Page 30 of Faking the Play

Damn, I’d needed that.

Chapter sixteen

Logan

Iconsidered myself a fairly patient person, someone who kept their head under pressure. Those were two of the qualities that made me a great quarterback. They were also two of the reasons Ethan and Ryan tended to let me take the lead in most things. Except I wasn’t at the head of the pack when it came to this thing with Amelia.

Ryan fucked her in the mountains. Ethan got her off at a party. Both of them had been on dates with her.

I’d kissed her.

And I’d been jerking off to that memory ever since.

The guys and I hadn’t discussed how or when we’d switch from Ethan taking her on dates to me, and it had been days since I’d seen her. And even then, she was on a date with Ethan, so I hadn’t spent a lot of time talking to her. Today, the minute I learned that one of my classes had been canceled, my first thought was of her.

Which was why I was headed to Newsom Hall, hoping to catch her in her room so I could see if she wanted to take a walk or goget a coffee or something. We wouldn’t even have to make it a date. Just two friends hanging out.

I didn’t think about texting her first until I’d already knocked on the door, and the moment it opened, I wished I had. A slender woman with short, white-blonde hair stood on the other side, staring up at me with wide eyes. I assumed this was the roommate, Megan, and while I had my own thoughts about the sort of person she was, I planned on being polite.

Until that walking asshole, Jason Hunn, came up behind her and put his arms around her waist in the sort of possessive manner that said he was staking a claim.

“What do you want?” he asked belligerently.

“I’m looking for Amelia,” I said.

“Well, she’s obviously not here,” Jason said. “So why don’t you fuck off?”

“Jason.” Megan patted the hand resting on her stomach. “We don’t need to be rude to Logan.”

“You know this clown?”

I could practically see the green in his words, like he’d caught me kissing his girl instead of just knocking on a fucking door.

“He’s Logan Carter.” She shook her head. “CSU’s star quarterback who’s got like three NFL teams drooling over him.”

Technically, I had five that I knew were interested, but I didn’t feel the need to correct her.

“Oh. You’re a jock.”

Jason gave me the kind of look I’d been getting from assholes like him my whole life. The big guys who bullied the shit out of me when I was a scrawny kid, barely coordinated enough to ride a bike. The muscle-head athletes who thought humiliating the new kid on the team somehow made them look better. And then the non-athletes who thought I was all brawn and no brains, expecting the world to give me everything on a silver platter, including grades and girls.

Jason was the last one. The one who would’ve bullied a weaker kid, but because he knew he couldn’t push me around, he relied on trying to act superior. When that didn’t work, he’d blame me for anything shitty that happened in his life.

I really didn’t want to be here any longer than I needed to, but if they knew something that would save me some time, it was worth asking one more question. “Do either of you know where Amelia is?”

“We’re not her fucking parents,” Jason snapped.

“Is she supposed to be tutoring you or something?” Megan asked. “Because you might want to find someone else. You know she completely stole Jason’s work to convince Dr. Isenberg to hire her.”

“I don’t tend to believe rumors about people,” I said. “Especially people I’ve known since we were kids.”

“Really? She never mentioned you,” Megan blurted out, her cheeks turning pink.

Ouch. Three years of being roommates and Amelia hadn’t talked about me or the guys once. I supposed we deserved that.

“Anyway, they’re not rumors,” Megan rushed to continue. “I mean, Jason saw the paper she presented to Dr. Isenberg and recognized it as his work. So you’re not just hearing secondhand. He can tell you himself.”

Jason shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes darting around. “Yeah, as soon as I saw that opening paragraph, I knew it was mine.”

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