Possession: A Football Romance (Stone Creek University Book 3) Read online

  I run into Julia and Gabe in the training room when I arrive after class. They’re both in their final year in the doctoral program for athletic training at SCU, and I know Julia is eager to land a full-time university position. I try to feel her out and talk about what happened with Justin, but she seems tight lipped and quiet when I bring it up.

  Instead, she launches into a story about a gymnast with basically a compound fracture in her leg. “Girl wanted to continue her vault work. I was like, um, no. Let’s get you scheduled for surgery.”

  Gabe smiles and when I see him lean in to drop a kiss on her temple, I know that my hunch from the other night is correct. I wonder if they’ll get positions at the same university someday. Will they have to live in separate cities so they can each pursue their careers? It doesn’t take long until I start fretting about where I’ll go to grad school, how far that will be from where Bax gets drafted. I’m lost in my thoughts about them when I see Justin come in and tape up the schedule for the training room team for the rest of the week.

  “Wait,” I say looking at my name on the chart. “Saturday morning meet?”

  Justin’s eyes narrow. “Is there a problem with that, Ms. Hampton? I thought you’d jump at the chance to prepare these athletes for competition. Hands on…”

  I bite my lip. He knows I always go to the SCU home games and sit in the family section to support Baxter. Is Justin right, though? Should I be focused on my own career? After all, Baxter will play his best whether I’m there the whole time or not.

  I look at the schedule again and decide that, if I hustle after the meet, I can make it to the stadium before halftime.

  “No problem,” I say. “I was just surprised is all.”

  “Good,” Justins says, and there is no mistaking the sharpness in his tone.

  Across the hall, I see the new quarterback talking with Tim, my injured swimmer. It’s unusual for these particular sports to inter mingle, but before I can think too hard about it, Tim saunters into the room, pulling off his shirt.

  “I’m ready for my daily torture,” he tells me, grinning. “Hook me up to the juice.” I laugh at his description of the treatment, but get him situated on the training table while Julia checks out the notes on his chart.

  “This is all really good work, Olive,” Julia tells me. She looks down at Tim on the table. “You should be competing this weekend, no sweat.”

  He grins and tries to pump his fist without tangling the wires on his back. “Well,” he says, “I hope I’m sweating from working hard.”

  I finish up his treatment, get him all set with the ice and stretches, and I can’t help but smile because I know that I really have been helping him. It feels good to have so much impact on someone’s recovery. Through it all, though, I can’t help but feel uneasy.

  At dinner, I sit with Tia and Elyse and listen to them talk about their plans for after graduation. They’re going to rent an apartment together in the city, hoping they’ll have jobs lined up by May. “I can always wait tables again,” Tia says, telling us about how she worked in a diner growing up. “Speaking of,” she says, “if you really want to get laid, you just need to waltz into a diner on a Friday wearing tight jeans.” Tia shrugs. “The after-bar crowd will be more than happy to cream your donut.”

  “Ugh, gross, girl.” Elyse throws a fry at her roommate. “You can’t get a drunken diner dude for your first time. Especially when you’re trying to fuck a crush out of your system.” She gestures at me with another fry. “Don’t even try to tell me it’s not a crush. You’re totally smitten and I think it’s ridiculous that you don’t just open up about it.”

  I open my mouth to argue, to tell her that theory is ludicrous, but Tia nods. She says, “I actually think this plan is better than the bang-a-stranger-to-get-it-over-with idea.” She and Elyse launch into a detailed theory about how we could rock friends with benefits or even just burn out in a blaze of orgasms leading up to graduation and the pro football draft.

  “Then,” Elyse says, “He’ll go off to Buffalo or wherever the hell and you’ll get a full ride to Berkeley and the distance will be a buffer.”

  I see the merits in what they’re saying, but the idea of losing touch with Baxter horrifies me. It’s not just about physical proximity. He calms me, supports me, grounds me. Is my barometer when I’m afraid or upset.

  “No,” I tell them. “I can’t cross that line with Bax.”

  They look at me, a bit sad, and we finish our meal in silence.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bax

  THIS IS PROBABLY the longest I’ve gone without speaking to Olive in 12 years. I saw that she texted me the other night, but I don’t feel like opening it. I have to get my head on straight. A redhead on my lap at the bar didn’t help. Neither did sprinting on the track the next day or tackle practice this afternoon.

  It’s Friday, and the team is quarantined to a hotel before our game. Team bonding is Coach Burns’ reasoning, but really he’s just holding us here so we don’t get our asses in trouble. He’s been around for awhile. He knows what a bunch of athletes in their 20s would rather be doing on a Friday night in a town where we’re revered as gods.

  Poor guy doesn’t know that half the undergrads covet internships at this hotel so they can bag a football player during fall semester. Most guys on the team have gotten a blowie in the hot tub.

  So this would probably be at least entertaining if not tolerable…except that Coach has me bunked up with Kevan Pence, the transfer QB who’s starting for us this weekend since JT has a fucked up hand.

  Smarmy dude spent half the evening in the supply closet and he’s climbing out of the shower now like he wants to tell me all about what went on in there.

  I don’t give a shit, though, and I’m in a pissy mood. “Will you quit making that face like you’re so damn pleased with yourself?”

  He raises an eyebrow at me. “What’s your problem, Morgan?”

  I snort. “You, man. I don’t know you and you don’t know me and neither of us is going to be here long enough for that to matter.”

  “Dude,” he says. “We’ve got a whole season to go. You want to tell me anything specific?”

  He flops onto his back on the bed and stares at me. I roll my eyes and turn off the light, punching my pillows. “Just quit staring at Olive.”

  “The girl from the training room? She your girl? Is that what this is about? Look, man—”

  “She’s off fucking limits,” I grunt, pissed that nobody made this clear to him. Pissed that he can’t take a hint. Just pissed. I saw him smile at her the other day, and that pissed me off more.

  “You done yelling?”

  “Yeah, if you’re done looking where you shouldn’t be.”

  Kevan turns the light back on and I squint, rolling over halfway to look at him. “Dude, I was not staring at Olive. Morgan, don’t you know that I’m gay?”

  I just blink at him a few times. What the fuck is he even talking about?

  “I. Like. Cock. You don’t have to worry about me getting between you and your dream girl, Morgan. And before you tell me again that she’s your best friend, I think we both know it’s more than that for you.”

  Well this is unexpected. “But I saw you staring at her…”

  “Did you?” He asks, turning the light out again and punching his own pillows. “Or did you see me staring past her at the shirtless swimmer she was stretching?”

  Shit.

  “You’re seriously gay?” This has me all sorts of messed up. I’m a good judge of people. That’s basically all I’ve got going for me, apart from my ability to tackle the shit out of running backs. You don’t grow up in a house with a maniac and not learn how to read a room. Sometimes, that was the only way I avoided getting my ass kicked. I was a thousand per cent certain this guy had the hots for Olive.

  “Super gay. Like just had a cock in my mouth gay.”

  “Come on, man.”

  “Hey, you asked. Now you want to tell me what�
��s going on with you and Olive?”

  I shrug in the dark, like he can see me. “I told you. She’s my best friend. It’s not like that with her.”

  I hear a bag rustle and I realize this asshole is eating chips in bed while he’s talking to me. “Could have fooled me,” he says. “I know I’m new around here, but a blind man could see that you want her.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not going to ever happen. I need her as a friend more than I need to get my rocks off.”

  He keeps eating the damn potato chips while I think about all the times I thought he’d been staring at Olive’s tits in the training room. She’s always stretching someone out. We’re all wound up tighter than twine on a pork loin. “I’m not sure it’s any better that you’re checking out the other guys on our team,” I tell him.

  I hear him crumple the chip bag and toss it in the trash can. “You think I’m the only gay football player at SCU? You really don’t know your team very well, Morgan.”

  This guy is fucking with my head. Is Kevan right? Have I been misreading my teammates for years? This is the most unsettling conversation I’ve had in a long time. I don’t like it one bit. I don’t answer him, but I also can’t sleep, running through a list of my teammates, trying to figure out who I actually know.

  Eventually, Kevan says, “Not everyone feels safe admitting it, though. Some guys are good at trying to hide who they really are.”

  That gets me thinking about my fucking father—master of hiding his true self. I mean, it’s sort of the opposite. My father hides that he is a monster and Kevan’s saying my teammates are afraid of monsters. Everyone in my home town thinks dad’s some upstanding citizen. Turning all the boys of Fulton football into men. Loving mentor. All of it an act.

  My father would come home and spit venom, complaining about everyone and everything in his life, detailing how thoroughly everyone was standing in his way. Most especially me and Brody.

  I honestly think that’s how Olive got her start as a trainer. She’d look after me when he’d twist my arm behind my back for missing a spot washing the dishes. She figured out how to massage my head if he slammed it off the dining room table. Brody never had anyone like Olive to look after him. Sounds like Kevan knows a thing or two about that experience himself.

  I don’t like thinking about my brother the night before a game. I roll around for awhile, trying to forget everything Kevan said, too. Eventually I hear him snoring and I cram a pillow over my head. I fall asleep thinking about Olive’s touch on my skin and how much I missed feeling that in the training room this week.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Olive

  FOOTBALL SATURDAYS HAVE always had a special rhythm. Usually, I wake up early and head into the training room, get everything set up to tape ankles and wrap wrists. The linemen always come in first, needing more attention than everyone else. And then I give Bax a pep talk, assure him I’ll be watching from the stands, wearing his jersey. I kiss his forehead each week, for luck.

  So today, when I’m in the natatorium all morning stretching out swimmers, I just feel off.

  Tim was in early for some more treatments for his back. He’s not going to let anything like muscle spasms prevent him from competing. I’ve been around athletes long enough to know they don’t sit out until their coach screams in their face.

  Nobody seems to mind that I, an undergrad assistant, step in to work out Tim’s hamstrings and hook him up to the TENS unit. Justin is over with the football players for game prep, so the mood in the training room is pretty light while I go about my business.

  Tim is doing much better after a few days of lighter training and heavier stretches. He is even chatty, telling me about his internship from last summer in New York City.

  He grits his teeth as I lean into his leg, trying to get some more stretch from his thighs. “Yeah,” he says. “The hours were insane at the bank, but I was staying with my cousin and he has a pool in his building, so I could still get in off-season workouts.”

  “That’s good that you can be that disciplined on your own,” I tell him, gesturing for him to roll to his stomach. I crank back his hairless shin to stretch his quads, marveling again that I can be so close to an objectively beautiful body and feel nothing sexual. Not even a flutter in my belly.

  I get him race ready and stare at the clock. One more hour of my shift. I’ll miss the first quarter of the football game. I head into the office to make notes, update Tim’s chart, trying to be ready to leave as soon as possible.

  There’s a grad student trainer in here working on charts, too. She looks at me questioningly as I sit at the big table we all share. “Justin reassigned me the other day,” I tell her. “I was on football before.” I shrug.

  “This is a big shift,” she says. “Anyway, I’m Emily.” She holds out a hand, and I shake it.

  “Olive,” I tell her. “Pleased to meet you.”

  We sit next to each other working for awhile, and then she stops and stares at me. “I know who you are,” she says. “Julia was telling me. You’re the undergrad wonderkid.”

  “Wonderkid?”

  Emily tells me how Julia was bragging about me to the other grad students in the program. I flush, embarrassed, but Emily grins. “I’m glad you’ll get more hands-on experience with the swimmers. This will be good for you.” She shows me her folder.

  Emily’s doing her PhD research on knee ligament tears. She’s been trying to get moved back to soccer or a sport with more impact, since the swimmers don’t really damage their knees all that often.

  Turns out, Justin has been shifting a lot of people around this semester.

  “So who got sent to fill my spot at football? Why not you?” Emily shrugs and looks over my shoulder, like she’s searching for someone.

  “Honestly? I wasn’t willing to kiss Justin’s ass, so he sent me here as punishment.”

  “What? That’s insane.”

  Emily shrugs. “It’s just a thing he does. He’s on such a power trip. None of the higher ups give a shit because the athletes are all fine. It’s just that none of us can really finish our research easily since we don’t get the right cases for our focus.”

  I spend the rest of my shift thinking about Emily’s words, wondering what comes next. As soon as my time’s up, I hurry to grab my things, wanting to get to the stadium as quickly as I can.

  Emily shouts out, “You wanna come to the Dark Horse? A bunch of us are going to watch the game on the TV there,” she says.

  “Oh,” I pause. I look down at my Morgan jersey. It’s not one like fans can buy in the gift shop—this is one of Baxter’s actual practice jerseys. A lot of the players give these to their girlfriends…he says he just likes knowing he’s got a friendly face in the family section. “I actually have to get to the stadium. I have tickets…”

  Emily nods. “Gotcha. Another time, right?”

  “Definitely.”

  By the time I get up into the family section, it’s midway into the second quarter. Scotty’s mom waves me over to my seat and hands me a bag of popcorn. “Olive, there you are! We just weren’t sure what on earth happened to you.”

  I explain about getting my assignment switched to swimming. I realize with a jolt that I didn’t even check to see if the Otters won the swim meet. I really should be more invested if I’m going to help take care of the team. I start to feel bad until I see Baxter turn around from the bench. Then I feel worse.

  “He’s having an off day,” Scotty’s mom whispers to me. “Maryland running back snuck past him for a first down early in the game.” I cringe. I know this isn’t my fault, but I feel guilty that I wasn’t here to show Bax support when he missed a tackle.

  Bax scans the crowd, looking absolutely miserable, until he finds me. Relief floods his face as I wave and shout, and then his expression quickly fades to irritation. I can tell he’s angry that I missed so much of the game.

  Bax leans down and talks to one of the water carriers, who looks baffled that one of the pl
ayers is speaking to him. Bax puts an arm on the guy’s shoulder, and he nods rapidly and runs off. Soon, the water boy pokes his head into our section, breathless.

  “Ms. Hampton?” I nod. “Baxter just wanted to make sure you’d be in the training room after the game.”

  I swallow. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to do that…but if Baxter wants me there, I don’t see the harm. I nod and turn my attention back to the game. The SCU defense takes the field to open the second quarter.

  I watch the snap, the pass, the reception and the smack as Baxter flies down the field and flattens the wide receiver. Most people have their eyes on the big screen watching the replay, but I’m looking over at Bax. I see that it takes him longer than usual to get up. He’s hurting, and he’s angry. So very angry.

  But Baxter has been angry for years. Sometimes he thinks he’s angry about one thing, but usually, he’s angry about his dad. He’s angry about his brother. He’s angry that his mother left.

  Baxter spends so much time curled up on my couch confessing to me how very, very angry he is, and the only way he seems to express any of that anger is out on the football field. Playing football seems to calm him, give him an outlet to focus his anger. Most of the time.

  For the rest of the game, I cringe watching him play. His adrenaline must be pounding through his veins as he chases down players who may or may not even have the ball. He slams them all into the ground, again and again, getting up with a roar I can hear across the stadium, where the other parents in our section look at me with wide eyes.

  Over the loudspeaker, the announcer keeps talking about Baxter’s stats, and I know he will eventually feel excited that he played so well. Scouts will likely see him today and this will help his career. But I also know that everything he’s doing is in response to feelings stirred up inside. Baxter Morgan is hurting.