Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (8 page)

“Could you walk me home, maybe?” Teagan asked suddenly, sweeping some stray strands of red hair away from her lips. “I just … I feel a little unsteady right now.”

“Yeah,” I said, the hot embers of desire in my blood fading to ash. I could feel it cooling, clogging my veins and arteries.
What just happened? I came out here to talk, not to take my childhood friend's virginity.
The worst part of it all, was that I knew I fucked up. That I couldn't be the man she needed me to be. “Yeah I can do that.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and pretended like my legs weren't shaky, like I wasn't at all fazed by what'd just happened between us. The aching pulse between my thighs begged to differ, but I ignored it, clenching my upper arms with my orange fingernails.

The park was deserted, the sky thoroughly inked in black by this point.
How stupid was that? I know better, I do.
Tyce and I could've been caught; we could've gone to
jail.
If we'd been arrested, I could've been charged as a … Never mind. Didn't matter. We didn't get caught, and all I had to deal with now was this sticky weirdness between us.

I stared down at the tips of my sneakers, some ratty old thrift store finds that had definitely seen better days. They looked ridiculous striding next to Tyce's perfect black Nikes. I raised my gaze and stared straight ahead, at the spots of light from the lamps above our heads, the gentle swaying of the trees as they picked up an incoming breeze.
A storm is coming,
I thought absently as we continued to walk in silence.

Tyce kept glancing over at me like he wanted to say something, but then he just looked away and ran a hand over his face. I studied him, the way the wind picked up the espresso dark strands of his hair, tousled it messily around his strong face. His full lower lip was stiff with anger as his blue eyes scanned the horizon and then flicked back my way.

Our gazes met and a warm flush flickered through my body. I could still feel the strange sensation of sharing my body, feel the wetness between my legs. Some of it was blood, I knew. I saw. I reached up and brushed some russet red strands away from my face as we reached the wooden bridge. Across the street from us, Autzen Stadium loomed in the winking twilight, reminding me that Tyce had a game coming up on Saturday.

Saturday.

Today was Friday.

I spun to face him, pausing in the middle of the bridge.

“You have a game tomorrow?” I asked, wondering what he was doing out here, running around on dark forest trails and … screwing girls against the trunks of trees. I ran my fingers through my hair as he studied my face with a guarded expression. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what he was thinking, so I just stared back, right into those blue eyes of his. But … blue wasn't the right word. No, Tyce's eyes defied description. They were the color of a deep breath, a heavy sigh. Rimmed in gold, flecked with shards of hazel. And his lashes, they were dark and long, curving up against his bronzed skin.

“Yeah,” he said, pushing his fingers into the pockets on his sweatpants. His gaze was penetrating, like his body was not five minutes ago. I dropped my gaze to the skull tattoo on the center of his chest. With the black tank he was wearing, I couldn't see much more than the eyes above the neckline.

I waited a moment, but I wasn't sure exactly
what
it was that I was waiting for, so I turned and started walking again. I noticed Tyce didn't invite me to the game or even ask if I was already planning on going. That hurt, really hurt.

I pretended it didn't.

“Should you really be out running the night before a big game?”

“Not exactly,” he admitted, reaching up to run his fingers through the back of his short cropped hair. “But Kai's my roommate, so I know he won't say anything.”

“He seems like a nice guy,” I said as my Fitbit started beeping again, like my own personal little lie detector.
Your heart rate is up,
it warned me.
Whatever you're doing, bring it down a notch.
Except I couldn't just walk off this strange feeling in my chest.
First kiss.
Check.
Virginity.
Check. Two things off my bucket list that I hadn't expected to check off so quickly.

“You should stay away from him,” Tyce said, irritating me with his know-it-all tone. “You should stay away from the whole team. They're nothing but a bunch of man whores.” Tyce paused and the awkwardness between us grew in leaps and bounds, like a canyon opening up in the earth. There was no bridge, no crossing this divide.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“This is good enough,” I said as we paused at the end of the block, across the street from my apartment complex. “You can let me off here.” I made myself smile a smile I didn't feel. “You should get home and rest for the big game.”

I started to turn away, wishing he'd reach out and take my arm, hold me close for a minute.

The seconds ticked by as I waited for the light to change, so I could cross. There weren't any cars, but I waited anyway. When I heard his footsteps moving in the opposite direction, it took everything I had inside of me not to cry.

To my credit, I made it home with two dry eyes.

According to a quick Google search, the game tonight started at seven-thirty on ESPN. There was a part of me that wanted to watch, see Tyce in his element. The other part of me just wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep it all away.

I decided on a compromise, pulling up the ebook versions of my class texts and diving into homework. That computer and information science degree wasn't going to earn itself. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to be a makeup artist, but that was about as likely as my mother becoming a dancer, something she'd talked about right up until the day she died. As much as I wanted to toss my laptop aside, trade out my keyboard for a palette of color, I wasn't about to walk away from this opportunity.

I shifted in my chair, feeling an uncomfortable ache between my legs.
Ouch.
Last night … that had hurt more than I wanted to admit. I wasn't thinking clearly in that moment. I was so desperate for Tyce to
finally
see me, to look at me like a woman instead of a little girl. And then he held me so close, and he kissed me so fiercely, like a promise. I felt that protective instinct in him that had made me feel so safe when I was younger.

I should've asked him to stop.

I adjusted myself again and then sighed when the ache started throbbing with a vengeance. I slammed the top on my computer and stood up, stretching my arms above my head and doing my best to put last night out of my mind. The whole situation was just weird, off, wrong. Both Tyce and I knew that, but we did it anyway.

I let him use me.

I gritted my teeth and opened the door to the hallway, the sound of Chelease's shower escaping through the crack in the bathroom door. The noise of the water made me feel sick as I remembered scrubbing the blood off my thighs, washing off … everything else.

“Ugh,” I growled, running my fingers through my hair, pacing a tight circle in the living room. Tyce might've been able to walk away and pretend that last night didn't mean shit, but that was a first for me. That moment in the park was going to be burned into my brain forever, a memory, a moment that I couldn't wipe away. “Fuck you, Tyce,” I mumbled as I headed into the kitchen and tried to come up with a guilty pleasure snack that would erase all of this crap from my brain.

When my phone started buzzing in my pocket, I pulled it out and found an incoming call from Melia Pham, a girl I'd clicked with during orientation. She was bubbly and wild and fizzy, totally spastic but a lot of fun to be around. We'd hit it off right away.

“Hey,” I said, listening to the buzz in the background. “What's up?”

“I've been calling you for days,” Melia said, the sound of a can popping open on her end of the line. “Seriously, all week. Don't you ever check your messages?”

“Not really,” I laughed as I pulled out a jar of Nutella and jammed a spoon into the dark creamy surface of the chocolate hazelnut spread. One hundred calories per tablespoon, and I was going to eat as much as I damn well pleased today. It felt like an appropriate after-virginity treat. I closed my eyes as a flush came over me and my body responded to the memory of Tyce. His cock was long and thick, stretching me to that fine line of pleasure and pain. I'd wanted him to stop as vehemently as I'd wanted him to keep going. “Why? Are you really so desperate to talk to little old me? You know, you could've come to tech writing if you'd wanted to see me.”

“It was the second week, Nerd Girl. Nobody goes to the second week of class.”

“I can assure you, nobody's ever called me Nerd Girl before. Like, ever. I once set the teacher's lounge on fire when I was in junior high.”

“Wow, angry teenage angst much?”

“You have no idea,” I said as I scooped a big, luscious lump of Nutella on my spoon and flicked my tongue out for a lick. Tyce had been from the wrong side of the tracks; I'd lived there all my life. We both had anger problems and daddy issues and a serious lack of parental supervision, money and resources. But we'd had each other's backs, or so I'd thought.

He certainly had my back last night,
I thought as the sensation of Tyce's hands gripping my ass popped up in my brain. That feeling was followed immediately by that picture perfect shot of his bronzed fingers gripping Jia Yang's flat white ass.

The chocolate cooled on my tongue, turned to ash.

I tossed the spoon in the sink and tried not to drown under the sudden wash of sadness.

Tyce Winship. He wasn't the boy from my memories anymore. He was a selfish, arrogant asshat that used me. I used him, too, I guess, but it still stung. He fucked me and then he walked away like it was nothing. I didn't want to sound like the stereotypical girl from the movies, acting like sex automatically meant something between us, but … well, it kind of did.

“Are you still there?” Melia asked, waiting patiently for me to go through my mental hula hoops. “Because I'm having a tailgate party in my shitty apartment. Please come over and cheer on the Ducks with me, eat cheap hot dogs and drink cheap beer?”

My stomach twisted up and I could suddenly feel the food I'd eaten rise to my throat.

“As long as you don't mind me ogling Tyce Winship's perfect ass the whole time, I think it'll be fun. I'm inviting some of my other friends over. You could mingle, meet some men.” I didn't respond, trying to clear the dryness from my mouth. “Or women. I don't judge. I have a few cute bi friends and one seriously sexy lesbo BFF.”

“You have no idea how appealing that sounds right now,” I joked, taking a deep breath and putting the cap back on the Nutella. “But I have a lot of homework—”

“Bullshit. Put on something cute and get your butt over here. If nothing else, you can veg out on chips and dip and smoke some weed. Hurry up, I'm texting you the address.” And then she hung up on me.

“Great,” I said as my phone buzzed and I plugged the address into my GPS. At least Melia's place was in walking distance. I didn't exactly have access to a car. With a sigh, I collected my thoughts, squared my shoulders … and prepared myself to beg Chelease for yet another outfit.