Tackled: A Sports Romance (20 page)

"
O
h
, God, what is that pounding sound?" I ask, peeling my face off the sofa to look around.

Throb. Throb. Throb.

Oh hell. That's my head pounding.

Sable is passed out on her back on the loveseat, her mouth open and snoring loudly. A half-empty bottle of tequila and a cutting board with lime wedges and salt are scattered across the coffee table, along with open bags of snacks.

My stomach lurches just looking at the food.

Knock, knock, knock.

Shit, it wasn't my head making that sound. "Just a second," I yell.

"Huh?" Sable asks, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "Why is it so fucking bright in here?"

"It's not," I say, stumbling to the door.

It's Colton's mother.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I stand there staring at her, because frankly I can't think of what to say with my head throbbing like it is.

"You girls look like death warmed over," Doreen says, pushing herself past my arm without waiting for an invitation to come inside.

"Tequila," Sable says, her hand on her forehead. "I'm never drinking it again."

"Jonathan said as much," Doreen says. "Go take showers and I'll make you some coffee and pancakes. You need something in your stomachs to soak up the alcohol."

"Doreen, I –" I start, then stop.

"Go," she says, waving me in the direction of the bathroom. "Now."

After I brush my teeth and sit on the floor of the shower with hot water beating down on me for twenty minutes, I feel considerably more life-like than I did before.

When I come out of the bathroom, Sable is in her bathrobe, her hair wrapped up in a towel, sipping coffee. The bags of snacks and tequila have disappeared from the coffee table, and the house smells like bacon. Doreen is in the kitchen, humming to herself.

The fact that she's here right now cooking us breakfast makes me feel worse than ever.

"Take this," she says, thrusting a cup of coffee into my hands when I walk into the kitchen. I sip it, grateful for the caffeine and for something to focus on other than the fact that Colton's mother is standing in my kitchen. "Go sit down," she orders. "I'll bring you girls food."

A few minutes later, she sets plates of bacon and pancakes down on the table, and Sable pops a piece of bacon in her mouth, munching happily. Doreen sits down at the table with a cup of coffee and takes a slow sip.

Then she looks at me. "Now. What the hell did you do to my son?"

Oh God.

Beside me, Sable coughs. "You know what? I think I'm going to take these delicious-looking pancakes into my bedroom because… reasons. Thanks for the breakfast, Mrs. K."

Sable scurries away from the table, practically speed-walking to her bedroom, leaving me here by myself with Colton's mother. Doreen looks at me expectantly. "So?" she prompts me. "Spill the beans."

"I don't know what to say." My voice trembles. "Or where to start."

"Let's start at the place where he's head-over-heels for you," she says.

Head over heels.

"That's not true," I say, my voice cracking. "There's… nothing between us."

"Oh, cut the crap," Doreen blurts. "I'm not your employer. I don't care about whether or not you're
supposed
to be dating my son."

"We're not dating," I shoot back quickly.

She raises her eyebrows. "Let's not argue about semantics," she says. "I've never seen Colt moon over anyone as much as he moons over you. You make him happy, which makes me happy because I'm an old woman who wants grandchildren."

I nearly spit out my sip of coffee. "Whoa, now. Who said anything about grandchildren?"

"Forget the grandchildren," she says. "Fast forward to whatever happened yesterday that's got Colt sulking around the house and fighting with Jonathan."

"Oh, that." I exhale heavily.

"Yeah, that. Jonathan mentioned that Colt might have screwed a cheerleader but that you said whatever happened was your fault."

"He didn't screw a cheerleader," I say. "That I know of."

"Didn't think so," she says. "My son might be an ass, but if there's one thing he is, it's honest. He's not one to sneak around behind someone's back. So if he were going to screw a cheerleader, you'd know it."

"That's…oddly comforting." Then the full impact of her words hits me. If there's one thing Colton is, it's honest.

Unlike me.

My eyes well up again and I blink back tears.
Damn it, am I about to have my period or something? I can't stop crying. I'm not a crier. I can't remember the last time I cried.

Doreen puts her palm on mine. "What happened, honey?"

So I tell her. I tell her the whole story about how I was working on a different thesis topic, but I hated it and wasn't making any headway, and then when I agreed to tutor Colton the new topic popped into my head.

"I wasn't trying to hide it," I say. "Shit. Who am I kidding? I
was
trying to hide it. I convinced myself it wasn't a big deal. I wasn't putting anything in it about the players, nothing about Colton or the team, I would never do that – and it was really just a literature review and proposal of a study. I didn't tell him, though. Which is basically lying. And then Colton read the first bit of it yesterday, which was really a bad place to read because I was summarizing some theories about aggression in sports that made it really sound like athletes are overgrown children just throwing tantrums or compensating for –"

"That's it?" Doreen interrupts.

"That's the whole story," I say. "It was terrible of me and I should have told him from the beginning."

"So my son is all bent out of shape because he read a few lines of your thesis and decided that it's about him and that you've been trying to screw him over this whole time?" Doreen asks.

"Sort of, I guess," I mutter. "Not exactly. He has a point. It probably feels like a huge violation of privacy – and trust – because it is. And people do have ulterior motives around him, and that's only going to get worse, you know? I didn't mean to hurt him. If he would have listened, or read further, I could have explained that what he was reading was just theories and I go on to explain the current research –"

"Stop," Doreen says, putting her hand up. "I've heard enough."

Shit.

"My son is the most stubborn, hard-headed person you'll ever meet. He was that way even as a baby. He was worse than his brother and his brother was pretty pigheaded. They used to get in some awful fights when they were kids," she explains. "They got that stubborn streak from their father. Lord knows it wasn't from me."

Not from her.
I feel a laugh bubbling in my throat and I squelch it for fear that Doreen will kill me.

"Don't think I don't see that look on your face, Cassandra," she says, raising an eyebrow. "He did not get that stubborn streak from me."

"I said nothing."

"His father was the same way," she goes on. "Used to drive me crazy when we first got together. I don't know where I'm going with this except to say that my kid is being an idiot and going high and to the right about something that's clearly been blown way the heck out of proportion."

"I did screw up though."

"So what?" Doreen exclaims, standing up and taking my empty coffee cup. "Where'd you get the idea that if you screw up something, it's done with?"

"I don't think that's exactly my choice. Colton was pissed and he stormed out of here."

"I know," she says, returning with coffee. "I had to be in the same room with that sulky shit. You need to woman up and go see him and explain. And while you're there, tell him that his mother says his stupid ass needs to listen to you."

"I don't think he's going to want to see me," I start.

"I don't care what he thinks he wants or doesn't want," she says. "I care about what's good for him. And you're good for him. My boy's not dumb enough to think otherwise. So that's that. Then you both can forget this whole misunderstanding and get on with making grandchildren."

This time I do choke on my coffee, sputtering as the hot liquid goes down the wrong pipe.

"Oh, and I want to see this thesis that caused all of this trouble," Doreen adds. "I'm going to need some light reading anyway."

I
'm
on my third plastic cup of beer, sitting in a lawn chair by the pool, listening to the
thump-thump
of the bass pouring out of the speakers inside the house and thinking that I really have a massive fucking headache.

And another five or six beers might start to take it away. Another twelve might make me forget all about this bullshit with Cassie.

Pretty much the entire team is here for a post-finals blowout. Every hot, slutty girl on campus is going to roll through here, too.

Speaking of which…

A girl with bleached blonde hair and enormous tits pouring out of her tiny yellow bikini materializes right in front of me. "Colton King," she says.

"Yep." I look past her at the lawn, my eyes scanning the crowd for whatever. A small part of me is hoping that Cassie will just show up here, that she'll push through the bodies in one of her skirts and high heels, far too overdressed for a pool party, glasses perched on the end of her nose. And then she'll look at me and say –

"Do you need to blow off a little post-finals steam?" the blonde asks, and I blink for a second, somehow surprised that I'm hearing the sound of her voice and not Cassie's. "Because I really, really like to blow… off steam."

"I'm all set," I say, hardly able to hide the disgust in my tone. "Thanks anyway."

"There's the offending document." A ream of papers lands in my lap, and I look up to see my mother standing beside the chair giving me a murderous glare. She turns her attention to the blonde. "And you are?"

"Trixie," she says. Then she wraps a lock of blonde hair around her finger and gives my mother a vacant look.

If I wasn't so generally irritated, I'd be amused by the fact that my mother is going to eat this girl alive.

My mother looks back and forth from me to the girl. "
This
is how you're choosing to console yourself?"

"Hey!" the blonde sputters.

"Bless your heart, honey," my mother says to her. "I'm sure you're very smart and quite the catch. What are you studying?"

The blonde looks at her. "Um… maybe fashion?"

"Of course you are," my mother murmurs. "Walk away, please."

The blonde's mouth falls open and she huffs as she retreats.

"Are you finished here, mom?" I ask, irritated.

Emmett passes us, and my mother grabs his arm. "You like the bimbos, don't you, Emmett?"

"Hells yeah, Mrs. K."

"There's one right over there who's up your alley."

Emmett holds up his hand and my mother hi-fives him. "You rock, Mrs. K."

"Don't mention it." My mother turns her attention back to me. "Now, you."

"I'm sitting here enjoying my beer, ma," I say, holding up my cup. "And then I'm going to enjoy another one."

"I read that thesis, the one sitting in your lap," she says. "All of it. There's not one thing in there for you to get all butt-hurt about, so either you're just as pigheaded as you were when you were three and refused to wear clothes outside the house, or you're in love with her and terrified so you're picking a fight so you can screw up the entire thing. Either way, find your balls and go fix things with that girl."

"Damn it, mom," I groan. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know exactly what I'm talking about. You know who was stubborn just like you? Your father."

"Yeah, well you never lied to dad and pretended to be something you weren't," I say bitterly.

"That girl didn't pretend to not know you just so she could get with some football star," my mother says. "If that's not obvious as daylight to you, then I don't know what to do with you."

I cross my arms over my chest, the papers piled every which way underneath. "Then I guess you don't know what to do with me."

"You know what's sad?" my mother asks.

I grunt a response, looking behind her at the people walking around the lawn. She doesn't know what she's talking about. She has no idea about what's between me and Cassie.

"What's sad is that you're going to have everything," she says. "I've known that since you were ten years old. Your father knew it too. You've always been great at football. It was written all over you the day you picked up a ball. But you're going to get everything you want and then realize it's really damn lonely at the top."

I sit there in silence, her words ringing in my head.

It's lonely at the top.

I don't have a response for her.

She doesn't wait for one. She kisses the top of my head. "I'm going to get out of here. I've seen more breasts at this party in the past fifteen minutes than I care to for one evening. I hope you figure things out, because I love you, Colt."

"I know, ma," I say. "I love you, too."

It takes me twenty minutes and another beer before I look at the thesis.

"
S
moking hot
," Sable says, evaluating my outfit. I just spent an ungodly amount of time putting on eyeliner, which I never wear, and fussing over hiding the dark circles under my eyes that are a result of last night's tequila binge. "He's not going to be able to resist an apology in that outfit."

"Well, I don't want him to forgive me just because he wants to bang me." I look in the mirror, noting the fitted jeans, sandals, and a black tank top of Sable's that she insisted on loaning me. "I should rethink the shirt."

"You will not rethink that shirt! Because there's nothing to rethink about it. Displaying your boobs during an apology should practically be mandatory. Actually, that's probably a good negotiation tactic in general."

"You should be a diplomat," I deadpan. "And in no way would you set women back a hundred years with those kinds of tactics."

"Use what you got is what I say."

"How are you in a graduate program in sociology again?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Sable says. "The parental units hated it. Especially my mother."

"Always a great reason to get a Ph.D."

"So let's go," Sable says.

"I don't need an escort," I say firmly. "I should really do it on my own."

"I want to see Jonathan. And because, well, you know there will be a party. So just in case you need moral support…"

"You don't think Colton is going to be hooking up with someone?" The thought hadn't even crossed my mind when I decided I was going to "woman up", as Colton's mother put it, and fix things.

The thought makes me really want to vomit.

"Nooo," Sable assures me. Except it's one of those falsely bright
no's
, the kind you say when your best friend asks you if the designer magenta tube top she paid five hundred dollars for was too expensive.

"You do think that," I say. "I don't know if I can handle seeing that, Sable."

"I don't think that, not really."

"You totally do."

"I just want you to be prepared… in that eventuality," she amends. "He's a jock who has women throwing themselves at him all the time. And he's pretty pissed at you."

"Well, I'd rather know," I say firmly. "If he's hooking up with some girl after a tiny fight, then I know he's a dick before things go any further."

"Then we go to the house," Sable says.

"We go to the house."

I have one more panicked moment when we pull up to the house, but I resolve to not let it get the best of me. I'm going to see him and say my piece and explain. And if he's stuck on it, then I'm going to walk away.

I take a deep breath.

The party is pretty much just like the one I walked in on the first time I met Colton, except this version is more crowded and louder, if that's possible.

"I don't know where we're going to find him in this mess," I yell.

"Go look outside," Sable yells. "You know how he likes that roof slide. I'll find Jonathan. He might know."

"Okay," I yell, pushing through bodies on my way out the back door.

When I finally make it outside, I pause, breathing in the air that seems a million degrees cooler than the inside of the house. I stand by the kitchen door, scanning the lawn for Colton.

This was a stupid idea. How was I planning on finding Colton here, exactly?

"You're the tutor." A low voice beside me makes me jump, and I turn to see a big guy standing there holding a beer.

"Um… yeah," I say. Not creepy at all that he knows that. He's not one of Colton's roommates but he's unmistakably a football player. The fact that he's ginormous is a dead giveaway.

"Colton's told us all about you," he says, giving me a look that immediately puts me on edge. He smiles at me, but there's something off in the way he smiles that makes me think he's less friendly than he seems. "Beer?"

He holds out the plastic cup in his hand.

"No, thanks," I say to creepy guy.
Yeah, right. Sure, thanks, I'll take your roofie-laced beer.
"What has Colton said exactly?"

"You're the virgin," he says, leering. "He'll tell anyone who will listen about how he's fucking the virgin schoolteacher. Not a virgin anymore. The opposite of that now, with what Colton's been doing to you."

My head is spinning. I feel like I can't breathe. "Colton said that to you?" I ask in disbelief.

"Well, yeah, not just to me," he says. "More like the whole team. In the locker room, mostly. He tells us a lot of stories about you."

"That is not true," I say, shaking my head. "Colton wouldn't do that."

I have to get out of here.

Screw apologizing. I just want to get out of this house before I lose my lunch. Or faint.

"You didn't know?" the guy asks. His eyes travel up the length of my body – he doesn't even bother to hide that – and I feel filthy under his gaze. "Oh, shit. Colton said you were totally cool with him sharing stories. I mean, he usually hooks up with the kinds of girls who don't care about that kind of thing."

"I have to get out of here," I say, more to myself than to him. If this guy says another thing to me about Colton talking about me, I'm going to knee him in the balls.

"Front door is that way," he says, pointing toward the kitchen.

I don't say anything else. I push my way through bodies, weaving and winding through the kitchen and into the living room, fighting back tears and nausea.

Colton would not do that,
I tell myself.
There is no way. I know him.

Or maybe I don't. Do I
really
know he's not bragging in the locker room about debauching the virgin?

It takes me a while wandering around before I find Sable, and only because I see Tank first. She waves to me from across the room, and I slowly make my way to her and Tank. "I need to get out of here," I say immediately before they can tell me where Colton is.

"We haven't seen Colton," Sable yells. "Tank said he was sitting outside in a chair all night but you didn't see him out there, did you?"

"No." I feel sick. "I'm going to leave. You can stay if you want."

"I'll go with you," Sable insists.

"Stay, stay," I yell.

I just want to get out of here and go somewhere I can think. I don't want to tell Sable what Colton's teammate said. It's too humiliating.

I wonder if Tank knew. Maybe they're all assholes.

I don't want to think about it right now.

I'm making my way out of the living room when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I whirl around to see Creepy Guy standing behind me. "You're looking for Colt, right?" he yells. "He went up to his room."

I glance upstairs.
Do I go up there?

I don't want to see him right now.

"I'd be pissed off," he yells over the noise. "I feel terrible now that I know you didn't know."

I look upstairs again. If I march up there right now and give him a piece of my mind, it's over. Clean break and closure.

Woman up and confront him.

"You sure he went up there?" I yell.

"Yeah, a few minutes ago. Just saw him."

"Thanks." I wade through people to get to the stairs, my thoughts racing. The irony of Colton getting so pissed off at me about my thesis when he was apparently revealing intimate details about our sex life isn't lost on me. I'm furious.

I knock once before turning the knob on his bedroom door and flinging it open.

Standing in the middle of the room is a woman in a beach towel with her back to me. When I open the door, she speaks. "I thought you were never going to get here," she says. "I'm ready for that massive cock of yours."

She spins around and drops the towel.

She's stark naked, all big perky tits and freshly waxed hoo-hah and long legs.

"You're not Colton," she says stupidly.

"No shit," I say. I'm so angry I think my head might actually explode. "Wrong room. Tell Colton I said hi, though."

"Sure!" she says brightly. "But I don't know your name."

"Just tell him his former tutor stopped by to wish him luck," I say bitterly.

"Oh, wow, you get to tutor Colton King? And you make house calls!" she adds enviously.

"Not anymore."