Page 12 of Cruel Hate

“It doesn’t matter. You can pick one for me.”

“All right. I’ll get someone set up for tonight after practice.”

“That soon?” My shoulders tensed. I thought I would have a few days to get used to working with a stranger.

“We need to get ahead of this, Phoenix. No one—and I’m sure you feel the strongest about this—wants you to lose your eligibility and financial aid. I’ll send you the details in about an hour. I can have him start tomorrow if that works better for you.”

“No, it’s fine.”I might as well get it over with.

The meeting concluded, I headed out and back to the football house. I left feeling only slightly better than I had going in. If I could get the tutor to read the book or find me an audio version somewhere, then I would do fine on midterms.

“Damn you, Shane.” I muttered some version of that as I walked. When I got home, I had only about ten minutes until it was time to leave for practice. I stopped and asked Bryce, one of the defensive ends, if he’d seen my brother, but he hadn’t. Neither had Jaxon. I stopped there because of course my brother wasn’t there.

It was too much to deal with, and I wouldn’t even have been in that situation if he hadn’t been so determined to sleep with the entire female population as a balm to his very bruised ego when we got here. Hooking up with Tracey again had been the worst thing for him. She was the cause of his messed-up perception, even though I thought he’d finally come to terms with how she’d used him. It was fucked up. He’d blown off helping me, even knowing how much I needed him. I’d tried so fucking hard, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did.

I grabbed what I needed and left, heading for my SUV then the stadium.Maybe I should take this year off and get a full-time job. Save some money for the kid and school. It isn’t like I’ll get drafted my first year, anyway.

I rounded the corner that would take me to the lot where I’d left my car. I stopped short, fixated on the blonde laughing about three feet away.What the hell is Aspen doing?

Her arm was threaded with one belonging to a tall guy with black hair. Their heads were bent close, and whatever he said made her laugh. I saw red. She shouldn’t have been dating around.

In long strides, I ate up the distance between us, glaring at the guy the entire time. His eyes widened, and he stopped walking. Confusion settled over Aspen’s features as she looked at him then followed his line of sight right to me.

“Phoenix.” Aspen’s mouth tightened, and she let go of the guy’s arm.

“What the hell are you doing?” I jammed my index finger into the guy’s chest, pushing him back a step with ease. “Aspen isn’t yours. She’s my girlfriend. Which means hands the fuck off of her.”

“Max is a friend, Phoenix.” She swatted my hand away from the guy and stepped in front of him.

She smacked me in the chest and tried to push me back. That didn’t happen. She kept her hand on me, which calmed me enough not to punch the loser in the face.

Over her shoulder, she addressed the guy. “I’ll catch up with you later, Max.”

“You sure you’ll be okay?”

I bared my teeth. Fucker was asking to get punched.

“Yeah, promise.” She grabbed my arm and tugged until I followed her a few feet away.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Max is my friend.” She threw her arms up. “And who the hell are you to tell me who I can hang out with? I talked about fake dating, but I didn’t order a side of psycho with that. You are the one who doesn’t date, so your girlfriend comment was bullshit.”

“We’re fake dating.”

“No. That went to hell at the diner. Nothing was established. You blew up and were a total asshole.”

“You tried to make it more than fake. I told you I didn’t want a relationship. Never will.”

She smacked herself on the forehead, her eyes briefly closing. “Neither one of us wants a relationship. The fake dating was supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, not anything real. It’ll keep my parents off my back, sort of. And you wanted to keep girls away so you can keep your sight on whatever it is you need to focus on.”

“And that’s what we’re doing.”

“Ahhh. You drive me crazy.”

The feeling was mutual. I crossed my arms over my chest, ready to drop some rules around our fake relationship, so we were both on the same page. “It’s official, then. We’re fake dating. Which means no dating anyone else.”

“That goes both ways.” She mirrored my posture.

I shrugged. I had no intention of dating anyone else. “I don’t date, so that’s not a problem.”

---