared me down hard. I didn’t budge. If this bastard came at me, he was going to get hurt. I’d been in several fights during my junior high days. It was part of the reason I took up football; it was a good way to channel some aggression. But as quarterback I didn’t get to hit that many people, so the aggression continued to build.

  Then I discovered wrestling. I quickly became the best in my division and weight class. I won all state three years running. But when it came time for thinking about careers, football was the way to go for me.

  If Mark wanted to fight me, he would soon find himself in a hold he couldn’t get out of and I would probably choke him unconscious.

  He walked back to the line and I did the same. The jerk. Who did he think he was trying to intimidate me? It was laughable. I’ve never been the type of person to back down from a challenge, especially when it’s some steroid freak who thinks he can try to scare me.

  I got into position behind the center, and then called out the play from the line. The ball was snapped into my hands and I dropped back ready to pass, looking for my receiver. This time I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t just covered; he was not anywhere to be found.