Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 125852 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125852 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
“What the fuck?” Brady laughs, looking up at me as he drops down to put on his shoes.
“You’re like hot jock mixed with the naughty pool boy. Like Scott Eastwood, the Suicide Squad and The Longest Ride versions mashed together. But somehow even hotter.”
“Somehow, huh?” He climbs to his feet, making a show of running his hands down his torso and doing a little stripper hip roll.
“Okay, Magic Mike. Save it for the dance floor.” I head for the door, and Brady reaches past me, tugging it open.
Once outside, I let out a little yawn and Brady laughs, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “Food first?”
“Food first.”
The two of us head over to the small pizza place across the road, and just as we’re walking through the doors, the others call, saying they’re starving too.
Forty-five minutes later, we’re sitting on the patio of the place with our best friends, a couple pitchers of beer being passed between us and three empty pizza trays.
We never make it to the party.
And I forget to remember that this time last year, I was like Ari and Payton and had a man I considered my own.
I’m oh for two at college.
Here’s to hoping junior year won’t make it three.
CHAPTER SIX
Brady
The treadmill slows as I switch it into cool down mode, and I tug my earbuds from my ears, letting the wires hang from the lip of my hoodie. The gym was pretty empty the first forty or so minutes I was here, but people started shuffling in about twenty minutes ago, and in another twenty, there will be so many that some will be waiting around for certain machines. Yet another reason I like to be the first through the doors each morning.
That and I don’t sleep all that much. When I was younger, my mom would have to give me melatonin to get me to pass out, and even then, it still took me a few hours of staring at the dark ceiling and counting the number of times the fan went around before I’d pass out. It didn’t matter how early I woke that day or how much I ran around and let out energy, my brain just never could quite shut itself off.
Now that I’m older, it’s not so much that it’s hard to fall asleep but hard to stay asleep. Hence the four a.m. mental wake-up call.
I’m at the gym before five every day and gone before most even know I was here. It’s funny, even Coach questioned me a couple months into my first season here freshman year, asked if I was skipping out on the weight room and my mandated workout plan because when they were asked, none of the other coaches could remember spotting me more than a handful of times.
I happily started snapping them inappropriate pictures of me slick with sweat at five thirty in the morning, and after a good reaming on the field, they quit asking.
I laugh thinking about it, deciding I should get up to that shit again and wondering who would appreciate a sweaty, sexy motherfucker like me being the first person they laid eyes on in the morning.
For some reason, Cameron comes to mind first. Probably ’cause she’s good for my ego, not that I have a problem with that. I know what I am and what I’m not. And I’m not ugly or out of shape or hard on the eyes.
It’s with that thought that I tug my shirt over my head and drape it over the back of my neck, my dad’s first set of dog tags ever given to him hanging between my pecs. I lift the camera screen up and turn slightly, so no other bodies are in the pic, and flex, my muscles so slick with sweat, it looks like my back did after the massage—slicked up and ready for a ride. I stick my tags between my teeth, running one hand through my hair, and take the photo.
A couple guys laugh from the left and I only smile at my screen.
It’s the perfect thirst trap if I’ve ever seen one. Grinning, I fire it off to Cameron without a single word before stuffing it back in my pocket.
It’s true what she said the other night.
Girls do tend to fall, sometimes quite literally, right on my dick. I can’t tell you how many college girls decide my lap is free for the taking and straddle me right then and there in the middle of a party. I don’t hate it, but they’re coming around a little more aggressively now after that damn post on the Avix Inquirer’s social media page. It was a photo Payton took of me on the sidelines after a game, sweaty and grinning like a fool after a win. It said something about landing Lancaster and referenced Noah—basically a sneaky way of using Ari and Noah’s relationship and teasing who would be the girl I took with me all the way to the top, assuming I go pro.