“What did you do last night?” a guy by the name of Peter asks his friend Braden.
Cole and I aren’t close to the guys on the swim team like we were back in Collins. We keep our distance. They don’t try to be our friends, and we don’t go out of our way to be theirs.
“Seth came over,” he answers, sitting down on the bench a few spots down from me. “He brought his hot little girlfriend with him.”
Cole looks over his shoulder at me. I ignore him and keep listening to the guys.
“Damn, the high school bitch he’s fucking?” the guy asks.
He nods.
“Fuck, I’d be all over that every chance I got.”
He laughs. “Yeah, it was weird, though. She just sat there and drank while playing video games. They didn’t even talk much.”
Cole throws his towel into his locker and steps into his jeans without even bothering with his boxers.
“You should have jumped on that. I bet he would have shared her with you. I hear they have an open relationship.”
My hands fist. Is that what you call it? Then why did he get so pissed when he heard she was sleeping with me? I’ve seen him in class since then, but he’s sat down on the front row. He’s the last to show up to class and the first one to run out once the professor releases us. He thinks he can run from me, but he can’t.
“Maybe that’s what he was waiting on,” the guy jokes.
“I know I’d share if she was mine. I’ll take that sweet ass while you take her mouth.”
And I’ve heard all I need to know. What the fuck has Seth been telling his friends? She was a fucking virgin, so I know they haven’t done much. Hell, he’s never even eaten her out. And I saw the way she looked at my cock. She’d never seen one before. What makes these guys think that he would share her?
I stand and turn to face him, but Cole grabs my upper arm. “Don’t.”
I look over at him and growl. “What if it was Austin?”
He lets go of my arm and nods. “I got your back.”
“Fuck that mouth, I want her pussy …”
I step forward, gripping the guy’s hair, and I rip him from where he sits on the bench and shove him headfirst into the lockers.
_______________
“What the hell happened?” Coach snaps as we all gather in his office.
I only got a few punches in before he came running into the locker room and broke it up. The bastards got off lucky.
“They jumped us,” Peter barks.
I snort. Fucking rats. I place my bloody hands behind my back and step forward. “They were discussing in much detail how they planned to, for lack of a better word, fuck a girl. At the same time. A girl who I know, Coach. And I didn’t feel comfortable listening to their derogatory comments. Especially since she is underage.”
Coach’s face instantly goes red. Our fathers taught us to do our research so before I took the scholarship at the University of Texas, I did some on Coach here. He has three sons and once had a daughter. She was an all-star athlete. Head cheerleader, played soccer, softball and ran track. One Saturday morning, she left her parents’ house for a run. They called the police three hours later when she didn’t return. Two days later, they found her body twenty feet off the running path. She was completely naked. The man had sexually assaulted her and strangled her with a shoelace. He pulled it so tight that it was still embedded in her neck. She was only a junior in high school. The report went on to say that her boyfriend told the police to look at Rodger Simmons, a swimmer at UT, because he had been calling and harassing her. I knew I wanted to come here when I read that he left town and never returned. Never to be heard from again. Of course, Coach was a suspect in his disappearance, but it’s all about what you can prove, not what you think. That’s why he’s here with us, and Rodger’s rotting corpse was never found.
“Coach …” Braden begins.
“Shut the fuck up!” he orders, placing his fisted hands on his desk and leaning over. “If you want to keep your scholarships, you will not breathe a word of it to anyone. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Coach,” we all answer in unison.
“Get the hell out,” he snaps.
We all turn to exit, but he stops us. “Except for Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Biggs.”
Cole and I turn back around, and he points at the two seats in front of his desk. “Sit.”
We do as we’re told.
He walks behind his desk and picks up two manila envelopes. “I’ve read your files, boys. And I didn’t like what I saw.” He looks at Cole. “You were arrested back in Collins for shooting your girlfriend and killing her stepmother.”
I watch Cole’s body go rigid out of the corner of my eye, and he grips the armrest on his chair. He still only wears his jeans. He didn’t have time to put a shirt on when I started throwing punches, and he jumped in.
“I was taken in for questioning, Coach. And released after proof of my innocence was found.”
“Ah, yes. And the friend of yours who committed the crime has never been seen again.” If I’m not mistaken, I would say Coach looks at him with pride. It takes a lot of planning and patience these days to kill a man and not get caught. If only he knew we did it by the seat of our pants and within minutes after we found him with Austin’s body. Sometimes you just have to work with what you got. Then he looks at me. “I have no doubt you helped him.” He quirks a brow.
I just cross my arms over my chest, and he nods once as if he understands that my loyalty lies with Cole.
He goes on. “Your father shipped you off to boarding school at the age of ten.” My teeth grind. “Wanna tell me why they kicked you out after three months?”
“They said I was unteachable,” I answer honestly. “And they believed I was possessed.”
Cole chuckles, and I smile. It’s the truth. My father sent me to an all-boys boarding school in Switzerland. I found him in the kitchen with his hand around my mother’s throat, and I ran at him with a knife. After he beat the shit out of me, he shipped me away. The man was afraid I was gonna kill him in his sleep. My mom begged me not to. It wasn’t until years later, once I was older, that I understood why she was with him and put up with his shit—money. Bitch loves money as much as he loves having his options of pussy.
They had it out for me the moment I arrived at the boarding school, so I had to live up to my reputation, of course. I played a few pranks here and there, which all landed me in deep water. But the final straw was when I beat the shit out of three boys at once in the boys’ bathroom. It didn’t matter that they jumped me, and I kicked their ass. They kicked my ass out. Even my father’s money couldn’t keep me there. They had a no tolerance rule and told him I was the spawn of Satan. If they only knew how true that was.
He gives us his back and looks out his floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooks the courtyard of the university. “Your accolades spoke higher than your behaviors.” He spins back around and stares at both of us. “Don’t make me regret giving you both this chance.”
“Yes, Coach,” we both say.
He nods and sits down in his chair. “Go home, boys, and come back tomorrow ready to swim until your muscles ache to the point you’ll have to crawl out of the pool.”