Playing Hard: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (33 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

RILEY

Ava’s standing in the street, staring at me.

I’d finally managed to get myself out of the blonde girl’s grip and saw her standing there in the kitchen doorway, mouth open, eyes wet. I’d called out to her, but she hadn’t stopped. I knew I’d never catch her if I had to barge my way through the people in the house, so I jumped the fence and waited for her here.

There’s tears on her face, and her cheeks are flushed. She looks about as upset and angry as I’ve ever seen her.

“What did you see?” I blurt, without thinking.

Ava just keeps staring at me for a moment, before her lip quirks a little, and she shakes her head.

“I saw enough,” she says.

“It wasn’t what it looked like.”

Hell. Just trot out the corniest line in the book, Knox. That’ll work.

But in this case, it happens to be true.

Ava closes her eyes, then opens them again.

“You still have her lipstick on your face, Riley.”

“What?” I lift my fingers to my lips, feeling the oily smear of makeup.
Ah, fuck.
“No, Ava —
she
kissed
me
. I told her I wasn’t into it.”

Ava says nothing. Some idiots drive past us in their car, screaming and honking the horn, throwing beer cans out of the window. The people sitting on the house steps all scream in return, and there’s the sound of glass breaking on the sidewalk.

I’m still mostly lit and it’s hard enough for me to find the right words to say even when I’m sober. Now I’m trying to find some half-way plausible thing to say while I’m drunk
and
Ava’s standing in front of me, probably thinking I’m complete scum.

“Ava, honestly,” I say. “You didn’t see what happened. She was coming onto me all night, and I kept telling her I wasn’t interested. She followed me out there. I was telling her to back off when she kissed me.”

I watch as Ava heaves in a deep breath.

“Riley, I —”

Whatever she’s going to say, she doesn’t get far. Because in the next second, Bryce Lennox and one of his hangers-on have come storming down the steps of the house, Bryce shoving people out the way as he goes.

“Hey —
hey
,” he shouts, stumbling a little when he gets to the bottom step.

Oh great — he’s totally drunk.

As if he wasn’t annoying enough already.

“Bryce,
go away
,” Ava says. “I already told you —”

“Shut up,” Bryce slurs, not looking at her. Instead, he just fixes his glassy eyes on me.

I bunch my fists. Rage builds in my stomach. How dare he talk to Ava like that? “What the fuck did you just say to her?”

“I’ll say whatever the hell I like,” he shouts, raising his hand and jabbing his pointed finger in my direction. “You shouldn’t even be talking to me, you’re just a monkey who can throw a ba —”

That’s it. I don’t know why, but that’s it.

All the tension that’s been building up in me for the past few hours suddenly explodes out of me, and I charge forward, rushing him, driving my shoulder into his chest and sending him over backward.

Bryce is a big guy and he probably plays some rich asshole sport like lacrosse, but he’s no match for me at all — he goes over onto his ass like butter, and I swing my fist, smashing it into the side of his face.

Bryce struggles underneath me, trying to get some leverage to throw me off, but I don’t give him a chance, punching him again.

I can hear people gathering around us, clapping and cheering us on, chanting drunkenly for a fight.

In my rage, though, I’ve forgotten Bryce’s friend — at least, until his foot slams into my chest, knocking me backward and leaving me feeling a little winded. It takes more than that to shake me, though, and I immediately begin getting up, ready to fight them both if I have to.

But then I feel Ava’s hand on my arm, pulling me back.

“Riley,
stop it
,” she’s saying to me. “Don’t — you know what’ll happen. You’ll only get in trouble.”

Her voice is soft, but somehow I can still hear it over the noise of the party and the screaming and chanting of the people who’re still hanging out for a fight.

I close my eyes, trying to clear my head of the mist of rage that has clouded it.

She’s right. I’m already on thin ice — if I get caught fighting, the consequences for me will be way worse than for Bryce. I could lose my scholarship. I could miss out on the draft. The only thing that’ll happen to Bryce is… maybe a slap on the wrist. If he’s unlucky.

Ava’s fingers squeeze my arm.

“I’m okay,” I tell her. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m sorry too. I was… I never should have said what I said. I’m sorry.”

The only thing I want to do right now is sweep her up in my arms and kiss her, but I don’t know if she’d like that. I still don’t know if she believes me about the girl coming onto me, or whether she’s cool with us going public — for real this time.

But then, I realize, I just don’t care.

So I kiss her.

She opens her mouth eagerly, drawing my tongue in, like it’s meant to be there. Our tongues twine together like they were made for each other, her shoulders fitting in my arms perfectly. We’re like two puzzle pieces — we fit. We belong. There’s no question about it.

I can vaguely hear rude comments and hooted yells from the onlookers, but I don’t care. All I want to do is kiss Ava and keep kissing her until everything else gets blotted out. Bryce, the fucking party, the whole stupid mess we’ve gotten ourselves into by agreeing to this ridiculous fake dating situation.

None of it has anything to do with us.

Ava melts against me, her hands sliding up my sides to grip my body tightly, her fingers digging into my muscles. I love the way it feels — like I belong to her.

Just like she belongs to me.

She’s my girl.

Mine
.

Nothing’s ever gonna change that.

I can feel my cock twitch in my pants, coming back to life at the taste of her, the smell of her. The feel of her lips beneath mine. Her hair slides against my hand as I cup her cheek, tilting her head so I can drive my tongue even further into her sweet mouth.

She whimpers, and the sound goes straight to my dick.

When we finally break for air, I look down into her deep blue eyes.

“Fuck,” I mutter. For some reason, it’s the only word I can muster. Not especially romantic or anything, but somehow it conveys everything I want to say — how confused and conflicted I’ve been, and how much better it feels to be able to kiss her again. And this time I don’t care who sees us.

“Yeah,” she whispers, as if she understands me perfectly.

She raises a hand to my face and strokes it lightly over my cheek, sending little electric ripples down my spine.

Hell, if this keeps up, I’m going to have to get somewhere private with Ava sometime very soon.

Ava keeps looking into my eyes, until, a second later, we both suddenly hear a massive
BANG
from behind us.

Turning, I hear Ava gasp as we both see that someone has heaved a couch out of one of the upstairs windows, off the balcony and onto the road below. It’s also on fire —
I guess the stories were true after all
, I have time to think — a second before a bunch of drunken lunatics all start pouring out of the house, dancing around their impromptu bonfire, screaming at the top of their lungs.

“Holy
shit
,” Ava whispers. “Does this happen at every party?”

“Uh, no,” I say. Honestly, this would probably be a good time for us both to leave. I take Ava’s hand, getting ready to run with her as fast as we can, before the sound of a chopper drifts from overhead.

Fuck.
The party must have spread way farther down the block if the cops are surveying it from the air now — this has gotten
way
out of hand. I don’t need another second of this.

“Come on,” I tell Ava. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Yeah, good idea,” she agrees, slotting her hand into mine.

We don’t even have time to take a step before we hear it.

Over the sound of the approaching chopper and the screaming of the dancing bonfire assholes, there’s the sound of a revving car, and the screech of tires on asphalt. People have been zooming around all night, chucking things out of car windows and yelling, but this… for some reason, this is different.

The smell of burning rubber permeates the air, and I turn just in time to see headlights flashing, glaring directly into my eyes.

“What the
fuck
—”

The car does a pass, and I see… what the
hell
, I see Bryce Lennox’s infuriated face, smeared with blood from where I punched him, glaring out the window at me, one finger aimed squarely in my direction.

He’s
way
too drunk to be operating any kind of vehicle under any circumstances right now, and with so many people running around in the street, someone’s definitely going to get hurt.

But then, as he hits the brakes and fishtails the car, I realize something: he’s only trying to hurt
me
.

There’s a squeal of tires again and the car suddenly leaps forward — it’s the replacement Maybach his parents got him after he totaled the last one — tearing across the street and heading straight for where Ava and I are standing.

“Oh shit —
oh shit
—”

He’s trying to hit us with his fucking
car.

Without thinking, I bundle Ava up in my arms, lifting her off the ground before diving as far away as I can from where we were just standing. I hit the ground with my shoulder, hard, and then keep moving, rolling us over the ground. I hear Ava gasp as I’m forced to push her against the ground to try to get a little more distance — but then, a foot or so away from us, Bryce’s car mounts the sidewalk, roaring up over the place we were standing just a moment before. I see flying sparks as the car’s axle grinds against the curb, but it doesn’t stop.

For whatever reason, Bryce seems to have forgotten to hit the brake, and the car keeps going, shooting across the sidewalk before busting straight through the fence of the house.

Scrambling up, I pick Ava up and stare through the broken-down fence palings. Bryce’s Maybach is still going, like it’s got a life of its own, leaping down through the yard as partygoers scream and try to get out of the way.

The car doesn’t stop until it lands, with an almighty splash, in the pool.

Water goes everywhere, dousing people, knocking down some kegs, and washing away the flimsy plastic pool furniture.

“Oh my God,” Ava murmurs.

I look down at her to see her eyes wide, her hand raised to her mouth. She’s gone totally pale.

“This is insane,” I say. And it is. Bryce just tried to kill us. And now he’s flailing around in the pool, screaming and ranting. “Come on, we better go check if anyone’s hurt.”

“Shouldn’t you get out of here?” Ava asks, and I can feel her shaking a little against me. “I mean, it could be trouble for you to get caught here, right? The cops are coming —”

I shake my head firmly. “I know first aid,” I say. “I did a little as part of training. C’mon, there might be someone who needs help.”

Ava licks her lips, nodding. “I did first aid when I was a camp counselor. But I should call 911.”

I point to the dozen or so people standing around, already on their phones. “I think it’s taken care of.”

“That, or they’re just filming it to prove they were here,” Ava says, shaking her head.

“Possibly. Still, I think it’s probably taken care of.” To be honest, I wouldn’t put it past a lot of these people to just be standing around filming when they could be calling an ambulance — but I can hear a couple of people giving the address of the house, so I assume it’s done.

“Come on,” Ava says, taking my hand.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

AVA

“For the last time, Dad, that’s
not
what happened!”

I look up at my father, wondering why on earth he’s being so infuriating about this. No matter what I tell him he doesn’t seem to
get
it: Riley wasn’t the one causing trouble that night.

Dad glowers at me from beneath his eyebrows, hands clenched on the table in front of him.

“Then what did happen? As far as I’m concerned, anyone at that so-called party — though
riot
may be the better term for it — gets exactly what they deserve. If Riley’s scholarship could get revoked, then I’d see it as justice done.”

“But
I
was there, Dad,” I say, challengingly. “Do you think I deserve to be punished too?”

Dad frowns. “That’s different,” he says. “Though don’t think I’m pleased about it. Do you know how bad this looks for me, especially with the election almost here? That
my daughter
was attending a party that had to be broken up by the police? My God, the damage control Murray’s had to do, not to mention the —”

“Dad,
please
,” I interrupt him. “Just listen to me.”

I don’t know if it’ll do any good. But I have to try. Ever since it got found out that Riley — along with several of his teammates — had been at that crazy party, things have been non-stop. There’s been article after article questioning the culture of Blaketon’s football team, and whether the players involved should be allowed to play next season. It doesn’t matter that most of them weren’t involved in the craziness. Omar hadn’t even been there when the cops came: he’d been helping a friend walk home. But it’d been too late — he’d already been photographed dancing there, and it was all over social media. A few of Riley’s other teammates who I don’t know are also in deep shit over it. But Riley’s in the deepest shit of all, given that everyone knew he was already walking on thin ice over his partying.

And Riley
could
have just run off and left, and wouldn’t have been seen by the cops there. But instead he decided to stay, and see if there were people who might have been hurt by Bryce Lennox’s stupidity with the car.

“Dad,” I say. “It wasn’t
like
that. Riley wasn’t causing any trouble — he went to the party, but he didn’t know it was going to turn crazy like that. He didn’t do anything. In fact, he wanted to leave when it got so… so out of control.” I start to get a little angry. “And anyway, he was there helping people! Why isn’t anyone asking why the hell Bryce was trying to run us over with his car?”

“It hasn’t been established that that’s what actually happened yet,” my father says. “It’s Riley’s word against Bryce’s.”

I stare at him. “It
isn’t
Riley’s word against Bryce’s. Bryce’s
car
was in the
pool
— how the hell did it get there if he wasn’t trying to hit us? And besides,
I’m
telling you that’s what happened. I was there, as you keep pointing out. Remember?”

“Bryce says it wasn’t him driving.”

I throw my hands up. My father isn’t listening to a word I’m saying.

“Of course he would say that!” I’m seriously close to yelling now. “But he
was.
He and Riley got into a fight, and he was furious when Riley beat him.”

My father nods. “Well, that part you both definitely agree on. Riley admits to punching him.”

“Only because Bryce provoked him! He’s been baiting Riley all year, trying to cause trouble. Yes, Riley punched him, but only because Bryce was being such a dick!”

My father glowers across the table at me. “You’re being very defensive of this Riley Knox,” he says. “Why?”

I feel my breath catch in my throat. For a long moment, I simply stare at my father, wide-eyed.

I could deny everything, like I did last time. I could tell him the only reason I care is because I want to see justice done — that I’m sick of Bryce getting away with things, and Riley and I are
friends
, nothing more, since we’ve been forced to spend so much time together. But isn’t that what caused all this trouble in the first place? Me not being honest about things? If only I’d been straight with everyone, none of this would have happened.

And besides which, I’m sick of lying. I’m sick of all the tangled half-truths and deceptions, and pretending to be something I’m not. I’m sick of wanting what I can’t have, or trying to live my life according to other people’s rules.

“Riley and I — we’ve become — we —” I stutter out. I have to take a deep breath, and try to collect myself. I don’t exactly know what word it is that I’m looking for. “We’re together. Romantically, I mean.”

I don’t know if that’s the best way to put it, seeing as we haven’t yet had any chance to even
talk
about where we want to go from here, or what we really mean to each other. I only know that somehow, over the past few months, this has become more than just sex.

That’s what it’s
not
. But as to what it
is
… I just don’t know. And I’m not sure Riley does either.

My father stares at me from across the table. “
What?
”

I gulp, and stare back. “You heard me.”

There’s a long, unbearable silence, while my father simply stares at me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. His face has become a stone mask.

Eventually, I can’t stand it anymore. “Dad —”

He cuts me off, shaking his head. “You told me on the phone that nothing was happening between you two. Was that a lie?”

“I’m sorry,” I say desperately. “I — I didn’t know what to say. I was so worried you’d be angry. I didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

“So you
lied?
To me? Your
father?
”

I can’t look at him anymore. I hang my head, ashamed. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you love him?”

I hiss in a breath, shocked. I wasn’t expecting that.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly, once I’ve had time to collect myself. Part of me wants to tell him
yes, I love him
, but we’ve been trapped in such a hothouse environment that it’s impossible to tell what we’d be like as a couple in a normal one — whether we’d last, or whether things would fizzle out. I desperately want that not to be the case, but I’m trying to be completely honest, for the first time ever.

Dad looks like he’s grinding his teeth. “He was told explicitly that this was not to be —
you
were told —”

“I know, Dad,” I say. “But it happened, all right? You can’t control everything. I didn’t know — I didn’t plan it. I even thought about breaking things off before we… got together, but I didn’t
want
to. I
wanted
to be with Riley.”

Dad is still glowering menacingly, head lowered like a bull, looking every inch the Marine colonel. “At least, that’s what he has you believing.”

“What?” I can’t keep the shocked tone from my voice. Surely Dad can’t mean what I think he means?

“Everyone knows about that boy’s reputation,” he says. “The bed-hopping, the partying. It’s why he had to do this in the first place. Are you really telling me he didn’t have to talk you into it? That he didn’t manipulate you?”

I feel my mouth drop open in shock. “What are you
talking
about?” I finally lose my temper, raising my voice. “Of course that’s not what happened. Are you really going to sit there and tell me Riley… manipulated me? You weren’t even there!” I close my eyes, clenching my fists, and try to breathe slow. Yelling isn’t going to get me anywhere with my dad. He can out-yell me any day. “Dad, you’re always saying how smart I am, and how I can do anything I set my mind to. Don’t you think I’d know what I’m doing here, too? That I can make up my own mind about this?”

Dad looks at me, eyes full of pain. “I just want to protect you.”

“I know you do,” I tell him. “But I don’t
need
protecting. Not now. And even if I
am
making a mistake, don’t you think I deserve to find that out for myself? To live my life the way I want to, and learn my own lessons?”

Dad closes his eyes. “Ever since your mother died —”

“I
know
, Dad.” And I do. I know he just wants to keep me safe. But he can’t. Not in this. “And I know you’re only doing what you think is best for me. But please — trust me now.”

I bite my bottom lip, waiting for his answer. I don’t think I have him convinced at all. But — what’s the worst that could happen to me? I get my heart broken?

Dad doesn’t look at me.

“I need time to think,” is the only thing he says, before he gets up and leaves the room.