Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (21 page)

My chest got tight, and I suddenly felt like a bitch for ever being mad at him.

So he'd made Venus cry, so I'd pined after him with a fragile fourteen year old heart. Big deal. Tyce was beating the cycle of poverty, living the dream. He was doing what he loved most and getting paid for it.

I felt so sick that I actually got up, left my phone on the bed and went into the kitchen to grab a drink. I settled on a glass of orange juice and took it back in the room with me, staring at the facedown cellphone with a sense of dread building up inside of me.

I still kind of hated Tyce for what he'd done to me and my mom, but I understood it. Me. I was a problem for him, a distraction. I both loved and hated that.

When the phone buzzed again, I picked it up.

'Never,'
he texted back and then,
'I fucking miss Venus a lot.'

I swallowed a lump in my throat, let my thumb say,
'me, too.'

'When I get rich, I'll send you some money. You'll never have to worry about a thing. I want to do that for you.'

What the hell, Tyce? I wondered as I stared at his message and sipped my juice. It was starting to taste like ash again. Great. My emotions were like a bundle of tangled string. I just wanted to grab some scissors and start cutting pieces off.

'Part of me wondered if you'd come here,'
he sent next and I furrowed my brow.

'What?'

'Here, to Eugene. I knew you'd find me. I wondered if you'd come. That's why I decided to play another year for the Ducks.'

Umm.

I had no idea how to respond to that.

'You're not drunk again are you?'
I texted back as I finished my juice and then took the glass back in the kitchen, just so I had an excuse to pace around the apartment. Everything was dark and basked in shadow from the hallway nightlight. It made me feel weirdly alone, like I needed to get out of here. But it was like two in the morning. There was nowhere I wanted to go.

'Nope.'

'Then I'm not sure why you're saying these things. It's weird.'

'I guess. I just wanted you to know that I'm not a heartless prick. I like you, Teagan. I just want you to know that you deserve better than playing second place to football. You shouldn't have to be number two.'

I blinked back at the screen and then plopped down heavy on the couch. What. The. Hell.

'You deserve to be somebody's number one,'
he continued, sending the texts in short little bursts.
'I want you to find somebody that can make you their everything.'

I think Tyce was trying to be comforting, but I felt even sicker than before.

'Somebody that doesn't run off because he's scared.'

And then,
'Teagan, you there?'

'I'm here,'
I shot back, not sure what else I should say.
'Can we talk about majors again?'

There was a long pause before Tyce responded.

'Tell me about your classes,'
he said, and I just started typing a bunch of nonsense. How Risika liked to wear different color shoes on each feet, how Melia's brother, Loe, had just proposed to his girlfriend, how I hated my discrete mathematics class. I sent him anything and everything I could think of, just to shut him up. If he kept sending me weird messages, I'd break into pieces and I wouldn't know how to put myself back together.

After a while, Tyce stopped texting me back and I knew he'd fallen asleep.

It took about four hours for me to do the same.

I showed up at Melia's place with bags under my eyes and absolutely zero makeup on my face. Not my usual look, but I was too tired to bother with it. I had such terrible insomnia last night, reading and rereading Tyce's texts as I tried to figure out how to feel about them. About him. Four years of resentment and disappointment twisted up with anger and frustration at being used, and then, even more surprising, empathy and understanding.

I had no clue what I was doing.

I missed the kickoff and walked in to see a replay flashing on the screen with Tyce front and center, the commentators screaming in the background.

“… gonna snap it directly to Ballard. Now he looks to throw downfield. There's Winship. Ten … five … end zone! Touchdown, DUCKS! Ballard to Winship, forty yards for the score.” I stared at the screen as Tyce caught the ball and ran it down the field. While everybody else was admiring his athletic prowess, I was checking out his ass in the emerald green pants he was wearing. My heart thumped and throbbed at the sight of him on ESPN, and I couldn't decide if I was proud of him or if it was just … weird. My childhood friend, the guy I'd fucked in the park, sexted with … on TV.

“Sit, sit, sit,” Melia said, scooting off her beanbag chair and offering it to me. The rest of the living room was taken up with the usual suspects: Melia's brother Loe and his girlfriend-turned-fiancée Thina, Mee, Dane, Alton, Nyle, Vienna, and Risika. I now had a face to put to each name, too. I was starting to get the hang of this group. They were chill and easy going, fun to hang out with, simple to get along with.

What wasn't simple was how choked up I got watching Tyce in his uniform. He looked criminally good in it.
I want him to fuck me in it,
I thought and then swallowed hard as I plopped into a beanbag chair.

“Your boy is killing it today,” Risika said as she leaned back and let Alton play with her blonde dreads. I think they were sleeping together, but I wasn't sure. Melia had tried to set me up with the dark haired boy last week, claiming a revenge fuck was what I needed to get over Tyce, but it just wasn't happening. Sex and dating changed relationships, blurred the lines, made things, well,
weird.
I wasn't going there with any of these people.

“He's not my boy,” I said as I reached down and grabbed a frozen burrito, still stuck to the tray it was cooked on and sitting on the floor. They weren't big about utensils around here. “But thanks anyway.” I started stuffing my face with any snack I could get my hands on, watching the game with a dark filter over my brain.

You deserve to be somebody's number one.

Why did he have to say that? I knew he was right; I did deserve that. But his statement also made me wonder, if I was willing to be second, if I was okay with that, could I have him?

I don't want him,
I told myself, but that, that was a lie.

Before I realized what she was doing, Melia had my phone out of my purse and in her hand.

“I want to see that pic you took of me at the party,” she explained absently as I stared like a zombie at her flat screen and watched Kai jump on Tyce in a congratulatory man hug. Huh.

“Sure,” I said and then my eyes snapped open and I lunged for the phone. But it was too late. Melia was watching Tyce's sex video. Her hand clamped over her mouth as I tore the cell from her fingers and tried to shut it off before Tyce could speak.

Too late.

“That was all for you. Because I can't stop thinking about you, Teagan.”

Melia screamed against her hand as Risika leaned over and tried to see what all the commotion was about. I shoved my phone back in my purse and stood up suddenly, skin flushing hot from head to toe. Once again, the cameras were focused on Tyce and his Football God Glory.

“Teagan,” Melia whispered as she dropped her hand to her lap and everybody in the room turned to look at me. “You naughty girl.”

“I should probably go,” I said, but I wasn't getting out of there that easy. I leveled a look on Melia that said
shut the fuck up,
but she just continued to gape up at me.

“He's so in love with you,” she said randomly, confusing the hell out of me. How she got that from a video of Tyce jerking off, I wasn't sure. I glanced over my shoulder and found that I was still the focus of the group's attention, despite the fact that the guy on the TV was screeching again, something about Winship and eighty-seven yards and holy hell isn't he just perfect.

“What's going on?” Alton asked, still touching Risika's neck, rubbing his thumbs along her shoulders. That casual touching, I saw that and suddenly, I just
wanted
it. I wanted someone to touch me and kiss me and hold me. No, no, I wanted
Tyce
to do all of those things. I wanted to feel his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs rubbing along the back of my neck and teasing my hair.

“How can you tell?” I asked Melia as she blinked up at me with her coconut brown eyes.

“It's in his voice,” she said and then shook her head, dark hair flying as she ran her hands down her face. “I can't even believe I just saw that. Tyce Winship's dick.”

“Tyce's … what?!” Risika yelled as she stood up off the couch, Alton's eyes following her all the way. She held out her hand and shook it. “I need to see this. Now.”

“Um, I think we all do,” Melia's friend, Mee, said. “I'm gay and I still need to look at this. What's going on? You're dating Winship? Number eight?”

“I'm not dating anybody,” I said, wondering if it was possible to melt into the floor right then and there. If there'd been a way to do it, to spontaneously combust or something, I would have. “And this is … it's not what it looks like.”

“He loves you,” Melia said again, still half in shock over finding the video, half wanting to relay her cosmic wisdom about love to me. I believed in it about as much as I believed in her ability to read auras. “Hear how his voice gets all husky in there?”

“I don't care,” I said. A lie. I did.

“And you love him, too, don't you?” Melia asked me as I stumbled back over to the beanbag chair and slumped down. If I tried to go for the door, she'd jump me. I knew it. I'd seen her do it to Risika before.

“I don't.” Another lie. A big one. Huge.

I'd loved Tyce Winship since I was four, since I was fourteen, since I literally tripped and fell on him in the park. But I also hated him. And I was confused. And I refused to allow myself to accept any of it because I couldn't have him. I felt like if I reached out and tried to grab him, he'd slip from my fingers and fly away forever. Being friends with him was easier than saying good-bye forever.

“I won't,” I repeated as I watched him throw the ball, his arm muscles bunching with the motion, making me feel tense and twisted inside. But
won't
is a hell of a lot different than
don't,
isn't it?

I would stop myself from pining after him, but it couldn't change what my heart already knew.

When it came to Tyce, I was a lost cause.

I wanted him, but I didn't. He wanted me, but he didn't.

We wanted each other, but we couldn't. Or wouldn't.

I couldn't figure out which.

TYCE:
'On my way home.'

ME:
'Awesome.'

TYCE:
'Go for a run tomorrow?'

ME:
'Nah, I think I hurt my ankle.'

TYCE:
'Seriously? When?'

ME:
'I twisted it running after you.'
DELETE, DELETE, DELETE.
'I twisted it on the steps last night.'

TYCE:
'Damn. Okay.'

Pause.

TYCE:
'Are you doing anything on Saturday?'

ME:
'No, but you are. You're playing the Stanford Cardinals, right?'

TYCE:
'So that's a no then?'

ME:
'Nothing besides watching the game.'

TYCE:
'Perfect. Consider yourself booked. On Saturday, you're mine.'