The Perfect First (Fulton U, #1)(3)

I wasn’t going to leave until I was ready.

I wasn’t going to end up like my dad.

“Fine, I’ll meet with him.”

“Her.” Coach peered over the top of his glasses. “And I wasn’t giving you a choice.”

I left his office and went to the locker room. Looked like I’d missed the celebration. Pads, helmets, and bottles littered the floor.

Keyton came out of the showers with a towel wrapped around his waist and another around his neck. He ran it over his hair, trying to dry his light brown strands. He always kept it short and neat, like the preppy kids who used to tease the shit out of me back in middle school. But he wasn’t like them. Keyton had transferred two years earlier, a quiet guy who mainly stuck to himself. He walked past.

“Listen, man, I didn’t see you out there or I wouldn’t have gone for the ball.” I held out my hand.

He stared at me, his fingers tightening around the towel. There was a flash in his eyes, the same kind I’d seen when guys got to their boiling point. He was only half an inch shorter than me, but when people got that look, they could be unpredictable.

“Yeah, you would have.” Then the look was gone, blowing right past like a feather on the wind. He smiled and shook my hand, smacking me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll beat you to the next one.”

I grinned back at him. “I’m sure you will.” Not a chance.

Rushing into the shower, I blitz-washed myself, scouring my skin to get the remnants of the sticky drink off me then headed back out into the locker room. I dried off and sat in front of my locker. My gaze darted down to the bench, and I glanced underneath it. My heart rate picked up. What the hell?

Jumping up, I opened my locker and stood frozen. The blood drained out of my face. The bottom of my locker was empty. Finally able to form words, I bellowed, “Where the fuck are my shoes?”

“What shoes?” Nix sat beside me with his hippie-ass hair and a shit-eating grin.

“Don’t screw around with me. Those are limited-edition Adidas.” The vintage pair I’d bought over the summer. The same ones I’d begged my parents for, but they had shot me down over and over again when everyone else on the team had had a pair in ninth grade. As a former pro player’s son, I’d had a bullseye on my back growing up. Expectations were sky high not just for how I played, but also for how we lived.

“You’re worse than a chick, man.” Cupping his hand around his mouth, he faced the rest of the room. “Someone hand over his shoes before he passes out.”

Berkley strolled out of the shower room with a wide smile showing off his dumbass dimples. His black hair dripped water everywhere because he straight-up refused to use a towel, just free-balling it while air drying.

“You did this, didn’t you?” I pointed at him like an evil old witch ready to turn him into a frog.

“What? Did you mean these size 15s that were once again sitting on top of my clothes?” Berk grabbed the pristine pair of sneakers from the top of the lockers behind me and shoved them into my chest.

Recovering from his linebacker attack, I cradled the red and white striped beauties in my arms. “You think I’m putting these just anywhere?”

“Next time you put your shoes on my clothes, they take a Gatorade bath, just like you.” He slipped his feet into his beaten and battered sneakers, which no longer had any discernible color other than gray, kind of like the ones I’d worn my last semester of high school. It wasn’t that we’d been broke, but my dad had only played pro for a couple years and after that, things weren’t easy. If you didn’t get a fat contract, you were screwed, which meant first-round draft pick or bust for me.

“And I’ll be shaving off your eyebrows while you sleep. I’m not going to set them on the dirty bench.”

“But you’ll sit your ass on it? You’ve got some priority issues.” He shook his head, spraying everyone in the vicinity like a dog after a downpour, and tugged a shirt on.

“Just because you’ve worn the same pair of sneakers since freshman year doesn’t mean some of us don’t like to look like we didn’t drag a pair of shoes out of the dumpster.”

“They’re comfortable.” He shrugged and grabbed his bag. “You headed back to the Brothel?”

I cringed and buttoned my jeans. “Can’t you just say the house?” The term was a leftover from the name the frat house had had before they got kicked off campus and we moved in. Theta Beta Sigma, AKA The Bed Shakers Brothel.

We’d spent the last year disinfecting the place, finding condoms crammed into places they had no business being. The name stuck after the previous tenants left and the Brothel was born, whether we liked it or not. It didn’t help that our team was the Trojans. The Fulton University Trojans, or the FU Trojans as was often chanted in the stadium, the volume always reaching a deafening point. Being known as a manwhore hadn’t been too big of a deal until it was, and I’d learned the hard way that it wasn’t easy erasing someone’s preconceived notion of you once it settled in.

“Our house has a reputation to uphold.” He grinned, reveling in the thought of the almost constant attention he received on and off the field. “But you’re right, maybe you should just hole up in the library to study the new plays the coach sent out.”