Thinking of Carson made me remember we’d put the leftover Chinese food in my fridge. Score! I wandered out into the kitchen to retrieve it. As I was dumping what was left of the General Tso’s chicken onto a plate, I heard Lucy rustling around in her room. Huh. Rehearsal should have ended by now, which meant she was supposed to be on her way to New York.
“Did you forget something, Lucy?” I called. It must have been important if she’d come back for it. She’d been so eager to get on the road that she had even considered sneaking out of rehearsal early.
I stuck my plate in the microwave, hit the reheat button, then walked toward Lucy’s room. Spying her phone-charger cord on the couch, I backtracked to grab it. “Your charger is out here!” Ever since the cord she normally kept in her car went missing, she’d been taking this one with her everywhere, at least when she remembered it. But she would definitely need it for a solo eight-hour road trip at night.
I got to her door just as it flung open, hitting me with a smack. I yelped, putting a hand to my forehead, where there was sure to be a mark. “What the hell?” I knew Lucy was excited for New York, but cheese on a cracker. She didn’t have to maim me.
Instead of Lucy’s chagrined apology, I heard a grunt. I stepped back, and my eyes widened at the sight of a man I didn’t recognize standing in the doorway of Lucy’s room. His dark eyes locked onto mine, and I backpedaled, but there was a wall at my back. “You’re not Lucy,” I whispered, which was the most idiotic thing I could have said, because no shit.
The man snapped out of his stupor and slammed into me, flinging his elbow into my temple. My head knocked back into the wall, then everything went dark.
***
Carson
“FLECK! WHAT THE hell are you doing?”
I stopped in my tracks at the assistant coach’s shout and surveyed my teammates. Damn it. I had run the wrong route. I had never made such a rookie mistake, even when I was a rookie. The playbook was the one book I didn’t mind studying.
I jogged back to the line of scrimmage. “My bad, Coach.” Fuck. After the hard loss to Miami, the last thing I needed was for Coach Coyle to think I was incompetent.
Wyatt stood with his hands on his hips. “You’re supposed to run the burst four route.”
“I know,” I muttered.
He shook his head and handed the ball to the center.
Jake clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. It’s the first mistake you’ve made in a long time.”
It was a stupid mistake, though, because that route was beyond basic. The truth was I’d been off all practice. My personal life had never affected my game before. True, it was only practice, but I practiced like I played—hard. And I didn’t mess up easy stuff. I couldn’t seem to get my shit together because my mind was too crowded with visions of Becca in a wet T-shirt.
Ignorance is bliss. Too bad I couldn’t go back to being ignorant of how she’d looked in that wet shirt. Jesus. It wasn’t like I’d never seen her in a bathing suit before, but something about that T-shirt was getting to me.
Plus, there was the whole revelation that my feelings for her were far from platonic. I’d always cared about her—deeply—but I hadn’t realized until now that the reason I was so fiercely protective of her wasn’t because she was like my little sister. The shock of seeing her soaking wet like that had broken illusions I hadn’t even realized I was clinging to, but now I couldn’t go back.
I wanted her. Not just her body but her heart, soul, and everything in between.
Fifteen minutes later—and fifteen minutes past when practice was supposed to end—Coach Coyle called it. I started stripping off my equipment on the way to the locker room, eager to shower off the stench of my poor performance. It was a disgrace. I’d always said I was only good at one thing, so it really sucked when I couldn’t even manage to do that well.
Normally, I stuck around to shoot the shit with Jake, but I wasn’t in the mood. He would tell me to shake it off, and I would have to stop myself from telling him to go to hell. When I was in a foul mood, I didn’t want to hear any Pollyanna bullshit. I was doing us both a favor by going off to sulk on my own.
I swung through a drive-through on the way home. Maybe that was part of my problem. My diet had been horrible lately, and I wasn’t taking care of myself as well as I normally did during the season. But just like the blindfold had been removed from my eyes last night at Becca’s, I couldn’t delude myself about this either. I’d been utterly distracted at practice, too busy thinking about Becca and wondering if she’d figured out why I left her place like a bat out of hell.
That wasn’t the only Becca thought I was having, though. I couldn’t stop thinking about how her curves fit against my chest or how her nipples felt. God… her nipples. Payback is a bitch. I’d started the semester with an incident of Becca being preoccupied with my nipples, and now I couldn’t stop thinking about hers. Though she had the better end of the deal since I’d never seen her topless.
Christ. Part of me thanked God that Roman wasn’t with us at VVU, but the other part wished he were. If he knew what I was thinking, he would kick my ass, and I would let him because I deserved it. I was supposed to protect Becca from dirtbags like me. I didn’t deserve her and had nothing to offer her, but the thought of seeing her with someone else made me want to punch something… or someone. Namely, the faceless guy I was imagining.
When my phone rang and Becca’s name popped up, I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry despite the fact that I’d just downed half of the super-size soda from my food order. Play it cool.
“Hey, Bec, what’s up?” As the words came out of my mouth, I wondered why she was calling. Normally, we texted. Shit. I hadn’t sent her the paper she’d agreed to read for me. She hated when I waited until the last minute, and to be fair, it was a shitty thing to do when she was doing me a favor.
“Carson, are you busy?” Her voice was shaky, immediately setting me on edge. Even if I were busy, the tone of her voice would make me drop everything.
“What do you need?”
“Can you come over? As quickly as you can?”
“What’s wrong?” My heart thudded in my chest. Becca had never sounded like this before. Something was not right.
“I… Just come. Please.”
I hung an illegal U-turn. “I’m on my way.” I tried not to let my imagination run wild, but when I got closer to her apartment, I saw flashing lights in front of her building. Oh, fuck.
I floored it, wishing I still had the Camaro so I could take the turns without slowing down. Still, my tires squealed as I skidded to a stop next to the source of the flashing lights—an ambulance. Two cop cars were parked beside it, but their lights were off. Two officers leaned against the hood of one cruiser, chatting. Their nonchalance should have calmed me, but it didn’t. It took a lot to rattle a cop, but that didn’t mean the situation wasn’t serious.
Becca called. That means she’s okay. If something had happened to her, she wouldn’t have been able to call. Shit. It must be her roommate. Relief filled me, making me feel like an ass. It wasn’t as if I wanted something bad to happen to Lucy, but I wanted even more for Becca to be safe. Becca came first. Always.