Page 3 of Matched By My Rival
I staggered, off-balance, pain flashing through me and fueling my anger. Parker stepped forward as if to grab me. To catch me or shove me? Either one was a big fucking hell no.
“You think I’m weak?” I snarled as I dropped the crutch in my right hand. “You think you can fuck with me?”
“What?” He laughed. He actually laughed at me. “Don’t be—”
His words were lost in a wash of rage. I didn’t think. I didn’t make a conscious decision. I just snapped. One minute I was standing there watching Parker get his jollies from my pain, and the next I’d taken a swing.
My fist connected with his lower jaw—and the corner of that smart-ass mouth of his, splitting his lip. I used my other crutch to sweep his legs out from under him, and he hit the ground with a thud.
There was a chorus of gasps. We’d drawn a crowd.
“Simon!” Darnell bellowed, lunging forward to grab the crutch from me before I could do something like swing it at Parker’s head. I wouldn’t go that far, even as incensed as I was. I dropped, landing in an awkward sprawl over Parker and sending another pulse of pain through my thigh.
“I should fucking kill you,” I growled in his ear.
Parker let me get in his face, didn’t fight me at all. If someone had decked me, my reaction would be to punch them right back. So why wasn’t he swinging? Or at least shoving me the fuck off his body?
“Fight me, you fucker,” I said, grabbing his shirt and shaking him. His lip was bleeding, but he smiled through it. Did nothing faze him?
“Can’t fight,” he said, his pronunciation a bit garbled by the swelling lip. “Scholarship policy.”
It took a second for me to process his words. When I did, my blood ran cold.
There was a zero-tolerance clause for fighting. How had I forgotten, even for a second, what was at stake?
I needed that scholarship to finish school. That was half the reason these injuries had freaked me out so much. If the coaching staff decided to decrease mine, decided I hadn’t earned another semester, I was fucked. My dad had lost everything in his last big investment scheme. My mother worked as a waitress, barely making enough tips to cover her own bills. My grandparents covered what they could, but they had my sister, Chelsea, to think about. She wanted to go to culinary school, and that would not be cheap.
Darnell grabbed me under my arms, hauling me off Parker. But not before I saw the crowd that had gathered, the smartphones directed at us. There would be video of this, social media posts. But our coaches wouldn’t see it, would they? Not unless Parker decided to point it out. It was dark. Maybe we wouldn’t be recognizable in the footage? Only…how many guyswerethere in a compression wrap and on crutches?
Parker wouldn’t have to report me. I was fucked. Utterly and completely fucked.
“I messed up,” I groaned as Darnell half dragged me with one arm while carrying my crutches in the other.
“No shit, Prentiss. You can’t go off like that, especially on our best fucking wide receiver.”
That stung.
“Other than you,” he added, soothing my ego a little. “But you can’t fucking play right now, can you?”
“No.” I groaned, knowing I had no defense. I hadn’t been thinking straight, had been depressed and drunk—more out of it than usual thanks to the addition of painkillers—but none of that would save my ass. Coach would cut me loose. “Fuck!”
I almost missed the numbness I’d been feeling earlier in the night. It was better than the gutted, raw, guilty helplessness that descended on me as I realized the truth.
I’d feared losing my scholarship because of my string of injuries. Instead, I’d thrown it away in one drunken flash of temper. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I’d made my own fears come true.
1
SIMON
Five Months Later
Tracks, a little college dive bar with live music and drink specials, was hot and muggy from too many bodies crammed into a small space. Even behind the bar, with a few more inches between my body heat and the crowd of drunken twentysomethings, I was sweating enough that my T-shirt stuck to my back. On the stage to my left, a semi-decent band cranked out their tunes, but at least they were acoustic. On the nights band members hauled in electric guitars, I popped Tylenol like it was fucking candy. Tonight, the music was a quiet backdrop to the bar activity, drunken chatter and laughter that could still be headache-inducing.
“Well, shit. Of all fucking weeks.”
I glanced over. Rhett was frowning down at his phone as if it had just offended him. He tapped out a text, thumbs flying, then shook his head and repocketed it, murmuring something under his breath.
“Everything okay?” I asked as he slid behind me to grab a bottle of vodka, all business once more. The floor was sticky beneath my feet as I shifted to give him space.
