Page 7 of Matched By My Rival
To say our head coach was unhappy was an understatement.
He prowled before us on the sideline, having ended our drills early. “Is this how much you care about your future, gentleman? You show up tomyfield, not even fit to call yourselves football players! This isn’t high school. This isn’t ahobby.This may be college, but this isnotthe amateur hour. You are athletes, competitors.” He scoffed. “I expected self-discipline from you. Foolishly, maybe, but Iwillget it before the week is through.” His gaze landed on me and weighed heavily. I knew he’d expected more from me. “This field, this game may not be forever for you. It’s a loooong shot to the pros, and talent is only a tiny piece of that pie. This is temporary for some of you, I understand. But while youarehere, you will give this team all you’ve got, and in return you will leave with a college education, discipline you can use for the rest of your lives, and a healthy body in peak physical condition.”
He paused, raising an eyebrow, and we obliged by calling out, “Yes, Coach.”
“I won’t tolerate sloppy, hungover players. I have no patience for bullshit,” he added gruffly. Coach was not one to sugarcoat anything. “Since you all have so much time on your hands, you’ll be committing to five hours of volunteer service a week. Get your choices approved by Coach Martinez. You’ll be reporting your hours to him weekly. You don’t do your volunteer work, you’re benched.”
He came to a stop directly in front of me. “I expected more of you, Reed.”
I nodded once. “Yes, Coach.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about your personal hang-ups,” he added while staring me in the eye, and I tried my best not to wince. My relationship with Coach had been rocky since he let Simon go. I’d fought hard for Prentiss, hard enough I was pretty sure Coach would have cut me too just to get me out of his hair, were it not for the fact he didn’t want to lose his two best wide receivers in one fell swoop. During that skirmish, Imayhave told Coach I didn’t care about football the way Prentiss did. He hadn’t appreciated my candor. “While on this team, you’re mine, and you will go big, or you will go home.”
Coach moved on to another player and another, targeting a few of us to vent a little more of his displeasure. Eventually, when the air was thick with disappointment, he dismissed us to shower and change.
The locker room was quieter than usual when we straggled in, beaten down by our first drill in weeks and Coach’s tongue lashing. No trash talking, joking, or laughing echoed off the walls. We stripped, quietly, and stepped into the showers. I lathered and rinsed quickly, eager to move on to breakfast. My stomach rumbled as I grabbed a towel.
“What’s this crap about volunteering?” Bryan Smith complained by his locker. “I barely find time to sleep.”
“Must be why you were late today,” Darnell Davidson said wryly, making me snort.
“What are you laughing at, Reed?” Smith groused. “Coach zeroed in on you too.”
“Yep,” I said as I opened my locker and withdrew a pair of track pants and a hoodie. I didn’t bother with underwear. “We all fucked up.” I paused. “Well, not all of us. Double D is a good boy.”
Darnell—who’d received the nickname Double D partly because he wasn’t the only Davidson on the team—flipped me off. “Man, fuck you. I just knew today would be brutal, and my ass wasn’t stupid enough to add a hangover to the mix.”
I smiled. “My mom would like you.”
“I can give her a call.” He waggled his brows. “But how do you know I haven’t already?”
“Walked right into that one,” I said as snickers went up around us. Double D was a good egg, though, and I didn’t take his trash talk seriously. If you could even call it trash talk. Pretty tame by college jock standards.
Smith continued to whine while I pulled on my clothes. “Where the hell are we s’posed to do this volunteer work anyway? We’ve got workouts, drills, game footage to review. Not to mention fucking study hall hours. And now this?”
“Suck it up,” our QB, Holmes, ordered. “There’s plenty of things going on around campus. The Greeks do charities, and I’m sure there are some other organizations too. I’ll get a list together for us, and you guys can sign up for something.”
“This is supposed to be the fucking off-season,” another player grumbled. “Coach still has to own all our time.”
Holmes scoffed. “Five hours a week is easy. I thought he might give us ten.”
“He’s done this before?” Davidson asked.
Holmes laughed. “You should have been here my freshman year. Ugly man. Just ugly.”
I slammed my locker door after stuffing my things inside. “You want to be a player, you gotta play the game.”
If anyone knew those words to be true, it had to be Simon Prentiss. He’d failed to play by the rules, and he’d lost everything.
I almost envied him.
* * *
SIMON
I bumped fists with Darnell when I arrived for my Sports Leadership class. “What’s up? You look glum.”
“Isn’t that my line?” He rumbled a deep laugh. “You’ve been one glum motherfucker since the day I met you.”
