Ruthless Heart

by Eve L Mitchell

  “I thought I did.” Coach Bowers shook his head as he looked at the wall with his prized accomplishments on it. “I thought wrong.”

  “You didn’t,” I corrected him quickly as I pulled a chair out and sat down, without his permission, but I wasn’t thinking straight. This could mess up my entire year, hell my entire career. “I was at a party on Friday night. I don’t remember much about it,” I admitted as he glared at me in anger. “I thought I’d had one beer, but on Saturday morning, I woke up beside a girl.” I ignored his look of disgust. “Ash came to get me for practice. I’m never late, but I almost was on Saturday. He asked me about her, and I told him I didn’t remember.” My hand ran through my hair. “I swear to God, Coach, I thought I’d drunk too much, but I wouldn’t.” My anger was mounting rapidly. “I didn’t.”

  “You shouldn’t have been out before a game,” Coach reprimanded me automatically as he sat on his chair and considered me. “You’re saying that your drink was spiked?”

  Was I? I nodded slowly. “I wouldn’t pull this shit, this is all I want. The game, the NFL, I wouldn’t risk anything for my chance, Coach.”

  His small dark eyes watched me longer than I was comfortable with. “You need to prove it,” he said eventually.

  My eyes closed briefly. How the hell would I do that? I had no idea who she was, and even if I did, how would I know if she was the one who spiked my drink? “I will.”

  “You have two weeks.”

  “You’re not reporting it?” I asked him with incredulous hope.

  Coach levelled me with a flat glare. “You do train hard, you do appear to be committed, but I’ve been fooled before. This once, I will give you a pass. This will go on record in two weeks if you can’t prove in that time that you, Jett Santo, got your drink spiked. If you can, then you will be absolved of the offence you have committed.”

  “I didn’t commit an offence,” I retorted angrily.

  “I don’t fucking care!” Coach suddenly screamed as he leapt to his feet. “If you were stupid enough to get tricked, you’re as fucking reckless as I feared. This team is not for reckless, stupid, arrogant devils. Now get the hell out of my office, tell no one, and I want you back here in two weeks or before, with proof that you’ve been played.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “Yes, you’ve got an injured ankle.”

  “I have an injured ankle…” I stood slowly as his meaning sank in. “I’m suspended?” I demanded, outraged at the outcome.

  “Yes. What? You think I would let you play?” Coach snorted in contempt as he sat back down heavily. “You may be privileged, boy, but you get no privileges in my team. Now get out, get proof, and keep your mouth shut.”

  I had no choice but to leave him, and as I slammed the door behind me, I heard the crash from his office. I didn’t give a fuck what he had thrown, as I was pretty close to destroying something myself.

  Gray was already on his feet as I stormed towards them. Ash was looking past me to the closed door.

  “What is it?” Gray asked as I walked past them.

  “I’ll tell you outside.”

  We exited the locker room, and I jogged down the steps as my mind raced with the last ten minutes. Gray and Ash were silent as they kept pace beside me. When we were far enough from the sports building, the stadium rising behind it, I turned to them both.

  “What did I drink on Friday?” I demanded of Gray.

  “What? I dunno.” Gray looked at Ash, who shrugged. My brother tapped his hand off his thigh as he thought about it. “I wasn’t there long enough,” he said. “Why?”

  “My drink was fucking spiked,” I spat out as I looked around to make sure there was no one else nearby. “I failed the drug test.”

  “For real?” Ash asked in astonishment.

  “I’m suspended for two weeks,” I added as I glared back at the modern sports building, as if the sandstone walls were the cause of my problems.

  “Are you joking?” Gray demanded as he stepped closer to me. We were twins, but I was taller slightly, where my brother was broader. Our features were similar, but we weren’t identical; however, there was no denying that we were brothers. Our twin bond was just as strong, although some days that worked against us rather than for us.

  “Do I look like I’m fucking joking?” I snapped at him, and his eyes narrowed at my tone. “Sorry,” I muttered as I shook my head.

  “How did this happen?” Ash asked as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “The girl?”

  “I think so,” I told him as Gray looked between us both.

  “What girl?” he asked as we began to walk slowly onto the campus. Gray hadn’t come home Friday night, choosing to stay with whoever’s bed he had fallen into.

  “Some blonde in my bed on Saturday morning,” I explained as we walked under the heavy tree canopy.

  “I didn’t see a girl when I came back to get ready for practice,” Gray said as he looked between us. “Why am I just hearing about it?” Ash nor I said anything as we walked on, each deep in our own thoughts. “And you don’t know who she was?” Gray probed.

  “No clue.”

  “So, she hooked up with you after you were spiked?” Gray surmised. “Otherwise, you would remember who she was if it happened before you took it.”

  Ash looked thoughtful as he stopped walking. “Yeah, that’s a good point. We need to trace back to everyone you spoke to from the minute you turned up at the party to the last thing before you can’t remember.”

  Nodding in agreement, I saw four of the guys from the team, heading out of the library. They saw us and hollered. Forcing a smile on my face, I reached into my back pocket and put on my shades.

  “We say nothing to anyone,” I told them both as I gestured towards our teammates heading towards us. “Act like nothing has happened. All they need to know is that my ankle got tweaked in practice and we’re being careful.”

  “This is bullshit,” Ash muttered under his breath as he raised a hand in greeting.

  “Play the game, Ash. We’ll figure this out later,” Gray said as he shot me a worried look.

  Falling into step with our teammates, we made our way to the cafeteria for lunch. I had three classes this afternoon, and I needed to eat before then. A football was passed easily between us as we walked, and as we got deeper into the campus, I started eyeing every blonde who walked past me.

  “Even behind the shades, you look like a perv,” Ash murmured as he caught the ball and threw it back. I smirked despite myself at getting caught. “Play it cool, we’ll figure this out,” Ash repeated Gray’s words from a few minutes ago.

  The cafeteria was packed as it would be at lunchtime, and as I looked around the crowded room, I tried to keep my expression neutral. Our usual table was at the very back, positioned with three chairs along one side, with only the wall behind them. It enabled me, my brother and my cousin to sit and see everything. We hadn’t intended to claim the table on our first day here last year, it had just happened.

  The football team knew who we were before we even got here, and just seemed to have migrated to the back of the cafeteria to be with us. It was a thing, it happened throughout school. People wanted to be beside the Santo boys, fuck knows why. I was definitely not a people person, Gray was hostile to the point of violence, and Ash, well, Ash was popular because he was actually the only one who was likeable. Maybe if we ditched our cousin, Gray and I could enjoy the silence. Even with my temper high, the thought of trying to remove Ash from our lives caused me to smirk. It had been the three of us since we were seven years old. Through elementary, junior high and then high school, we were inseparable. And now college.

  Cardinal Saints College was a D1 college, and as I looked over the cafeteria, I could practically map out the varsity teams at the tables, as each sport grouped together. Like liked like after all.

  Gray practically vibrating with rage beside me brought my focus back to my current problem. Pressing my knee into my brother’s to warn him to
keep calm, I remained outwardly unaffected. Ash was leaning back in his chair as he surveyed the room coolly. He was equally as angry but hiding it better than my brother, probably better than me if I was honest.

  “How the fuck do we hide this from dad?” Gray asked me with his voice low.

  “You don’t,” Ash answered quietly as he flashed a smile at a girl crossing the floor. Short skirt, tight top, wide smile. My eyes narrowed as I watched her; her blonde hair wasn’t the right shade of blonde. She wasn’t the girl from Friday.

  “Coach has to tell the dean,” Gray answered him with more bite than he probably meant. “And that prick will fucking burst with happiness when he finds out. Dad’s going to be the first one he calls.”

  “Coach won’t say shit,” I said to my brother as I saw Ash agree out of the corner of my eye.

  “You don’t know that,” Gray reasoned as he jerked his leg away from mine, causing me to turn and give him my full attention.

  “I do know that, because Coach knows he needs me on his team, and I can’t be on his team if I fail a drug test.” The three of us sat in silence as we continued to watch and assess every person in the room.

  “And you don’t remember what you drank?” Gray asked me with concern as he picked up his chicken wrap.

  “I remember a beer,” I replied as I took a drink of my bottled water. “I remember saying I was only having one and then I would move onto water. I fucking knew that hangover was shit, I would never drink that much before a game.”

  “We all had shit to deal with after Friday afternoon,” Ash said quietly. Gray grunted as he picked up his lunch, his scowl aimed at anyone who was stupid enough to look our way.

  “You’re sure that you only had one beer?” Ash asked me as his head turned to look at me curiously.

  “I don’t know. It’s fuzzy after that.”

  “What a complete shitshow,” Gray growled as he tore a chunk off his wrap. “I don’t even know how this could happen.” He tossed his wrap down on the plate as he glared at everyone and no one. “She better have been a good lay at least.”

  I saw Ash glance at me and then quickly to the line of footballers heading our way. “You said you slept with her, but what if you didn’t?” Ash whispered fiercely.

  “I did,” I told them as I fought to push down the rising anger again.

  “You sure it’s not just your ego talking?” Gray asked bitterly.

  “No, dipshit,” I retorted as I smacked the back of his head. “I picked up the evidence, and even if I didn’t, she took the bedsheet.”

  “What?” Ash looked at me, perplexed. I had no reasonable explanation. When I returned to my room after the game on Saturday, my bed was made. Finding that suspicious in itself, I had pulled the covers back and found only the mattress staring up at me. What the hell was on the sheet that would incriminate me?

  Looking around the room, I took in all the students, watching the ones who sat with friends, laughing, or the ones who sat alone, studying. I noticed what I always did. Almost every set of eyes was at one time or another on the three of us.

  Always fucking watching.

  “I don’t know what’s happening or why,” I told my brother, my voice heavy with anger. “But I know that someone on this campus spiked my fucking drink, slept with me and took my bedsheet. What the fuck do they want it for? Evidence?” I looked at them both. “I will find them, and when I do, I will take great joy in ripping their fucking body apart.”

  Leitch officially hated me. I knew it, the class knew it, and he made no effort to hide it. I wanted to die as he stood on his small podium and read my work to the entire class, derision heavy in his tone as he read word for word…slowly.

  “The wind cracked against the window as the rain fell heavily from the sky...” He paused, and in true complete asshole style, he looked at me over his glasses that were perched on the end of his nose. “Ms Bryant, remind me again what you propose to do with your undergraduate degree in English.”

  “Editor, for a publishing house,” I told him as I felt my body slide lower in my seat. I could feel every pair of eyes on me as the professor zeroed in on me.

  “Book editor?” he asked with such scepticism. I heard a few answering titters in the class. At my feeble nod, he seemed to positively radiate with glee. “Tell me, Ms Bryant, as a potential editor, does the opening line of this...story that you have produced make you quiver with excitement?”

  “My role as editor is not to be excited by a book but to know whether it would be a good fit for my publishing house, if it would sell.” Fuck you, asshole, you don’t scare me.

  “Wrong,” Leitch spat as he spun on his heel and marched to his whiteboard. In the day and age of laptops and online classes, Leitch was old school and liked whiteboards, paper submissions and red markers. He especially loved red pen. “As an editor, you are the reader. If that book does not grip you, why would it grip others? How can you market and promote a book that you do not believe in?” He held up my submission with his fingertips. “If this does not excite you”—he shook the paper lightly, causing more snickering in the class—“tell me, why would you think it would therefore excite me?”

  My mouth opened to snap at him when the doors to the lecture room were swung open, the looser one on the right flying back wildly and bouncing off the wall. The guy stood there, looking at the wall and the door and then at Leitch.

  Ash Santo. The third god of the football triad.

  He smiled widely at Leitch, completely oblivious that the look he was receiving from the professor made us mortals run and cower in fear.

  “Am I late?” Ash asked casually as he closed the door behind him. “Like a little bit late or so late I shouldn’t have bothered?” It was quite clear he didn’t care what the answer was as he made his way into the lecture hall. He was so tall and broad I doubted even Leitch would challenge him.

  “You shouldn’t have bothered,” Leitch drawled. “Who are you, and why are you”—he glanced at his watch—“fifteen minutes late for this class?”

  “Ash Santo. Practice ran late, therefore lunch ran late, hence…I’m late.”

  I looked between the two of them. Ash was solid looking. He had to be, he was the team’s tight end. Leitch was average height, potbellied, with old man stubble and grey hair. Ash, with his light brown hair, clean shaven jaw, stunning good looks, and his arms bare showing his biceps, stood out for all the wrong reasons for Professor Leitch. Quite simply, Ash did not look like he belonged in this class.

  “I told administration to stop sending me jocks,” Leitch muttered loudly as he motioned for Ash to come further into the class.

  “Pretty tough to do in a varsity college with sixteen sports represented,” Ash retorted with a snort as his eyes ran over the class, making me suddenly very conscious of the empty seat beside me. “Anyway, I opted for this class, I’m not looking for easy credit.” Ash walked past Leitch, whose face was turning purple. “I was told you were good, was I misinformed?”

  Ash ignored the swell of laughter as he made his way to my end of the row. His bag dumped on the floor at my feet as he somehow crammed his massive frame into the seat beside me.

  I watched the professor open his mouth and then close it again. I almost felt sorry for him. Here he was being upstaged by a football player who didn’t appear to know Leitch’s fearsome reputation. What could he say, his class wasn’t easy credit? By doing so, he would be acknowledging Ash’s intelligence for opting for this class. If he said it was easy credit, easy for jocks, then he was saying the class was easy. This class was anything but easy, and I knew this as I had already had a year of Leitch in the introductory class in freshman year.

  “Don’t be late again” was all the professor had as a comeback.

  Ash shrugged, and again I felt myself staring at him out of the corner of my eye in awe as he sat there unfazed. That he was being so nonchalant to the meanest man I had ever met made me almost admire him.

  I think Ash Santo
just became my hero.

  “Yo, blondie,” Ash whispered when Leitch turned and decided to demoralise another victim and their writing. “Got a pen?”

  Glancing at him, I met his wide, dark blue eyes, and my throat closed up. With horror, I recognised the whispered voice. Ash was the other person in Jett’s bedroom on Saturday morning.

  He had seen me naked.

  Throwing up.

  Naked.

  My butt facing them as I threw up.

  Naked.

  “Wow, I’m not used to being propositioned so early,” Ash told me with a wink. “A pen will do for now, if you can?”

  What? Oh my God, I had totally blurted out the word naked to him. I was going to die. This was the worst afternoon of my life. Wordlessly, I handed him my pen. He looked at it and then at me and my now empty hand.

  “What will you use?” he asked curiously.

  Shaking my head so my hair surrounded my face, I shrugged slightly.

  “Okay, thanks.” I heard him give a low whistle as he sat back in his chair, the creaking noise telling me the chair was also regretting him sitting beside me. “Weird girl,” he muttered.

  I was weird but not because of him. Not really.

  The rest of the lecture, I had no idea what Leitch said. The only good thing was that he ignored me, and I think I had Ash to thank for that. The professor had only looked at me once when I had rustled in my bag for a substitute pen. With an apologetic look, I pretended I dropped it, and with a resigned long-suffering sigh, the professor had resumed his lesson.

  As I hurriedly packed my book bag, Ash held my pen out to me, inviting me to take it back, but all I could focus on was the chewed pen lid. I shook my head in refusal. He could keep his saliva, thank you very much.

  “You look familiar.”

  My stomach dropped like a stone. “You can keep the pen.”

  “Have we met?” he asked me as he unfolded from the chair. It was a sight to see, and I wasn’t a hypocrite—it was enjoyable seeing those muscles flex up close.