Dedication
For the Carmcats.
You guys are the best street team any author could ask for. Thanks for
loving these characters, making Friday the best day of the week, and
always being there in the middle of the night when I want to procrastinate.
Slow claps for everyone!
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Coming Soon
About the Author
Also by Cora Carmack
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Silas
The flash of a camera blinds me as I take my seat at the front of the room. I scoot in my chair, and the scraping sound grates on my nerves. A second flash. Then a third. Then I lose count. Sweat gathers at the back of my neck, and I struggle to keep my breathing slow and steady.
Fuck this shit.
I don’t want to be here. I play football so I don’t have to think or talk. As a general rule, I prefer to do my talking with my body whenever possible.
Football. Fighting. Fucking.
That’s what I know how to do. Not this.
Coach has finally taken his seat, and I feel the tension in my spine lessen as he begins talking to the press. He’s in the middle with me, Carson McClain, Jake Carter, and Mateo Torres surrounding him, the team leaders. Coach covers the niceties and starts talking about his plan for preseason camp, while I survey our group. Everyone looks calm but me. McClain is a freaking choirboy. He probably lives for this kind of shit. Torres has never met an argument he can’t talk his way out of or a skirt he won’t try to talk his way into. And Carter is so full of bullshit, he has no trouble spewing it to others. And me? My hands are shaking beneath the table like an addict in need of a fix.
If Coach weren’t so strict and observant, I would have tried to calm my nerves with a little weed prior to this whole media day circus. But there’s no way I could have slid that past him. And I’ve been trying to cut that out since Levi was busted. Coach has become like one of those sadistic teachers that love to give pop quizzes . . . only with drug tests.
“We’ve got a young team. McClain and Moore both still have two years of eligibility,” Coach says, slamming me back into the present. “Torres has three. And though this is Carter’s last year with us, we’ve got a solid group of linemen coming up. We’ve got our foundation, and I think we’re going to surprise people with what we manage to build this season.”
Coach opens up for questions, and even though I know what’s coming, my body still locks up at the first one. “Coach Cole, your team was rocked by scandal last year with the arrest of starting quarterback Levi Abrams. The team snagged a few impressive wins despite that, but ultimately things fell apart in the latter half of the season. Mentally, where is your team at right now?”
“Last season, we had to do a lot of learning and discovery on the fly. And unfortunately, we had to do that while also trying to win games. But I’m proud of the season these boys put up.” His expression goes hard, and I’m glad I’m not the only one scowling. I resist the urge to pick up the bottle of water in front of me and lob it at the reporter. “I don’t think they fell apart at all actually. The last half of our schedule was certainly more demanding with bigger and better competition. But win or lose, the team never fell apart. They played through to the last second every time, and I feel confident that they gave it all they had. As for where their heads are at now, I can’t say for certain. I know where they better be, though.”
Laughter rolls through the room and the same reporter says, “Carson McClain, care to comment?”
McClain leans up to the microphone and says with perfect ease, “The team is focused. We’ve kept our heads down and worked hard this summer. We’re all ready for camp to start. As a whole, I think we’re pretty determined that any conversation about us this year happens because of what we’re doing on the field, not off it.”
A new journalist jumps in. “Silas Moore, you were close with Levi Abrams. You were redshirted together as freshmen. What’s it like playing without him?”
Better. Worse. Fucking terrible. I don’t know.
I can’t talk about Levi. It twists up my head to think about him. He had everything—a good family, money, scholarship, talent, brains—and he screwed it all up. I don’t have half those things. It’s a joke that I’m even sitting here. If he can’t get by without fucking things up, what hope do I have?
My hand shakes as I reposition the microphone, and I curl it into a hard fist. “McClain is a good QB.” The whole room pauses, and the reporter gives me this expectant look, and I realize they want me to say more. Shit. “He’s driven and focused, and the rest of the team works harder because of him.”
I leave it at that because I’m not talking about Levi. When the discussion moves on, my chest feels like a boulder has been rolled off it. I don’t have stage fright or some shit like that. I just . . . I don’t belong here. And whenever we have stuff like this, I feel like I’ve been shoved under a microscope, and if they ever get a really good look at me, they’re going to see just how different I am from these other guys and take it all away.
Another reporter asks me if I think our offense has come together well despite our last tumultuous year. (Who the fuck says “tumultuous”?)
“I think we have.”
Again, they wait for me to say more, but this time I don’t give in to their looks. If they want someone to chatter on and on, they should have asked Torres. The reporter prompts me, “How do you think that came about?”
“Hard work,” I say.
I only get asked one more question, and when I give another short answer, they begin ignoring me in favor of Coach and the other players, and I finally manage to relax a little. All I want to do is go home, and spend the weekend blowing off steam before preseason camp starts on Monday.
When the media session ends, I catch up with Torres, who took over the lease on Levi’s room this summer.
I ask, “You cool if people hang at our place tonight? I’ll text Brookes, and have him get out the word.”
“Like you even have to ask. I’m pretty sure party was my first word.”
“I don’t think I like where this is heading,” McClain says, stepping up beside us as we walk.
Torres groans. “Let us get our party on, man. Not all of us get to go home to the Coach’s daughter.”
McClain nails Torres hard in the shoulder, and I glance back to make sure Coach isn’t in hearing range. He’s not. He’s caught up talking to a few press people. When I look back, Torres is circling his arm like he’s trying to work out the pain.
“Damn, QB. If that’s how you react to me just mentioning her, how am I ever supposed to lay out all the dirty jokes I’ve been stockpiling?”
Torres is kidding. We all know it, but McClain doesn’t joke a
bout Dallas. He’s easygoing about everything else, but not her. Maybe it was the weeks hearing Levi mouth off about dating her in high school (and yeah, me talking shit, too). Or maybe it was the mess of rumors that screwed things up for them a little while last year. Either way, the guy is intense about her. More intense even than when he’s on the field.
Which is pretty fucking intense.
“Make your dirty jokes about Carter’s girlfriend,” I say.
Torres scoffs. “Carter’s relationships go bad faster than the food in our fridge. Like I’m gonna waste my comedy gold on that.”
Carter just grunts in response.
“And you,” Torres turns on me. “I’m not even sure you could get to the third syllable in the word relationship without having a seizure.”
I roll my eyes and steer the conversation back where it matters. “I want to get shit-faced tonight. Doesn’t matter to me whether I do it at home or at the bar. But poor Torres here is still underage; so really, I’m trying to be kind.”
“You’re a regular old Good Samaritan,” Carson says. He sighs and adds, “Just keep it small. We just spent the morning telling all those reporters how focused we are. Don’t let anything get out of hand.”
His eyes land on Torres first, then me.
If he’s trying to guilt me into being boring, he’s barking up the wrong tree. I don’t do guilty. I do what I want. Life is too short and shitty to do anything else.
“Oh, I’m getting out of hand, McClain. Plan on it. If you want to keep us out of trouble, I guess you’ll have to show up.”
Torres grins. “Yeah and bring—”
Carson hits him in the stomach just hard enough to cut him off.
He wheezes a few times, playing it up, and says, “I was gonna say chips, man. Bring chips.”
THE PARTY IS already going when we get back in the afternoon. Apparently, I’m not the only one who could use a bit of relaxing. There’s a Slip ’N Slide in the front yard, and girls parading around in bikinis. A few people are throwing around a Frisbee. I head inside, ready to grab a beer and shove off the unease still clinging to me after the press day.
I keep waiting for it to go away. That feeling that the other shoe is about to drop. But with three years here under my belt, it hasn’t shown any sign of lessening.
I grab a beer from the fridge, and just closing my fingers around the cold neck of the bottle makes me feel a little more in my element. The first time my brother stuck a beer in my hand I’d been ten, maybe eleven. That’s my world. What I know. These days I have to concentrate to push that all away, to be the Silas Moore that people watch and respect and expect things from. To be the Silas Moore that matters.
I must not be doing a very good job because my roommate, Brookes, sweeps in beside me. One dark arm reaches out to grab a beer and he says, “You okay?”
Observant motherfucker. How he knows what’s going through my head at just a glance, I’ll never know. But I don’t like it.
There’s a reason I do my best to seem laid-back and easygoing. When you look like you don’t give a fuck, people don’t ask you questions about how you’re feeling. They don’t ask you questions, period.
“Yeah,” I reply, using the edge of the kitchen counter to pop the cap off my beer. I take a long pull, clink it with the bottle in his hand, and head out of the kitchen before he gets it in his head to play shrink.
My phone buzzes with a text, the third in the last hour, and I almost ignore it. I know who it’s going to be. It’s why I’m doing a shit job of keeping my composure, the old me too close to the surface.
My best guess is that somehow the media stuff this morning put me on her radar. Maybe she happened to catch it on a local TV station or read an article online because the texts started an hour or two after the meeting with the press.
Maybe all absentee moms have Google alerts on their sons. Or mine just has a canny sixth sense that tells her when I’m worth her attention.
The last time she reached out was my senior year in high school when recruiters came calling. My coach ran interference then. She’d been out of the picture for as long as he’d known me, so he had no problem making sure she stayed far away from the whole process. And considering I spent most of senior year living in guest rooms of friends or coaches, it wasn’t like she could just go home and find me.
Now, though, things are different. There is no one here to run interference because no one knows. Rusk is a private school. Expensive and privileged. People here tend to just assume that you come from a background like them, and I never bothered correcting their assumptions.
I make my way out onto the front porch to watch the festivities, and I fish the phone out of my pocket to see what she’s said this time.
Only this text isn’t from my mother.
It’s from Levi.
Fuck.
I’ve traded one person I don’t want to see for another. Another who shouldn’t even have access to a cell phone right now because he should be in prison.
I lean on the railing that surrounds our porch, paint peeling and wood sagging, and I read the text.
I’m out fucker. Come get wasted with me.
He’s out? I count back the months. He was caught selling pot, among other things, last fall, but it can’t have been more than six months since he was actually sentenced.
Six fucking months?
If it had been me, I’d be rotting away in there for a few more years at least. Then again, I grew up in a trailer park. Levi was raised in a house with bathrooms bigger than my old living room.
When you grow up like I did, no one has to tell you the world isn’t fair. You figure it out pretty fast on your own.
A body settles against the railing beside me, slim and petite, and I look over at Stella Santos. She says, “You look even broodier than normal.”
I look around expecting to see her best friend Dallas attached to her hip. She’s alone, though, which means either Dallas and Carson haven’t showed yet, or the coach’s daughter decided she didn’t want to talk to me and made herself scarce.
Probably the latter.
I guess when you try to bed a girl on a bet, you’re not going to be party buddies anytime soon.
“I thought girls liked broody.”
She flicks her short, black hair out of her eyes and sips something out of a red Solo cup. Her lips are painted nearly the same color, and she purses them before she answers, “Depends on the situation. There’s a fine line between broody and potential sociopath. Right now you’re walking the line.”
She tops that dig off with a sly smile, and I shove my phone deep in my pocket, ready to let her distract me from my mom, my ex–best friend, everything. She’d turned that same smile on me last year at a party, and I don’t remember doing much brooding after that. Granted, I don’t remember much of it, period, except that she was feisty, and she knew what she liked—two things I can always get on board for. I don’t usually go for seconds on my hookups, but Stella is different. She won’t try to make it into something it isn’t. I don’t know for sure because we didn’t talk about it, but I just get this feeling that we’re alike, that we both know a different side of the world than everyone else here.
My gaze dips down to take her in, and I nod my head at the Slip ’N Slide in the yard. “Where’s your bikini?”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh please. I believe in leaving some things to the imagination. I’m not that desperate.”
I smirk. “Who needs imagination when you’ve got memories?”
She shoves me. Or tries to anyway, and I laugh. The girl is so tiny she doesn’t have a hope of moving me.
She glares at me, but her full lips are tipped up at the corners.
I nod at the T-shirt and shorts she’s wearing and say, “You’re wearing one underneath there, aren’t you?”
She looks like she wants to shove me again, but she doesn’t. Instead she huffs and says, “Fine. Yes, I am. But I’m only mildly desperate. Like a tiny, tiny amo
unt.”
“You do realize you could have half the guys at this party with very little effort, don’t you?”
“But the effort is the fun part!”
She says it with a smile, but I think she’s dead serious. When you live a hard life, you spend years wishing for the easy stuff, but then when you get it, it never feels right. You get used to having to fight and claw for the things you want, and when you don’t have to do that anymore, everything feels a little bit muted.
At least that’s how shit usually feels for me.
I ask, “That why you keep stringing the manager along?”
The glare she turns on me now is no longer playful. It’s harder. With an edge of something I can’t identify. “I am not stringing Ryan along. We’re friends.”
“Riiight.”
“Don’t Right me, mister. Like you know anything about relationships.”
That’s twice today I’ve had that tidbit waved in front of my face. I might be offended if it weren’t entirely right.
“I know fuck buddies when I see them.”
“We’re not,” she pauses, checking her volume, before adding under her breath, “We’re not that.”
“Yet.”
“I’m going to actually kill you. I’m going to wrap my hands around your throat, and then claim I got tetanus and was incapable of relaxing my muscles.”
“I had no idea you were into erotic asphyxiation, Santos.”
She shoots back, “I had no idea you knew what asphyxiation meant.”
I turn, laughing, and lean my back against the railing. A slow smile spreads across my face. “Speaking of erotic . . . here comes your fuck buddy . . .”
A group of people streams out the front door, including Ryan Blake, the team manager and Stella’s not-quite-boyfriend.
Stella says, “We’re not . . .” then trails off, a blush forming on her cheeks as Ryan comes to stand beside her, bumping her shoulder with his. Behind him is McClain, his arm draped over Dallas’s shoulder as her eyes flick between me and Stella. I give her my most charming grin, but her eyes only narrow in response.
“You showed,” I say to McClain when he walks over.
“Yeah, well, someone has to keep an eye on you douchebags.”
Torres jogs past then, pulling his shirt off. He yells, “Keep an eye on this, McClain!” Then he dives onto the Slip ’N Slide right after a curvy brunette, and the two of them end up a tangled mess of slick skin at the other end.