The Player and the Bet: An Enemies-to-Lovers College Sports Romance

by Liv Reid

  I pick up my phone and see it’s a text from “unknown caller”, but I can tell it’s my mom. She got a new number.

  She’s asking if I want to come home for Christmas. I don’t know why she keeps trying. It’s been years since I’ve seen her and when I cut her out of my life, my life got a lot better. It took me a long time to realize how toxic our relationship was, but I’m so glad I finally did. I just wish Dad could get over her like I have.

  She’s currently living in Boston again, with a new rich boyfriend, after living in Chicago for a while—with a different, less rich (but still rich), boyfriend. I would never want to spend my Christmas break in some stranger’s mansion where I have to walk on eggshells and pretend my mother is a great mom so that I don’t embarrass her in front of her new lover. I’ll take my dad’s trailer park over that any day.

  I’m about to put the phone back on the nightstand when it lights up again with another text.

  Unknown Caller: You can bring your belongings and move in at the same time. We’ve had the maid prepare a room for you. This house is much nicer than your father’s trailer, after all.

  My brow furrows, and I re-read the text. What is she talking about? Why would I move in? Even if I agreed to spend Christmas with her—which I never would—I’d still have to come back to New Hampshire for school.

  Something doesn’t feel right. I hesitate for a second, but then I unlock my phone and send a text back.

  Sadie: Why are you talking about moving in?

  Unknown Caller: Oh so now you finally respond.

  I wait for her to send another one, but she doesn’t. This is just like my mother. She loves to get attention any way she can. She knows she has something I want now—answers—and is going to stretch this out as long as possible and make me practically beg.

  Well, I’m not playing her games. I lock my phone and place it down on the nightstand.

  I open my laptop and surf the internet for a bit, but my eyes keep being drawn back to the nightstand and the phone sitting on top of it. Annoyed with myself, I put on one of my favorite shows and then lean back into my pillows. I get comfy and prepare for a lazy day of TV.

  But my mom’s text won’t stop popping into my mind. I groan and turn away from the nightstand, taking my laptop with me. I keep watching, but I can’t get the nagging feeling out of my head that something bad is happening and my mom is somehow involved.

  After twenty minutes, I can’t take it anymore. I sit up with a frustrated sigh, grab my phone and text my mom again.

  Sadie: What do you mean come live with you? I’m in school

  After a few seconds, three dots pop up, meaning she’s responding, and my heart starts to beat a little faster.

  Unknown Caller: I thought you dropped out.

  I get a sinking feeling deep in my chest. Mace was trying to get me to drop out of school and now my mother is talking about it like it already happened. This is too much of a coincidence for it to be just a coincidence.

  With a slightly shaking hand, I press the call button and raise the phone to my ear. It takes a couple of rings before my mom picks up. I know she’s doing that on purpose to make herself seem less available. It was a tactic she tried to teach me when I was younger. If you want a man to be interested in you, you have to act like you’re very busy and don’t have time for him. Don’t seem too available. You want to make him sweat a bit when he calls. You want him to know you have other options besides him, and that he’d be lucky to get even a moment of your time.

  “Hello, Sadie,” she says in her fake upper class accent.

  She was born and raised in Louisiana. She has a southern accent as thick as anyone you’ve ever met, but she spent a lot of time getting rid of it, so now when she talks she sounds like she’s forcing the words out. She sounds kind of like a sophisticated, snooty robot.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  It feels weird talking to her after so long, and I suddenly realize in surprise my heart is aching at hearing her voice again. As much pain as she’s caused me, she’s still my mother, and no matter how much I tell myself I’ve left her in my past, she’ll always be a part of me.

  “Why did you think I dropped out of school?” I ask and curse my voice when it cracks slightly.

  I hear her sigh.

  “I was told you dropped out, Sadie.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Who would my mother have connections with at this school? We are a long way from Boston.

  “You’re wasting your time there, Sadie. You’re spending all this time, energy and money, for what? Just so you can get a degree and use it to get a job where you’ll be slaving away at a desk for the rest of your life? Struggling just to stay afloat? Why would you want a life like that? You could be such a pretty girl if you put more effort into your appearance. You could get a rich man to take care of you and then you’d never have to struggle again.”

  The familiar anger builds up inside me. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this speech from my mother.

  “I made that mistake with your father, and I don’t want to see you do the same. You have to be smart, Sadie. I get that you want to be independent and a strong woman and all that blah blah blah, but this is real life, and life isn’t a fairy tale. It’s time for you to grow up.”

  “What did you do?” I ask through clenched teeth.

  “I’m helping you. I’m your mother, so I know what’s best for you. You’ll see that when you’re a bit older. Right now, you’re just being stubborn and rebellious but when you’re living a good life with a good, wealthy man, you’ll thank me.”

  “What. Did. You. Do??” I practically yell into the phone.

  “Calm down, Sadie,” she admonishes in her fake accent. “That is no way to interact with anyone. You won’t get what you want by yelling at people.”

  I take a deep breath to steady myself, but my hand holding the phone is still shaking. I’m so mad I want to scream at her, tell her all the ways she’s a horrible person and mother, but if I do that, then I’m not going to get any more information out of her—and I have a terrible feeling my mom had something to do with Mace trying to get me to drop out of school.

  “Are you calm now?” she asks condescendingly.

  “Yes,” I say in a strained voice.

  “Good. Now, I understand you’re upset, but you have to think rationally about this. You can come stay with me here in Boston. We have plenty of room and this will be the perfect place for you to meet someone. There are plenty of eligible bachelors here—and plenty of hair salons. I saw in some pictures online that your hair is a dreadful color, so we’ll need to dye it back to normal. Or maybe a nice blonde? Gentlemen love blondes.”

  My mother, of course, dyes her naturally dark hair a brassy blonde color that despite using the best haircare products in the world still looks like straw.

  “It’ll be fun! You and I can reconnect. We’ve been separated for so long, and I miss you,” she continues. “It’s your father’s doing. I know he’s said terrible things about me to turn you against me, because you never used to be like this. You were such a sweet girl when you were young, Sadie.”

  I push down the rage building inside me. I can’t stand when my mother says things like that about my dad. He’s never said so much as one bad word about her because he’s still hopelessly in love. But she never believes me when I tell her I made up my mind about her all on my own. He had nothing to do with it.

  “Who told you I dropped out?”

  “Warren is a powerful man and very well-connected. He told me he took care of it.”

  “Who the hell is Warren?”

  “Sadie! Watch your language. Warren is my partner. And you should know who he is because it’s his house you’ll be moving into when you come back here.”

  “How did he ‘take care of it’?” There’s a huge lump of dread forming in the back of my throat, threatening to choke me.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she says dismissively. “He sai
d he got some organization to take care of it for him. Does it really matter?”

  “Yes.” Yes, it matters a lot.

  She sighs. “You are so stubborn. He got some organization to hire someone to do it, or something. See, that’s one of the benefits of being rich. You don’t have to get your hands dirty because you can just pay people to do whatever you want. This is the kind of life you want, Sadie.”

  She emphasizes the last sentence like this whole thing just proves she’s right, being rich is way better than being poor. She keeps rambling on about me moving in with her, but I barely hear her over the blood rushing to my head and the ringing in my ears.

  The only part I catch is, “—break his legs if he doesn’t—”

  “Wait, what?” I ask. “What did you just say?”

  “I did this for you, Sadie. You should try to be at least a little grateful. I’m helping you get your life back on track and giving you a place to stay. I’ll send a car to help you move. How much stuff do you have?”

  “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” I yell into the phone.

  This finally shocks my mother into silence.

  “I’m not dropping out. The only way I’d leave this school is if they kicked me out. And even if I did get kicked out, I would never come live with you. I can’t believe you tried to do this to me. You are psycho!”

  There’s silence on the other side of the line. I’m breathing heavily while I wait for her to respond.

  Finally, she says in a cold voice, “I guess if you aren’t dropping out then they are going to collect.”

  The line goes dead. She hung up on me.

  I slowly lower the phone away from my face. I’m in shock. I’m shaking and my heart is beating a million times a minute. I didn’t completely understand what she was talking about, but I get the sense that Mace is in danger.

  I know I shouldn’t care about what happens to him after everything he’s done to me, but I can’t help it. It sounds like he’s gotten himself mixed-up in something dark, and I need to see him to make sure he’s okay—and get to the bottom of all this.

  I quickly open up my contacts in my phone and scroll to his name, then curse myself when I remember I deleted his number yesterday in a fit of heartbroken rage. I groan in annoyance at myself. Why did I have to be so dramatic? I deleted his texts too, so I can’t get the number there.

  Dammit.

  Wait. I open up my call history and there it is.

  “Yes!”

  I press his number and hold the phone back up to my ear. The anxiety in my chest is threatening to overwhelm me.

  The phone goes straight to voicemail, meaning it’s turned off, or he’s blocked my number. Either way, not a good sign.

  I debate what I’m going to do, but suddenly realize I already knew the answer because I’m throwing off my pajamas and yanking on jeans and a sweater. In less than a minute, I’m running out the door towards the frat house.

  44

  Sadie

  I run across campus towards Mace’s house as fast as I can. It’s crazy to think that just yesterday I was running away from it, but now I want to be back there more than anything so I can make sure he’s okay.

  I burst through the always-unlocked front door and run through the living room and down the hall. The place is unusually quiet. Most of the people who live here don’t really care about their marks, so it’s weird to see it so empty on a school day. It’s eerie, and it makes the dread in the pit of my stomach feel even heavier. I increase my speed.

  I burst into Mace’s room, not caring about knocking. My heart sinks when I see it’s empty. I double-check he’s not in his walk-in closet, but I already know he’s not. He’s gone.

  I pull out my phone and try to call him again, but it goes straight to voicemail. I send him another text before going out into the hall to look for the other Players. I’m not sure which rooms are theirs, and there’s no one for me to ask. I feel helpless. I don’t know what else to do.

  Finally, in desperation, I text my mom. I tell her if she doesn’t let me know where Mace is, I’ll never forgive her, and I’ll never speak to her as long as I live. And I mean it.

  While I wait for her to respond, I keep searching the house. But the whole place is completely empty.

  Finally, twenty agonizing minutes later, my mom texts back an address. I don’t even think, I just send for a car to pick me up from town and then I hurry out of the house.

  As I wait in the cold, soft snow starts falling in large flakes. I’m shivering, but I think it’s more from fear than from the cold. I check my phone again and my mom has sent a couple more texts. She says she’s going too, to protect me, but I don’t pay much attention. I don’t really care right now. All I care about is getting to Mace as quickly as possible and making sure he’s okay. Even though he’s done terrible things to me, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still care about him.

  Time feels like it’s crawling by in slow motion and it’s an eternity before my car pulls up to the curb—though in reality it’s only ten minutes. I jump in the backseat even before it comes to a complete stop.

  “Hi, miss—”

  I cut the driver off by saying, “I’ll pay you double if you get there in half the time.”

  I slam the door shut and without a word he floors it. We skid for a split second, then the tires grip the road and we shoot off down the quiet street.

  I just hope I’m not too late.

  45

  Mace

  My eyes open slowly and stare up into the bright lights beating down on me. My vision is blurry, and I blink in confusion. I feel straps across my body, pulling me tight against the cold, hard metal beneath me.

  What the hell?

  I try to sit up, but an intense headache—and the straps across my shoulders—stop me. I turn my head from side to side to try to see where I am. I blink away the blurriness from my eyes and slowly my surroundings come into focus.

  I’m in some type of empty old warehouse. There’s weak winter light coming in through the massive windows to light up the concrete floors and illuminate the dust and cobwebs in the corners. My heart jumps when I see there are several guys dressed in black suits spaced throughout the room. They look serious but bored. A couple of them are on their phones.

  I look the other way and my breath catches in my throat when I see Delilah, then it all clicks into place. Yesterday—or maybe days ago, there’s no way for me to know how much time has passed—after Sadie told me she hated me and ran from my room, I called the Org. I managed to speak with a secretary who agreed to take a message. I told her I wasn’t going to fulfill my favor.

  “I see…” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?”

  “I’m not going to do that to Sadie. I just can’t. Do what you want to me, but leave her alone. I’m not helping you and that’s it.”

  I felt relief as soon as I hung up. I had finally made my decision and there was no going back now. I wasn’t going to do it. Sadie didn’t deserve any of this. I was the one who made the deal with the devil to get ahead in life, not her. She shouldn’t have to pay for my success. I couldn’t do that to someone I love.

  Realization washed over me like a tsunami. I love her. I love Sadie Edwards. I love that rocker chick from the wrong side of the tracks. That smart, sarcastic, curvy badass. The one who gets under my skin like no one else and turns me on more than I ever imagined possible.

  I remember I had to sit down because my legs suddenly felt weak. Now that I had finally realized it, it was so obvious. I had loved her for a while and just didn’t want to admit it to myself. All the bickering, all the fighting, all of that had just been to cover up how I really felt about her. The last few weeks we’d spent together had been heaven. She challenged me and kept me on my toes like no one ever had before. I could fuck her and hold her for eternity and never get bored.

  As I sat on my couch, everything clicking into place all at once, a blanket of dread slowly settled over me. I
had just told the Org I wasn’t going to fulfill my end of the bargain, and now they were going to come collect. But worse than that was I finally realized I was in love with Sadie, but I’d already fucked everything up so badly she was never going to speak with me again.

  I put my head in my hands and just waited for what was coming next.

  Then I woke up here. They must have drugged me or knocked me out because I don’t remember anything between then and now. I have no clue how they got me out of the house without anyone stopping them. Maybe some guys did see us, but they were all too scared of the Org to interfere. Most of them have deals with the Org too, and they were probably just grateful it was me instead of them.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Law?” Delilah asks me.

  “Just great,” I say sarcastically. “Best sleep I’ve had in my life. My head doesn’t feel like someone smashed it with a hammer at all. Thanks for asking.”

  Her mouth twitches with just the hint of a smile.

  “I’m glad to hear it. So I understand you are not willing to perform the favor you owe us.”

  “That’s right. I won’t do it.”

  “You know the consequences. If you are unable to fulfill your end of the bargain, we collect your collateral.”

  “Fucking do it then. Just get it over with.”

  She looks at me, gray eyes assessing.

  “You can tell yourself this was your decision, but we were coming anyway. We knew you couldn’t get it done because you were taking so long.”

  Evil snake. She wants to take away the one noble thing I’ve done in my life.

  “Whatever, I don’t care. Just do it so I can get this over with and be done with the whole fucking mess,” I growl.