The Trouble With You

by L A Cotton

  “That was weird,” Flick added.

  “Probably just enjoying the show.” My eyes dropped to my chest and rather obvious nipple situation.

  “Maybe,” she mused, unconvinced.

  I wasn’t convinced either. Because I’m pretty sure Cameron had been sending me a message.

  And it looked a lot like game on.

  Cameron

  “Fuck yeah, senior year,” Asher waggled his brows as he casually leaned against his locker. Most of the kids had already made their way to class, but not our little group. We were in no rush. It wasn’t like anyone was going to tell us to move it along.

  “Shit, man, did you get a look at Hailee?” Joel Mackey, a sophomore, and our new tight end, grinned. “Can we thank you for that, Jase?”

  My eyes wandered absently to where she was just disappearing down the hall with her best friend. I didn’t linger though, sliding my gaze to Jason who shrugged with indifference. He liked to play with Hailee, but he wasn’t one to brag about it; not outside of our trio anyway.

  “Well, I for one, enjoyed the show.”

  Before I knew what was happening, my hand collided with Joel, slapping him upside the head. He yelped like a little bitch, his smile replaced with a grimace. “Show some damn respect, that’s your QB’s sister.”

  “Step-sister,” Jason corrected me, shooting me a funny look.

  “Sorry, Jase, I was only messing around,” Joel mumbled, rubbing away my hand print from his skin.

  I hadn’t meant to hit him, but hearing him talk like that about Hailee didn’t sit right with me. Besides, the idea the little fucker had been looking at her at all… The only people allowed to mess with her… to look at her… to talk to her… were Jason, Asher, and me.

  “Hey Jason, Cam.” Khloe Stemson, head cheerleader and total pain in the ass, approached us. “Looking good.” Her eyes grazed past Jason and landed on me, and she licked her lips like the viper she was. “I was thinking we should probably get together to talk about the pep rally—”

  “Not now, Khloe. We have to get to class.” Jason pushed past her, flicking his head for us to follow. Her eyes fixed on me again, glittering lust and desperation, but if she thought I was going to save her, she was barking up the wrong tree. Khloe wasn’t the kind of girl you saved. She was the kind of girl you fucked and then moved on.

  Swiftly on.

  “Are we really going to class?” Asher asked as we made our way down the deserted hall.

  “What do you think?” Jason grumbled. “I can’t believe we’re stuck with Khloe all year.”

  “Like you haven’t already banged that.” Asher elbowed Jase who levelled him with a hard look.

  “Exactly,” he ground out. “And I’m not looking for a repeat. Ever.” Contempt dripped from his words, as if the idea of being with a girl more than once was crazy. But then, when girls threw themselves at you the way they did Jason, I couldn’t blame him.

  Being a Rixon Raider came with a certain set of privileges. We were treated like gods in the halls at school; and outside the school gates, around town, wasn’t much different. It was easy to get swept up in it all. The girls. The attention. The respect. But being the team’s star quarterback was a whole other deal. Jason Ford wasn’t just a Rixon Raider—he was the Rixon Raider. The guy legends were made of, and we all knew he had a one-way ticket straight to the NFL.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Joel said and Jason’s head whipped around as if he’d totally forgotten he was with us.

  “You should get to class.”

  “But—”

  “Later, Mackey.” I shoved him toward the stairs, and he walked away, shoulders slumped, dejection burning in his eyes.

  “Little fucker’s got balls talking about Hailee like that,” Asher said, and my spine straightened.

  “Hailee would eat him alive. But no one will touch her,” Jase grunted. “Everyone knows she’s off-limits.”

  Thank fuck.

  “Anyone would think you want her, the way you act all—”

  “What the fuck did you just say?” Jason had Asher pinned up against the wall before he knew what had hit him.

  “Easy, man.” Asher’s eyes were wide, his hands up by his sides in surrender, as I watched on.

  Jason and Hailee’s games of push and pull were nothing more than sibling rivalry gone bad. Really fucking bad. Me and Asher had been around long enough to know how it was between them, so why Asher was pushing the issue now was an interesting development.

  “I’m just yanking your chain,” he choked out. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “So don’t fucking be saying that shit.” He relaxed his hold and Asher slumped down the wall, rubbing his throat. “You know I can barely tolerate her ass and don’t even get me started on Denise. I swear I should have figured out a way to sabotage the wedding before they went through with it. I can’t believe my dad married that smug bitch.”

  It was no secret Jason had issues. I would have liked to say his dad’s recent nuptials with Hailee’s mom was the reason for his anger, but he’d always been that way. Ever since we were kids, he’d had giant chip on his shoulder, angry at the world and everyone in it.

  “I don’t know,” Asher said. “She’s always been nice when we come over. Offering us cookies and milk, batting her come-fuck-me-eyes in my direction. Hey, if you need me to help throw a wrench in their post-wedding bliss, I’m more than willing to take one for the team.” He grinned, quirking his brows, and Jase tackle hugged him, the two of them falling into the wall again but this time with smiles on their faces.

  “Mr. Ford, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Bennet, what a surprise.” Principal Finnigan appeared, hands clasped behind his back, disapproval etched into his expression as he watched my two best friends untangle themselves.

  “Good morning, Sir.” Jason swept a hand through his messy hair, laying it on thick. “How are you today?”

  “All the better for seeing you.” He deadpanned. “I trust I can expect nothing but hard work and a mature approach to your school experience this semester?”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  “Glad to hear it. It would be a shame to find yourself on the bench in your senior year.” The principal gave us a scathing look before going about his business.

  “Motherfucker...” Asher muttered under his breath. “Like he can actually do that.”

  “He’s just pissed the school board overruled him last year.” There had been an incident with our rivals Rixon East High. Our names all got cleared in the end, but Principal Finnigan had made it his mission to see that the reputation of the football team be cleaned up, whatever the fuck that meant.

  Finnigan didn’t get it. An out-of-town transfer last year, he didn’t understand what it was like to live in Rixon, to play football in Rixon. He didn’t understand people looked the other way if they saw you up to no good, even if they recognized you as a Raider. Because Rixon, Pennsylvania, was a football town. And it just so happened to have one of the longest standing rivalries in the history of high school football. A rivalry that spilled off the field and into people’s lives. A rivalry so embedded into the history of the town, people accepted it as readily as they accepted Fourth of July or Thanksgiving.

  “Coach warned us he could be a problem this year, so we need to try to keep our noses clean.” Jason shouldered the door to the athletics field, and we cut across the grass to the gym.

  “Screw that,” Asher said. “Thatcher will be looking to get payback after what you did to Aim…” He backtracked when Jase levelled him with a hard look. “My bad. I’m just saying, after what went down, he’ll be gunning for blood.”

  “He can bring it.” Jase growled. “If they come onto our territory, then that’s on them. Finnigan can’t pin anything on us if it’s got their fingerprints all over it.”

  “So that’s it? We just roll over and let them come at us?” Asher threw Jase an incredulous look. But Jase’s eyes darkened, a wicked glint in his narrowed gaze as
he said, “Who said anything about rolling over?”

  “Hit the showers and get out of here,” Coach Hasson boomed. I was already ass naked, cupping my junk as I ducked into the showers.

  “Bell’s tonight?” Asher said from somewhere behind me and Jase grunted, “Yeah.”

  Jase didn’t want to talk, he rarely did after running drills out on the field, but Asher talked enough for the three of us put together. When we’d cleaned the dirt off our skin and let the hot jets unknot the muscles in our bodies, we each grabbed our towels and padded back into the changing room. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jase barked at the few remaining guys who were all staring at us.

  “I... hmm, shit...” It was Joel who stepped forward, his eyes avoiding his QB, opting for the floor instead.

  “Spit it out, Mackey,” I said, moving to my locker.

  “Hailee, she hmm...”

  Hailee?

  What the fuck?

  Then my eyes dropped to the bench in front of Jase’s locker. The bench where his sports bag was. The one that should have been full of his clothes and wasn’t.

  “Oh shit...” I whistled between my teeth, unsure whether to be impressed or concerned for her life.

  “She wouldn’t fucking dare.” Jase grabbed his bag and turned it upside down. “She took everything.” He sounded calm. Deadly.

  Shit. Hailee would pay for this, and there was something very wrong with me, because the idea made my dick twitch to life.

  My history with Hailee Raine was complicated. When she and her mom first moved in with Jason and his dad, she’d been nothing more than his annoying step-sister. But I quickly learned Hailee Raine wasn’t annoying at all. She was smart and quick-witted, and she didn’t take Jason’s shit.

  From day one, she’d stood up to him; looked him right in the eye as he laid into her, laughing at her pigtails, glasses, and denim overalls smeared with paint. He’d called her Pippi Longstocking and said he didn’t play with girls who looked like thrift store rejects. Hailee had kicked him in the shin and run off. But she hadn’t told on him and she hadn’t cried. That got my attention.

  But six years was a long time. Now we were older, and Hailee was a different kind of annoying. All grown up, she’d filled out in all the right places since junior high. I’d noticed. Hell, we’d all noticed. It was why Jason had shut that shit down in ninth grade, the year she grew tits. It had been an unspoken rule before then, but that year Jason officially laid down the law.

  Hailee Raine was off-limits to the team.

  But that wasn’t good enough for Jase. No, he issued a whole school lockdown. It was excessive. I knew it. Asher knew it. Everyone knew it. But since everyone also knew her step-brother’s reputation of following through on his threats, no one dared ask her out. And for the last three years, Hailee had been a social pariah. She kept herself to herself, had a small circle of friends, and preferred to lose herself in the art studio than lose herself in school spirit. Although part of me couldn’t help but wonder if she liked it that way, or if she’d just come to accept her fate.

  I should have felt an ounce of guilt of over it—I didn’t. Because the truth was, Jason wasn’t the only one who had issues with his teammates, or anyone else for that matter, hooking up with Hailee.

  “Found them.” Grady, another senior, breezed into the locker room, holding a pile of clothes. “But you’re not going to like what she did to your jersey.” He unballed the white and cobalt-blue shirt and held it up, a strange mix of fear and amusement flashing in his eyes.

  “Fuck,” someone mumbled as we all took in the drawing of a pair of tits covering half his jersey. If it wasn’t so weird it was actually a good drawing. Really good.

  “I call a D-cup,” someone else shouted. But Jason didn’t respond. He simply snatched his jersey back off Grady, anger radiating from him, shoved it into his bag, and started getting dressed.

  Jason liked to think he had Hailee under control. Liked to think he called the shots, that he ruled the roost. But over the past couple of years, she’d grown ballsy. Going up against us more. Against him. It was like she didn’t give a fuck, and it had made for some entertaining memories.

  There was just something about getting a reaction out of her that got my blood pumping. Although he’d never admit it, Jason and his step-sister were a match made in heaven.

  Thank fuck my best friend had a shred of morality left. Because watching him jones after his sister would have been a step too far—even for me.

  It wasn’t that I wanted her.

  I didn’t.

  I just didn’t like the idea of anyone else having her either.

  Hailee

  All week I waited for Jason to retaliate. But to my surprise, he never did. In fact, Tuesday morning when I’d left my bedroom to go downstairs, I had almost stumbled over a bag of my missing bras. It had taken a thorough investigation to deem them safe. There was no note. No hidden traps. Just my bras in all their super-supportive glory. Anyone else might have thought it was a white flag. But I wasn’t anyone else. If anything, I knew the gesture was a decoy, intended to throw me off the scent of whatever he really had planned.

  So all week I waited.

  And waited.

  My senses went on high alert whenever I spotted Jason and his friends in the halls at school. But they barely looked in my direction—just how I usually liked it. Except for Cameron. His eyes always lingered a little too long. As if he was plotting; planning my downfall. It was unnerving, but I didn’t overthink it. Maybe he was feeling particularly douchebaggy this year? Whatever it was, I didn’t care, because no matter what they dished out in my direction, I could handle it.

  I’d been handling it for the last five and a half years.

  Everyone thought Jason and I hated each other. But it wasn’t about hating him, so much as hating everything he stood for. So he could throw a football? Big whoop. So could thousands of other eighteen-year-olds. Personally, I didn’t understand the nation’s infatuation. Playing sports didn’t make someone a good person. It didn’t make them trustworthy or kind. In my experience, football players were usually conceited assholes who cared more about their dicks and winning games than what was going on in the world around them. How their actions affected the world around them.

  “Earth to Hailee,” Flick glared at me and I blinked, stuffing down the memories.

  “Yeah?”

  She popped a chip in her mouth and frowned. “You’re so weird.”

  “And you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “Don’t look now,” she lowered her voice. “But Jason just walked in.”

  So what did I do? I looked. Being told not to do something was like a red flag for me to react. Mom called me stubborn, but I preferred dogged. Jason didn’t even glance over in our direction though.

  Weird.

  “Huh,” I said, starting to feel a tad disappointed by his lack of retaliation.

  “Don’t tell me you actually want him to come after you?” Flick gawked at me, as I pushed a fry around my plate, coating it in a delicious ketchup and mayo combo.

  “I’m not saying I want him to...” My words died on my tongue as I felt eyes on me. Lifting my face, my gaze collided with Cameron’s.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Cameron Chase has a crush. That’s the fourth time this week I’ve caught him looking over here,” she said, her lip twitching.

  “Yeah,” I snorted. “And pigs can fly.”

  “Would it be so strange? You’ve known him for years.”

  “You’re serious?” It was my turn to gawk. “Did you forget that he helped my brother that time they stole my bike and clothes when I was swimming down by the creek and I had to walk three miles home in just my bathing suit and flip flops?” Granted we were only thirteen back then, but I’d had blisters for a week, and the sunburn had stung like hell. “Or the time in ninth grade when he and Asher snuck into the house when Jason was sick and decided to scare the shit out of me wi
th those freaky clown masks? Or the time—”

  “So they like to get a rise out of you... You know, some people call that foreplay.” Her brows waggled suggestively.

  “Oh my god, you are serious.”

  Flick shrugged. “I’m just saying, he’s looking at you like you’re oxygen and he’s drowning.”

  No, he wasn’t.

  Was he?

  I discreetly peeked over at the football team again. They always sat at the same tables; the ones next to the windows overlooking the athletic field. Cameron wasn’t watching me now. He was talking to a petite blonde thing—a junior called Kayla, or maybe it was Kylie. I wasn’t sure, because unlike most of the kids at Rixon High, I didn’t make it my life’s mission to know everyone. In fact, I could count my friends on one hand. But it was easier that way. When we’d started high school together, and people realized I was Jason’s step-sister, they looked at me differently and I quickly became a stepping stone to Rixon High royalty.

  Something I had no desire to be.

  Ever.

  I watched them together. Cameron smirking, her practically in his lap, all doe-eyed and coy, in a totally obvious kind of way.

  “Is that jealousy I see plastered on your face?”

  I leaned across the table and pressed my hand to Flick’s forehead. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” We’d never talked much about Jason and his friends, let alone looked at them. But I’d caught Felicity’s eyes wandering in their direction more than once this week.

  “Deny it all you want, but I know these things,” laughter filled her voice, “and I’m telling you Cameron’s into you.”

  Into making my life hell more like.

  I rolled my eyes at her, but found my gaze wandering back over to him. The blonde was stroking his stubbled jaw now, her chest pushed up against his. God, I wasn’t jealous. I was nauseous. The way girls threw themselves at them was disgusting. Raiders didn’t date. They screwed around. Rotated through girls like an all you can eat buffet. And the girls at school were all too willing to be on the menu.