Go Deep: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (9 page)

“
H
ey
, brother, what’s shaking?” Shawn answered lightheartedly.

“It’s late, bro. What’s going on?”

“Everything’s fine. Look, I know it’s late, but you know how busy things get with me. I was just expecting to leave you a voicemail.”

Cassidy walked around to the other side of the bed and took a seat. “That’s cool. What’s up?”.

“I need a favor.”

“Yeah. What?”

“I need you to order something for Mom at her favorite antique shop downtown. I’m flying in for Thanksgiving and the place will already be closed by the time I get there. Trust me I tried to pre-order it and give them my card. These little mom and pop shops don’t go for that crap.”

“That’s no problem. So is it the one with all that vintage shit in the window?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay I know the one.”

“What are you getting her for her birthday?”

“Huh? I actually haven’t thought about that yet. Shit’s been crazy this year with school.”

“Well you might as well see what else they have.”

As I sat there thinking about this conversation, something didn’t add up. This was a strange request for Shawn to call about this late at night. Unless he suspected something was up. He and Cassidy were really close, but she would never have told him we slept together. Her roommate would have been the first to know that, so if gothic pink chick didn’t know, my little brother all the way at Harvard couldn’t know. Not for certain, anyway.

“So you’ll do it?”

“Yeah, yeah. I already told you no problem.” I turned and stared at Cassidy, sitting with her legs crossed on the bed now, staring back at me with a confused look.

“Is everything all right, man?” he asked.

“I’m good. Tired.”

“Everything going okay with football?”

“Yeah, man, everything’s fine.” I let out a fake yawn. “Dude, I uh…it’s late, man. I need to get off this phone and head back to sleep.”

“Cassidy’s there with you, isn’t she?”

“Huh? What?” He’d caught me off guard.

“I’m not dumb. Just admit it.”

“What? Of course not. You’re at Harvard. You can’t be dumb,” I said with a chuckle, trying to change the conversation.

“Look, I know you, and you’re a dog when it comes to women. Just don’t hurt her. Actually, just leave her alone. She’s not trying to get stuck down on the bayou somewhere in Podunk, Louisiana. She’s got a lot going for her, and you don’t need to screw that up, man.”

“Uh-huh. So this is why you called?”

“She’s there, isn’t she?”

I looked at her, searching her face for answers to the question I hadn’t asked:
what should I tell him?
She looked just as confused by my responses as my brother sounded.

“Look, Shawn, I don’t know what you want me to say,” I started, trying to talk my way out of the conversation and not admit to him what was just about to go down before he called.

“Christ. Just put her on.”

“I, uh, let’s talk later, Shawn. You’re all upset and shit.”

I heard a key in the door just in, and Miranda bounced in with her fading pink hair.

“Oh, hey, Slade,” she said. “Have y’all been working on your project?” Her eyes moved from one to the other.

“You’re pathetic,” Shawn spat in my ear.

“Christ.”

“Just get the damn gift for Mom,” he said before hanging up.

Cassidy looked at me as I put the phone in my pocket. I shrugged, like I didn’t know what had happened.

“Listen, I’m glad you’re both here,” Miranda said, unaware of what she’d just walked in on. She plopped down on her bed, then looked at Cassidy and me with suspicion in her eyes. After a beat, she continued. “There’s a floor party down on the third floor next week. I thought it would be cool if Slade came along. You know, since you’ve been hanging out and you guys seem to be friendly…or fucking…or whatever.”

She was either drunk or high on something. I couldn’t tell which.

“I don’t know,” Cassidy hesitated.

“It won’t be like a date. I’m not trying to say you guys are turning into a couple. I just think it would be cool to give the girls on the floor a little something to dream about at night.”

She was definitely high…and drunk.

“It’s not a good idea,” Cassidy insisted. “Slade’s got a lot going on, and I don’t want to give people the wrong impression. We’re not together. You know that, right?” She looked at me, her eyes pleading for backup on this.

Miranda looked back and forth between us. “But you could bring him like a friend. Like, people go to parties with their friends, not always as a couple. What’s the deal? I just figured since he’s been around more, maybe he’d enjoy getting to hang out with all of us.”

“Not gonna happen, Miranda. Just no. He’s busy and I don’t have time to party.” Cassidy turned to me. “I’m sorry, but you understand, right?”

I cocked my head to the side. “I think I do, but I wish I didn’t. Whatever.” I got to my feet and made my way to the door. “I’ll get the write-up started. See you in class. Later, dolls.”

“Mmmm, later.”

I couldn’t believe Cassidy didn’t want to be seen with me. I was the Slaughter, for fuck’s sake. Every girl on campus would have killed or dumped significant others to have me as their date. Even Miranda seemed to want me there more than Cassidy did. Maybe this was just about sex for Cassidy now. Fuck, had the Ice Princess flipped the script on me? Shit, maybe I hadn’t given her enough credit. Maybe I’d been reading her wrong. She got a piece of the Slade, and she wanted more, but she wasn’t ready to let the world know it yet.

Well, I didn’t care what they knew. I wasn’t about to play her like that in front of her friends. Or in front of mine for that matter. We had a history, and although it wasn’t a romantic one, it was beginning to complicate things. Maybe it was time to call off the bet and forget about her.

Then, there was my brother. What the hell was Shawn’s problem? I knew they were friends, and at one point I’d suspected they were
together
, but that was years ago. He’d dated girls in high school and now at Harvard, so when did this possessiveness just creep up all of a sudden? I wondered how much his meddling ass knew. Cassidy would never tell him that we’d slept together, yet he seemed to know a lot about what was going on between us.

I sat in the car in front of Cassidy’s dorm, clearing my head so I could get my ass home in one piece. I wondered if she was spilling the Cajun beans on what Miranda had almost gotten a front row seat to. If Shawn hadn’t phoned, Miranda would have walked in on us. The most frustrating thing was having to drive home with that image of her perfect skin and pink nipples without getting to taste them.

I also had to try and get a handle on how she was acting. When it was just the two of us, she treated me like she wanted more, and as soon as anyone else was around, things went back to normal. In this case, normal meant that there was no sex, there was no friendship and she didn’t want anything to do with me. What the hell was her deal?

I pulled up to my place and parked in the back with everyone else. It was late, and I was tired, and I didn’t get laid.

Well, fuck me.

I stripped down to my shorts and crashed out for the night.

S
lade
and I didn’t speak for a few days after our last project meeting, which seemed to be par for course with everyone right now. Shawn wasn’t taking my calls or texts either, and even Miranda had a bone to pick with me for uninviting Slade to the dorm floor party. Something felt worse about Slade this time. We weren’t just
not talking
. We weren’t talking
for a reason
. He was pretty upset when he left my room that night, but I didn’t know what to say.

And I honestly couldn’t explain why I had treated him that way. I wasn’t quite ready to admit that my feelings for him were changing, or that he’d somehow managed to get his foot—and other key parts of his anatomy—in the door, a door I never thought could open. None of that was any excuse for how I’d been so rude.

I drifted those few days in a haze of worry and anxiety. I expected the situation to blow up in my face at any point. Shawn or Miranda would come down on me for sleeping with him. Slade would pull me aside and have a tantrum, humiliate me, skip out on our team project, or force me to admit I’d been a hypocrite for sleeping with him at all. At the same time, I couldn’t leave him alone or get him out of my mind. There was more to him than just football and girls. I’d caught glimpses of it over the past few weeks while we worked together—and slept together. The first and only time we’d had a proverbial touchdown, it was rushed and purely physical, fueled by lust and probably years of pent-up curiosity. The other night, it would have been different, less rushed, more sensual. I just knew it. Or maybe that was hope.

I knew something was up when he missed the only class we had together. He may not have had a reputation as a great student but he almost rarely missed class. And after working with him and seeing his dedication to our project, I couldn’t understand how he’d even gotten a reputation. He was always there. It was part of his commitment to school. He showed up for practice every day, and he made it to all his lectures every day.

I was distracted for the rest of the day. I’d come to expect to see him every Monday morning. I depended on that as part of my routine, so all was not right in the world when he started to avoid seeing me. No longer were things okay. In between classes, I expected to run into him at some point throughout the day. Our campus wasn’t
that
big. I didn’t see him anywhere. I wouldn’t see him when it was time for cheerleading practice, as we had moved back into the gym we normally used.

I kept my eyes out for the football team. Every time there was a lull in practice, I’d look out the windows. At best, I could see uniforms, but I couldn’t see who was out there on the field. I called myself a fan, sometimes, and Miranda had even accused me of being a fan of Slade’s, but I didn’t even know what his jersey number was. I’d never paid particular attention to him that way before now.

“Hey, what are you looking for?” Miranda asked close to the end of practice. She glanced over her shoulder, looking for whatever it was I was trying to find.

“Checking if Slade made it to practice. He wasn’t in class this morning.”

“What the hell is going on with you two? That shit the other night was awkward.”

“It’s complicated,” I admitted.

“How complicated?” Every once in a while, the Goth front she put on would slide, and I’d see the real Miranda, the Miranda who has obviously cheered in high school and hadn’t wanted to give it up when she came to college. That was the same Miranda who was letting the pink dye in her hair wash out because we weren’t supposed to do stuff like that as cheerleaders.

“You have no idea.”

“I bet I can guess.” She raised her eyebrows, and her face took on the glow of someone who’d just heard a tasty piece of gossip.

I rolled my eyes. I wanted to tell her not to say a word, but not seeing Slade these last few days was starting to eat away at me. What I should have been doing was apologizing for misjudging him all this time, instead of hiding behind my outdated façade, the one that abhorred jocks, especially him.

After practice, I headed out onto the field. The boys were still out there practicing, and I got a glimpse of Slade running drills and passing the ball. I smiled. They’d probably decided to do passing drills until he was sick of it, after that loss a few weeks back. I walked over to the bleachers and sat to watch him, keeping a respectable distance from the football groupies who assembled daily to wait around in hopes of being acknowledged by the star players.

“It’s pretty sad, isn’t it?” It was Miranda. She’d snuck up beside me somehow.

“What’s sad?”

“These chicks.”

“What about them?”

“Well, look at them, in this position. They’re so in awe or in love or in need of these guys’ attention that they have precious little else to fill their time.”

“Hmmm.”

So why did it feel like that was exactly what I was doing?

Mind you, I had other reasons for waiting on Slade than trying to get into his pants.

“How come you’re here?” Miranda was curious.

“I don’t know. Checking in on him about the lecture he missed.”

I wasn’t ready to tell her I needed to apologize for how I’d treated him the other night.

“You know you can send him a text, right?”

“Um, yes. I just figured since I’m here, and he’s almost done with practice…”

“I know what you’re doing, Cassidy.”

“What?”

“You’re sending a message to those chicks.”

“What? No I’m not.”

“Like hell you aren’t. I think you’re showing these bitches that you’re together, or something close to that.”

“God, not you too.”

“You want them to know you’re a part of his life and not just a one-night-stand waiting to happen. Admit it.”

“Christ, Miranda. You’re blowing this out of proportion.”

“Sure. But I’ve seen that look before. Not on you, but I’ve seen it. That’s the look that’s meant to tell people to keep their hands off your man, that you may be a cheerleader but you’ve got fight in you… that all these chicks want is a piece of meat and the bragging rights that comes along with it.”

“With what?”

“You know? So they can sit around one day holding it over their average husbands’ heads that they’d once slept with the star quarterback, and if they had just tried to make more of it than just a one-time thing, they would have been happily married with a beautiful family. These girls are the type who’ll spend the rest of their lives wishing they’d done it differently.”

“How… how did you get
all that
from the way I looked on the football field?”

“Easy. I’m psychic…and by the way, it all makes sense now. Before all this, you were trying to
not
date him, probably because you knew how good you’d be together.”

“That’s just ludicrous,” I protested, although it was probably true.

“I know you too well, Cass.”

“Stop talking, Miranda.”

We watched as practice ended, and Miranda excused herself to go to some event or another. The groupies cheered as Slade walked over. I saw the shock that registered when he got closer. He hadn’t come over here for me, apparently.

“Hey, Cassidy,” he said flatly. “Did the squad practice outside or something?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you.”

“That’s nice. Well there. We just did. Thanks for that.”

Ouch. That kinda hurt. I guess I deserved that cold shoulder.

“Got a second?” I started, not wanting to say too much around the other girls.

He held out an arm, and two of the girls moved to him, one on each side. They were like little sex slaves who’d been perfectly trained to come when summoned by their master. It was unreal how willing they were, but it helped me to understand why Slade was the way he was. He was used to these girls being there and throwing themselves at him to be used and discarded. They didn’t care to keep him around anymore than he cared to keep them around. They just wanted to say they fucked Slade Clark. Well, I had fucked Slade Clark as well. I grew up with his cocky ass, and I was best friends with his brother. Or, I had been.

“What’s there to talk about?” Slade asked. “Everything’s fine with the project, right?”

“It is.” That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about, dammit, and he knew it.

“Good. Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got plans tonight.” He let the girls start dragging him off. “I’ll text you when I can meet with you again about the project,” he called back over his shoulder.

I stood and watched as he wandered away with the two girls on his arm. I wondered if he’d try to sleep with both of them at the same time. It was every boy’s dream. Hell, I even wondered what it would be like to share someone with another woman. I just never went through with trying it out, and probably never would.

I felt the eyes of the few remaining girls on me. They knew what had just happened. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Slade had just blown me off after I’d been waiting to have the chance to talk to him.

Now I was seething. I narrowed my eyes at them and turned to leave.