Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70294 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 351(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
“Got you,” I heard Bailey mutter under his breath. “Fucking got you, Peachel.”
And then his body slammed into mine.
I went down hard onto the grass. My arm hit the ground and he had me pinned a moment later.
I heard the roar of the crowd change.
Excitement morphing into disappointment, all at once.
It was a good play, and I knew Bailey deserved the tackle. I could almost feel happy for him, if I wasn’t blindingly fucking upset with myself.
I could already sense the death stare I was going to get from Coach Ennick.
When Coach was let down, the whole team could feel it.
And since I was Coach’s new favorite player, I knew I was going to be in the crosshairs.
And by the way, Coach, I was dick deep in your son until he broke my heart a few weeks ago.
Don’t even want to imagine how you’d react to that.
As I got up from the grass, crystal-blue eyes followed me. Gray Gilman was already calculating how to take me down in the article. I could feel it. It was like he was a new point of gravity at the edge of the field, a place where my attention got sucked up like a black hole.
I finally made eye contact with him.
He was looking at me like he wanted to destroy me even though I’d never spoken to him before.
I was usually nice to everybody, but I’d just lost a game that should have been an easy win. If some straight-A student reporter with a big ego thought he could fuck with me?
He was going to meet my own ego real fuckin’ fast.
“That was bullshit,” Luke told me as we headed off to the edge of the field, jogging up beside me. “You deserved better for catching a pass that clean.”
I yanked off my helmet, running my hand through my hair.
I was hot.
I needed this gear off of my body, right now.
“I don’t know if I deserved better,” I told Luke. “I fucked up.”
“You’re sad,” Luke said, watching as I stared down at the grass on the field because I couldn’t stand to watch the crowd streaming out of the stands. “I don’t like sad-Andrew. What would make you feel better right now?”
I flicked my gaze up at him. “Changing the rules of football, maybe?”
“Would if I could.”
“Make it so that getting tackled near the end zone still counts as a touchdown. I think that would be the only thing to make me feel better.”
“You’re more likely to get me to blow you than to have that happen, Andrew.”
I pulled in a breath and gave Luke a shove. My team all supported that I was openly gay, but they razzed me just as much as they’d mess with anybody else, too.
Coach took Luke aside for a minute. He was probably telling him that the fuck-up out on the field wasn’t his fault.
100% true.
I knew the fault was mine.
I glanced over at the pair of blue eyes on the edge of the field, staring at me like they knew something I didn’t.
That heavy feeling in my chest came back in again, like a fat anvil somebody put right on my sternum.
Coach had told us that Gray would be watching us for the next two months until our Homecoming game.
Interviewing us.
Shadowing us.
Gray Gilman had written about the theater club last year, alluding very subtly to one girl’s coke addiction. But people could read between the lines. The gossip mill went wild until half of the theater club quit and a few students had to transfer out of TNU.
His articles were the only things people ever actually read in the school paper, instead of skimming through them or skipping them altogether. Gray Gilman wrote articles about people like he was taking knives to their throats. I never knew a school paper could be turned into a weapon of war, but he made it happen.
And last semester, he wrote an article about a basketball player. Then, soon after, people found out that the basketball player had a secret online profile where he drew and sold illustrations of dragons with gigantic dicks having their way with mermaid women.
Gray never said it outright in the article itself, but again, he planted the seeds that students picked up on.
And I’m not going to let you plant a single fucked-up seed about me.
“Watcha lookin’ at, Captain America?” I heard from behind me a minute later.
Luke was at my side again, slapping me on the bicep.
The last remnants of the crowd were already streaming out of the stands.
“They always seem to leave faster when we lose,” I said. I kept my head down, trying to ignore the obvious downcast feeling radiating throughout the entire field.
“You didn’t have any of the freshman girls and boys come up to you this time,” Luke said.
My heart squeezed in my chest. “Nobody wants a selfie with me if I whiff touchdowns like that.”