Jock Rule (Jock Hard #2)(27)

Jesus, where is she putting all that food she ordered?

Seriously, Teddy is tiny—compared to me. I guess for a girl, she’s pretty average, but next to my six foot four? She’s pocket sized.

And she’s stuffing breakfast links in her face with a forkful of egg and washing it down with chocolate milk. It’s more than I’ll pile in my mouth at once.

“Is that going to be enough food for you? Sure you don’t want to order more?” I tease, eyeing her plate of eggs, hash browns, and the side order of a giant cinnamon roll. The quantity rivals mine, and with both our heads bent, we go at it, stuffing our faces like we haven’t eaten in days.

I’ll pay for this during practice by running it off with extra laps around the field, but right now, the greasy breakfast is worth it.

Even if I end up with the shits later.

I shovel a spoonful of food into my mouth and chew, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, totally cognizant of the fact that if my mother saw me right now, her mouth would fall open in horror at my complete lack of decorum, my complete disregard for the manners she drilled into me from day one.

“Gross, you have eggs in your beard.” Teddy’s lilting, soft voice floats across the table, half amused, half disgusted.

“Where?” I don’t tell her that half the time when I eat, food ends up in my beard, a hazard of having so much hair hanging from my face. “Show me.”

“I’m not touching it.”

I snicker into my napkin as I swipe it across the lower half of my face, tempted to throw in a That’s what she said but think better of it when her lip curls up and her eyes narrow like she knows I’m thinking it.

I don’t even have to say it.

Nice.

“Don’t say it.”

I shrug. “I wasn’t going to.”

“But you were thinking about it.”

I laugh and egg flies out of my mouth. Teddy’s disdain grows, lip now completely curled up under her pert little nose.

“Yeah, I almost said it.”

“Wipe your face, Kipling.”

Ugh, that fucking name. “Dude, I can’t help it if shit falls out of my mouth.”

“You’re disgusting. I’m never eating with you again.”

“I have a feeling you’d eat with me every night of the week if I was paying for it.”

Teddy considers this, finally nodding. “You’re right, but only because my budget is so tight moths fly out of my wallet when I open it.”

“That’s sad.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. Insensitive as they are, Teddy doesn’t so much as blush.

“Poor me, I know. Feed me, Kip!” Her laugh is punctuated by the fork in her hand stabbing at the sausage on her plate, metal meeting porcelain, her moan fills the air between us as she stuffs the entire thing in her pretty mouth.

“Now who’s the slob here? You don’t have to be a pig about it because I had food in my beard.”

She rolls her eyes pretty damn hard. “You’re also spitting food out.”

No shit, but, “Not on purpose.”

She flops her fork in the air, pointing it in my direction and squinting. “Still, didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”

If only she knew. Not only did my mother teach me manners, she hired etiquette coaches to come to the house and drill manners into Veronica and me—actual fucking etiquette coaches like it’s the year 1845 or some shit.

No one can tell Lilith Carmichael what to do, and what she wanted was for her children to be impeccably mannered and well-behaved. And we were.

For a while.

Then, my sister and I became two teenagers who hated the watchful eyes of our parents, their staff, and the media. Our parents weren’t just wealthy, they were celebrities in our corner of the country, Dad appearing on news broadcasts, buying up a professional football team when his net-worth topped nine figures.

Everyone knew our family, and Ronnie and I hated it.

The fact that I call my sister Ronnie? My mom hates that more.

“Are you listening to anything I say?”

“Huh?”

“You do that a lot you know—zone out.” Teddy is back to picking at the food on her plate with the tines of her fork, pushing the scrambled eggs to one side, wry smile plastered to her face. “Sorry I’m so boring.”

Shit.

“You’re not boring.”

“I kind of am.”

“Would you stop?”

“Next you’re going to tell me you have a lot on your mind.”

“That’s not what I was going to say because it’s not even remotely true. There is nothing on my mind.” I laugh, grabbing a hunk of toast, folding it in half, and stuff it in my gullet. I can’t very well say I zone out when you talk because I’m reminded of all the secrets I don’t want anyone finding out, and you just discovered the second biggest one I have.

The first being my family’s ridiculous wealth.

The other is my giant, fancy fucking house off campus with its Egyptian cotton sheets and granite countertops no twenty-two-year-old on the planet should already own, because what the actual fuck.

Thanks Mom and Dad for making it impossible to have a normal life, or a relationship with a girl who doesn’t care about that shit.