“Can I get your autograph, Mr. Donahue?” someone says, and he’s leaning against my red Pontiac like he owns it.
My gut flattens, but I keep my expression smooth. “What are you doing here, Dodge?”
He pushes off the passenger side, his too-thin body coming into view under the sole street lamp above us. “Same as anybody else. Enjoying the game.”
“Glad you had fun. Get the fuck away from my car.”
“So mean.” Dodge covers his mouth in mock fear. “Shoulda used that on the field. Then maybe you wouldn’t have missed the last throw from QB.”
Dodge McBarrow was on our team before he was kicked off for failing a drug test last year. Back then, he was messing around with weed, a layman’s drugs nowadays, but not if you’re an athlete. As he steps into the light, his cheeks are hollow, his dark skin marked with crusted-over sores.
“What happened to sticking to blunts, Dodge?”
“Bah.” He waves me off. “Those are for preteens looking to rebel against their mommies.”
I should shove him aside and get into my car. Every instinctual bone says to. “When did you start meth?”
“You my sponsor now?”
“No. But I’m concerned.”
“Funny you should say that, considering what you know I’m here for.”
Car. Now.
“Where you goin’, ‘Hue?”
“Home.”
“No you ain’t.”
“Buddy, you’re so high right now I’m shocked you know who you’re talking to. But since you do, you should also understand the serious ass-kicking you’re about to get if you don’t move.”
Dodge’s furtive movements work in his favor, because his twitches make him quick. He’s at my driver’s side before I get there, blocking any entry.
I dump my duffel to the ground. “Last warning.”
“What happened to our deal, man?” Dodge crosses his arms, the flannel shirt he’s wearing dangling loosely like chicken wings.
Any patience I possessed because Dodge was a former teammate going through a rough time dissolves. “I’m not doing it, bro.”
His brown eyes skate from me, to the lamppost, to the parking lot, to the doors, where the rest of his former teammates remain.
“Deal’s off,” I say in a low tone.
Dodge’s brows jump, like I’m telling him something new. “There ain’t no deal, man. That’s not how this works. You’re lucky I didn’t hit you up for the cash you can’t afford instead.”
My chest tightens, but I cover it by folding my arms. He’s ditched his playful, innocent demeanor and grows snarky.
To assume Dodge is harmless is a great mistake, both as an opponent and friend. He collects information the same way he doles out weed—and makes money off both.
“You want to settle with me, that’s what you have to do,” he says.
“Why, Dodge?”
Dodge shrugs, playfulness creeping back in, before it disappears into cold calculation. “It’s what you and your buddies do, right? Make bets. Dole out fucked up dares to each other. Well, I want to be included. Is that so bad?” A bold smile crosses his lips. “You said you’d do anything.”
“I said we could work something out.” I try shoving him out of the way at quarter-strength.
“Don’t matter.” Dodge stays firm, despite my clear indication to fuck off. “It’s what I want you to do. What you have to do.”
He possesses the boldness to latch on to my shoulder to try to stop me. I hitch my step and whip to the side, growling in his face. He’s a little fucker. My teeth could clip his nose. But he’s speedy on the field. A true asset of mine where it counted, if only he weren’t such a slimy limpdick in normal life.
“Easy, boy,” Dodge chuckles.
He knew what touching me would do. Nobody’s allowed to lay a finger on me. Not my adoptive parents, not my friends, not even women. Not unless I give her the go-ahead, and that’s usually made very clear, in the form of guiding head to dick.
Tackling, however, is an entirely different matter, and I’m jonesing to lay this guy out right here and now.
My nostrils flare, my upper lip twitches, and if I don’t get in my car, I’ll break bones.
Dodge continues to chuckle. “Am I pushing your buttons, brother?”
“You are not my brother.”
“True,” Dodge muses, “But you’re about to fuck a sister.”
I rear, and this time the rules are out the window. I slam my palms against the car windows, making them rattle.
“Give me your answer, and I’ll move,” Dodge says, unaffected by my fury, or maybe too far gone on drugs to care. “You gonna fuck Acne Hayes or what? ‘Cause that’s what it’ll take, you know, to settle your debt with me.”
I breathe deep, wondering how many punches it would take to break his face. Probably one.
“Fuck Locke’s twin sister, and we’re even.”
I whirl and punch him target center.
“Och!” Dodge stumbles back, clutching his nose. Blood streams out between his fingers.
That’s the thing about clocks to the nose. They bleed like I fuckin’ just tore open a full-bellied leech.
“Consider that my answer,” I say.
“You—you—this makes it worse, you moron!” Dodge attempts to scream through his fingers, but with his quickly clotting airways and swelling nose, he sounds exactly like he should on a regular day. His true voice coming to light.
I stalk close and grin when he flinches and retreats. “Then make it worse, I don’t care anymore.”
“Really? Really, Hue? You don’t care?” He cackles, but it’s wet and broken sounding, enough to grate against my ears and make me grind my teeth. “You know what I can do with this sort of information?”
I falter, but not because I’m going to cave and do as he asks. He’s a sick fuck, to want to settle a debt through me screwing my best friend’s sister and showing him some proof afterward. Probably wants a photo of Astor in bed, half-naked, something he can jerk off to later.
I falter because of what saying no to him will do. I breathe out the nausea as I think about Astor Hayes, and what she’s been doing to me since the day I met her. First day at college, I’m paired with my roommate, Lachlan Hayes, a fellow pursuer of the NFL, so we got along fine. Great, even. I don’t pride myself on becoming close with anyone, mostly because I don’t need camaraderie to function, but Locke was easy with me. If I talked, great, if I didn’t, that was okay, too. We grew close mostly through silence and allowing each other room to breathe in a tiny, 15x15 cell meant to be our living space for the next eight months. We practiced together, eventually studied together, until we ended up hanging out during our down time. We found stuff in common with our neighbors, Asher and Easton, and before we knew it, we were together, getting drunk and taking bets on each other’s idiocy. It was a helluva way to pass the time when we weren’t on the field and became addictive shortly thereafter.
That was when Astor Hayes walked in.
Locke needed help with physics, said his sister was a pro at all things scholastic, and asked her for a study session. She came into the library one night, all windblown and agitated because Locke had begged for her help last minute when she was supposed to be at mock trial tryouts. And she smelled like roses.
Actual, literal roses, and her scent reached my nostrils about the same time her gigantic eyes did.
They were overly large, like two circles on her face, and an incredible, piercing blue. Coupled with her pouty pink lips and flushed cheeks, she was basically a blow-up doll.
One I instantly wanted around my dick.
I blinked back the image about the same time Locke introduced us, covering my growing bulge with a quick adjustment under the study table, and shook her hand.
Long, lithe fingers. A skinny beanpole, really, with tangled, shoulder-length brown hair and one dimple on her left cheek. Did she have some rough skin to earn the nickname Acne Hayes? Sure, I guess. I
didn’t focus on the bumps on her cheeks or the dots on her nose. There were too many other things about her calling for my attention. She looked nothing like her brother, and that was a good thing—for me, at least, since I was already picturing her naked.
Then she spoke.
“Astor,” she said while still shaking my hand. She had a firm grip, one I was impressed with, since most girls I met fluttered around shyly and turned into a limp fish in my grip. But she met me dead-on, and when she said her name it was like she wrapped it around smoke and velvet, making me the limp fish in our handshake.
“Ben,” I replied, real cool.
“You need help with physics, too?”
“Sweetheart, I’m fine in that department,” I said with a sly grin.
She arched a brow and managed to give me the once-over while half of me was under a table. I might as well have had my cock out for inspection. She was utterly unimpressed and being one of the most pursued guys in our year, I was insulted.
“Yeah, I’ve heard you’re the Shrödinger’s Dick around campus,” she said.
My mouth fell open, since I didn’t know how to respond to something I couldn’t pronounce.
Locke barked with laughter, and I thumped him good in the shoulder, because he wouldn’t have any more clue than me.
She smiled and elaborated. “Physics one-oh-one. Look it up, sport.”
Astor tutored Locke the rest of the night, and while I had my head pretend-buried in my Business Marketing textbook, I was drawn to her voice, to the curl she gave to every syllable, the clear dedication to her sentences.
Fuckin’ … dedication to her sentences? I wanted to punch myself after that.
I told myself to ignore her. She was Locke’s sister. Basically private property. And with everything going on, I couldn’t add that kind of complication to the chemistry explosion that was my life.
Yet, I found myself pretending difficulties in subjects where I excelled. Asking Astor to meet me at the library more and more. If she knew what I was doing, she didn’t let on, and definitely didn’t tell her brother about my shenanigans. She approached my questions patiently and thoughtfully, pointing out answers with the eraser end of her pencil, our fingers interlocking once or twice.
I had no idea if she liked me more than simply as her brother’s dumb best friend. No clue if she wanted anything above tutoring. All I knew was, I absolutely, positively, wanted my sheets to smell like roses.
That kind of conflict was hard to ignore, and I took it out on other women as much as I could. The hot ones, the loose ones, the tipsy ones, the skilled ones. I had my fix, my fill, yet still I felt this void. My heart—that annoying organ that keeps me alive—kept up its slow beats for those girls, then picked up the pace whenever Astor was around. I’d never seen her naked, never felt her tits, buried myself between her legs, or smelled her sex scent. My imagination was doing that all for me, and before I knew it, I was waking up to a blown wad in my sheets after particularly detailed dreams that I somehow had to explain to Locke when we woke up in the morning, and he had a chick in bed but I didn’t.
Almost two years of that. Two fucking years of jerking off to the image of Astor Hayes, and somehow, some little fucker named Dodge Hennessy figured it out.
And leveraged it.
“I’ll tell everyone,” Dodge threatens, and it brings me painfully back to our current conversation. “Starting with Coach. You’ll lose everything. Is that what you want?”
“What’ll make you stop there, huh?” I say. Rage drums in my chest, my heart replaced by a warrior’s shield banging against my ribs. “What makes you think I’m so stupid as to believe this dare will make you keep what you know a secret?”
It’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly why he wants this. Dodge has been aching to get in with me and Locke since we were freshies, first trying hard, then trying harder, to impress us. Worse, he was convinced we’d started our own Skulls club or some shit, when really, these stupid tasks were more to enforce our egos and cement our status on college campus as royal badasses. I mean, why do most guys do this kind of shit?
Adrenaline. Conquest. Dynasty.
Dodge twisted it all up into his own weird membership card where drugs and stolen exams could be involved. He is a bad egg, carrying with him a rotting smell I caught the day I met him during frosh week, only now, he’s decayed further.
Unfortunately, he’s a smart little corpse.
Cut to this moment, where he’s having his fun dangling this carrot in our school parking lot. It’s prudent to keep him happy, since there is the chance—slim, but there—that he will tell the wrong person, and any blowback would land directly on me.
Fuck, no matter what I do, he could always tell the wrong person. There’s only one way to end this blackmail cycle before it grows legs.
Dodge smiles through the blood. “I know it’ll break you. That’s why I want you to do it.”
I snarl and grab him by the neck, slamming him against a parked car. “Why do you hate me so much? Huh? What have I done to you?”
Remarkably, the bastard still grins. He says through the barricade of my strangle-hold, “You could lose everything. Locke will hate you. Astor will hate you. It’s perfect, for the sparkling, pristine, All-American boy who’s catfishing everyone.”
I scowl and utter my last shot at losing his interest. “You’re a sick fuck. What makes you think I could get hard for some fucking pimple-faced string bean, anyway?”
Dodge shows his teeth, eerily white against the frame of blood. “Nice try.”
“You know what kind of pussy I pull? She’s nothing. You can’t think of something better? My boys could come up with a better dare while high as fuck and drunk off four bottles of whiskey. Why don’t I steal an exam, huh? Break into Coach’s office and spray paint my name across his walls? Throw a game so you can make a ton of cash for your Fentanyl-laced crystals?”
“None of them come close,” Dodge garbles out. “You’re ruined either way. This way, I get to watch. The other way, you’d get to disappear, and that’s no fun for me.”
I lean in, so close I can smell the metallic tang to his blood. “I’m not doing it.”
“Then expect to make the news tomorrow.”
On a roar, I toss his head against the car again. He grunts, something cracks, but I’m past caring.
“Let them know. Let them come for me. At least then, I don’t have to deal with rats like you, looking to make a buck off other people’s nightmares.”
Dodge’s eyes flutter, and I consider that maybe I’m knocking him unconscious.
Like I give a damn.
“You’ll never win,” I say after another rally and launch. His shoulder cracks against the windshield. The car’s alarm goes off. “I’m out. I’ll pack my bags tonight. I’m leaving. You’ve got nothing left to wager, Dodge.”
“Ben? Shit, Ben!”
Stomping feet come up behind me, hands gripping my shoulders to throw me back. I’m in beast mode and ready to maul whoever decided it was a good idea to touch me, but when I see it’s Locke, when I register his face, pale with fear, a palm held out to keep me away from Dodge, I think, So, this is how I’m going to say good-bye to you, brother.
“What the fuck?” Locke says. “What are you doing to him?”
“What he deserves.” I swipe an arm across my mouth, shocked to see the sleeve of my shirt slick with blood. Dodge must’ve gotten in a few hits himself.
“Do you know what this can do?” Locke asks. “Forget him, what about you? Coach finds this out—”
“I’m out anyway.”
Glancing around, I find my duffel in the middle of the parking lot. When I ditched it, I’m not sure, but I sling it over my shoulder and start toward my dented car.
“You’re leaving?” Locke says behind me. “You don’t think I deserve some kind of explanation? Where are you going, Ben?”
“It’s better if you don’t know,” I say over my shoulder. But I falter. I�
��m annoyed I’m even thinking it, but I say it anyway, “You’ve been a good friend, Locke. I’ll never forget that.”
“Huh?”
Poor guy. Locke’s standing there with the crumpled form of a bloody former teammate on one side, and the supposed best friend on the other who won’t give him any answers. Locke doesn’t know Dodge very well, or what he represents. If I’m honest, Locke doesn’t know me very well, either. But it’s better if he stays away from both of us.
“Ben!” Locke roars, but I don’t slow my steps.
Being a good guy, Locke won’t leave Dodge. He needs to grab help, maybe take him to a hospital.
Perhaps that’ll be where Dodge spills the beans. To the doctor, or a nurse, or some other medical professional. They’ll make a few calls. Police will get involved. Then I’ll get a phone call, probably from my handler, saying, “Jig is up, Ben. We gotta move you.”
Well. That’s the nice version.
Either way, my dreams will be crushed. Everything I’ve worked for, gone. That whoosh of smoke that should’ve killed me as a kid will return, this time snuffing out my efforts, my luck, my fantasies of making a new name for myself.
If I thought screwing Astor would keep everything in place, I still wouldn’t do it. Astor doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment or require that kind of scar when she realizes why I slept with her. If she’d even allow it, that is. Jury’s still out on how she feels about me.
But I prefer the memories of making her smile, of drawing out her laughs and getting lucky brushes of her soft skin on the pads of my fingers. I’ll take those flashbacks with me, instead of seducing her in order to preserve this fictitious life I’ve crafted.
I should’ve known better.
The butt of my jeans vibrates, and I wonder if it’s my handler, if Dodge has put out some sort of mass email laying me out for all to see. If he’s capable of being that premeditative.
I pull my phone out, expecting the worst, but instead, it’s Astor.
Players to Lovers (4 Book Collection) Page 32
