Page 399 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

My grin dissolves. Shit. I can’t get Maxwell to pick me up. My mom will want to know where I’m going, and where could an eighteen-year-old possibly be headed on a Sunday night thatisn’t a party? But before I can open my mouth, Eliza says, “So...should Max use the front door or the back?”

I barely hold back a relieved sigh. “The back, please.”

Eliza giggles. “I have to go. See you Sunday!”

I almost blurt out what Mom told me about the Feast of Ashes, but manage to hold back. If I tell Eliza now, I’ll have fuck all else to talk about on Sunday.

Groaning, I fall back on my bed and stare up at the ceiling with my hands pressed to the top of my head.

I’m such a fucking loser. How thehellam I going to make it through this party without embarrassing myself?

Chapter 20

Jude

Phil Collin’s “In the Air Tonight” blasts out through Flynn’s boombox. I fucking hate the song, but it never fails to give me goosebumps.I guess that’s why Coach tells Flynn to play it at halftime during our Friday games. It gets the team amped up, and drowns out the sounds of players trying to fuck up each other for perceived slights they experienced out on the field.

All the noise, all the activity—it washes over me, as familiar as the chorus lines of the song. I’m still coming down from the endorphin high that hits me minutes into every football game I’ve ever played.I stalk through the locker room like a fallen angel, divine power radiating off me.

Players get the fuck out of my way.

Coach doesn’t even look in my direction as he yells orders at the rest of the team.

I’m untouchable. Indestructible.

I open the last stall door and slam it shut behind me. Doinganythingquietly is impossible right now. I have too much energy rushing through me. Which is exactly why I’m in thiscubicle. I’m so good at channeling my energy that, by halftime, I feel like I’m bursting out of my skin.

My duffle bag is already here. The team knows this ritual as well as I do, even though they only have rumors to go on. No one really knows what I do in here and none of them really give a fuck. Not even Coach cares—as long I perform on the field and my bi-monthly drug tests come back clean.

It’s been almost a year since my last bad game, and I’m not about to end my winning streak.

I’m fuckingcrushingit tonight. And I know why.

I can’t get Harper out of my mind. The smell of her, the anger blazing in her eyes when I had her pinned to that brick wall, how docile she was in the truck on the drive home. When I was lining up on the field tonight, my eyes kept going to the public restrooms so I could replay what I’d done to my stepsister. Every time that happened I’d get hit with a surge of adrenalin...and a semi.

Thank God I could control my dick long enough to get stuck in the zone, else I’d be out there on the field with a full hard-on.

I can’t even imagine how painful it would be if that happened while I was wearing a cup. Even a semi makes me nervous as fuck.

But I kept doing it.

Like a fucking addict.

it’s all been a pack of lies

I zip open my duffle bag and shove my hand to the bottom. I keep my bag clean—jeans neatly folded, a spare shirt and boxers and socks—so when my fingers touch a bundle of scrunched-up fabric I know I’ve found it.As soon as I drag Harper’s underwear out of my bag, a pump of blood hardens my dick. Tamping down a groan, I take my cup out of my pants. My dick comes out a second later, already rock hard.

I’ve been waiting for this moment

I grimace ruefully at the soundtrack accompanying my thirty-second jerk off session. Halftime isn’t the place to edge myself like I normally do when I’m watching porn—I need to get off and catch the tail end of Coach’s speech. Not that I’ll have an issue tonight—all it takes is pressing Harper’s panties to my nose before I’m ready to blow. My climax is so sudden, so violent, I barely get the bundle of black, satiny fabric against my dick in time to catch the cum shooting out of it.

I stride out of the stall with my bag bouncing off my shoulder, open my locker, toss it inside, and head over to the huddle Coach just called. The team looks hungry and impatient, but I stand behind them with loose muscles and an easy smile.

My spent dick sits comfortably behind its cup, but the rest of my body feels as ready now as it did when I stalked in here.

I already know we’re going to demolish the other team, and when Coach Riggs glances over at me, he must see it too.

He stands and gives me the kind of smile Dad used to beam at me during halftime, back when he and Rosie used to watch me play.

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