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)
Gray pulled over to the side of the street as I glanced through the text messages that had built up during our study session.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There was another stupid fucking bomb threat,” I said.
I looked back up toward the frat house, which the police had already cordoned off with caution tape. I could see them setting up to go inside.
“Excuse me? Another?” Gray asked. “There have been others?”
A tight feeling settled on my throat. “One other. Two, if you count the time we got the weird suspicious package on the doorstep.”
“For fuck’s sake. Who has it out for the TNU Tempests? Or is it just for the fraternity in general?”
I narrowed my eyes, glancing over at the guys standing on the edge of the lawn.
Their evening had been ruined.
Again.
Guilt pooled in my chest, like rising bile.
“Not the Tempests, or the frat. It’s because of me.”
Gray shifted in the driver’s seat. I could tell he was looking at me but I didn’t meet his eyes.
“Someone is threatening you, Andrew?”
I shook my head. “It’s all childish bullshit. There’s never any real threat. It’s all just to scare me and inconvenience the other guys. I’ve never been scared for a fucking second of any of it. It’s just idiots from the internet.”
“Calling in fake threats to your house?”
“There are some members of the college football community who really fucking hate that I’m out and proud, Gray. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the message forums online.”
“No, I haven’t.”
I turned to face him.
His brow was furrowed.
I hated the look of serious concern on his face, because I hated the idea that these stupid pranks could ever affect my life at all.
“Well, now I’m sure you’ll look them up, and I’m sure you’ll find a way to stuff it into your goddamn article somehow,” I said. “Because you’re like a bloodhound, and the rest of the college football community seems to find them eventually.”
Anger was rising through my body more quickly than I could control.
“What are people saying about you online, Andrew?” Gray asked.
He sounded sweet and kind, for once, which somehow only made things worse.
I was being a dick.
And Gray was taking this seriously, which nobody else usually did.
“There are just online gossip forums where people can post anonymously. They mostly talk about football rivalries, but sometimes, the gossip gets personal. And when it’s about me, most people defend me, but there are a few bad apples.”
“Bad apples who call in fucking bomb threats to your frat house,” Gray repeated, like he was trying to hammer home how serious it was.
I pulled in a breath and let out a heavy sigh.
“The police aren’t going to find any threat in the house. But it is going to take them at least a couple of hours to search the place, because it’s big. Last time it took more like three. So now I can’t go in my own fucking home, and neither can any of the other guys.”
A sliver of my guilt disappeared when I saw the guys on the front lawn, McDaniels and Henderson, heading over to one of the frat houses down the road. They had friends there, and hopefully they could chill there until the cops were done at our place.
“You can come with me,” Gray said, pulling on the gear shift of his car and taking it out of park.
“Thought you said you had shit to do.”
“I do,” he said, glancing behind him before making a U-turn on the street.
Typically it would have annoyed me that Gray just started driving us off campus without telling me a single detail about where we were going, but right now, it was exactly what I needed.
Seeing the frat house like that again was a weight on my shoulders I desperately didn’t want.
I hated making things worse for any of the other guys.
I hated the fact that doing the one thing I was proud of—playing football while being openly gay—was sometimes punished by the worst people in society.
So watching the world from the passenger side window having no clue where I was going was the only thing making my guilt melt away right now. The rev of his car engine made me feel alive again rather than pissing me off like it had the other day. I liked Gray’s car, even if his acceleration felt like a roller coaster half of the time.
Right now, it felt like an escape hatch.
Like I was able to get away from my own life, just for a little while.
Like Gray had… taken me under his wing, or something.
Not that I usually wanted to be taken anywhere with him.
I watched the trees on the edges of the road, seeing which ones were already turning yellow, orange, and red. The sun was starting to lower in the sky as afternoon became evening, and the slanted golden quality of the light made the small-town Tennessee roads look like postcards.