The Wrong Quarterback (The Wrong Player, #1)

by C.R. Jane

Cole: It’s called fashion. Me: It’s called embarrassing. I wish it had crapped on your head. “Good one,” Jace muttered, as I elbowed him for standing practically on top of me. Cole: It was stuffed! Walker: Somehow that makes it worse. Me: … Cole: Hey! None of that rhombus of ridiculousness shit. Walker: Do you mean Circle of Trust? Because if so, that’s blasphemy. If not, what the hell is the rhombus of ridiculousness? Cole: Tomato, Tuh-mot-oh.

One thing I knew as I drove my truck away from the house like I was being chased…ghosts were real. My mom was one.

The Davis family had a curse. Or at least they liked to think that they did. Our male family members tended to be one look and that’s all kind of people. When they found “the one,” that was it. I hadn’t believed that it was true—it couldn’t be true. Holy shit. It couldn’t be true…

I turned around…and it felt a little like my heart might be breaking. Because now that I’d seen him up close, how was anyone, for the rest of my life, supposed to compare?

“I’m going to kill you, ya back-alley hillbillies. I’ll fuck your mom and make you call me daddy! I am not going to be kidnapped by a bunch of wannabe Halloween decorations!” I snorted. Jace. Only Jace…

“When I find the girl of my dreams, you can bet your exquisite ass I’m going to find out everything I can about her.”

I groaned, but Casey was laughing. Hard. And now it was definitely time for Jace to go, because I didn’t want anyone making her laugh like that—but me.

“Matthew Clay Adler, get your fucking ass out of the truck, or I swear, I will find a ghost, and I’m going to sic him on your ass for the rest of eternity!” I growled. “God bless you, you’re an American classic,” commented Jace, clapping me on the back.

“You remember she’s only been buried for a week, right?” Matty said slowly. Jace froze and stared at us in horror. “This was not part of the job description!” he snapped, beginning to freak out. He dropped his shovel on the ground. “I signed up for skeletons, not Night of The Living Dead corpses! I want a refund!”

“I know you feel this. Like something has happened to my fucking soul. Like I can’t breathe without you anymore. Tell me it’s not just me that’s gone crazy. Tell me you’re right there with me,”

I’d be there for her, in whatever way she needed me. I could tell she thought she was broken. But I’d help change her mind about that. Get ready, baby. I’m coming for you.

“That’s okay, keep looking, baby, just know I do the same thing every time too,” I told her, watching, entranced, as the faintest smile played on her lips. Casey took another sip of her coffee, and I knew I’d gotten one step closer to my goal… Winning her heart.

I was going to fucking ruin her. Just like she’d already ruined me.

“If you were my girl, you would be the only thing that I would see. I would spend every day proving to you how fucking perfect you are for me. There would never be a day that you would doubt it,”

“You can’t steal something that belongs to you,” I told them, and they both blinked at me…looking concerned. “The delusion is setting in. We’d better call a doctor,” Jace whisper-yelled. “We can’t. They would lock him up,” added Matty.

Sometimes it hurt being this close to her because all I wanted was for her to be mine. I wanted to latch myself onto her and stitch her to my side so we were never apart. That sounded creepy, but I obviously meant it in the most obsessed, deranged, love-struck way, of course.

Did I mention that Jace only knew where he was because he’d added both of us to his Find My Friends app without asking permission…because apparently stalking was our thing?

“I want your words, baby,” Parker pressed, and all I could do was moan in response. “Say it, Casey. Tell me you want me to lick that pretty cunt.” He bit down in the space between my neck and my shoulder and I cried out again. “I want you to beg for it,”

“I’m not some temporary Band-Aid, Casey. And I’m definitely not some fuckboy you’re allowed to forget.” “I need to go,” I told him, pushing on his arm. “You don’t get to regret this. You don’t get to regret me. I’ll let you run tonight, but get ready for me, baby. It’s go time tomorrow. You let me taste you. There’s no ending to this story where I don’t get it all.”

“Bullshit. You and I both know this was inevitable, the kind of inevitable that gets tattooed on your skin until the day you die. I’m not going to be your rebound, Casey Larsen. I’m your end game.”

“I’m just saying, where are you? Because it looked like you were thinking about getting your dick sucked,” Jace continued. “I wasn’t thinking about that,” I griped, working to get my shoulder pads on since I’d been sitting here spaced out for who knows how long… Because I’d been thinking of getting my dick sucked.

This was just another reason why Casey was everything. She made everything better. Even the game I’d loved my whole life.

“Nat,” I told her, feeling strangely sad as I watched him play like some kind of football god. Because this felt so big, I wasn’t sure how it was possible for me to survive it. “What do I do?” She grabbed my chin and forced me to look at her. “Girl, you hold on fucking tight and enjoy the ride.”

“Don’t mind me,” Nat muttered across the room. “I’ll just be over here wishing it wasn’t socially unacceptable for me to pull out my vibrator right now. The two of you are HOT!”

“No, sir,” Nat interjected. “Our girl is going to this party, and you are going to show her a good time.” “Our girl?” he asked, a weird, silkily dangerous undertone to his voice. Nat gulped dramatically. “Sorry, sir…Daddy. I meant—your girl. Definitely your girl.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice low, thick with something raw. “Everything with you is…more. All I want is for your hands to be all over me, every second. But, damn, you gotta give a guy a warning, baby. I’d like to make it to the house in one piece.”

“No. My dick is definitely a ‘he’ and has his own free will. I’ve always thought I had control…but since I met you.” He winked at me. “I’ve stopped trying to hold him back. I’m pretty sure I’ve had a non-stop erection since the moment I saw you.” I gaped at him and then stared down at his still very hard dick. He put an arm in front of it. “Give him some space, baby. He can only take so much.”

We locked eyes through the glass, and I sent him a wish right before I turned the corner. Don’t hurt me. I don’t think I can survive you.

Cole: Because now I know—you’ve got a little rockstar in you. So, of course, you’d be up. Me: What makes you say that? Cole: Making out with a girl in the stands after you score…very rockstarish of you.

“Oh, well, with your friendship bracelet,” he said nonchalantly. Matty made a pained sound in the backseat. “They are not friendship bracelets.” Jace smirked. “They’re totally friendship bracelets.” I glanced at the leather band that I’d forgotten Jace had even given me. We’d gotten them freshman year, and I considered it my lucky charm at this point. I never took it off. “What does my…band have to do with this?” “It has a tracker in there,” he said proudly. “Because best friends stalk each other.”

I’d realized that Parker wasn’t a loss I was willing to take. I at least needed to fight for him.

“You could never mess us up,” Parker said, his thumb stroking my cheek as he held my face. “I wouldn’t let you. You could run, and I would run after you; you could hide, and I would find you; you could go to the other side of the fucking planet…and I would spend my entire life trying to track you down.”

“What’s the opposite of dickmatized?” Matty asked, leaning his arm on Jace’s shoulder as they both gave me smug smiles. “Pussy-conquered?” Jace offered, cocking his head as he thought about it. “Oh, yes. That’s a good one,” Matty said, giving Jace a fist bump.

“Don’t go alone. I’m never too busy for you. You don’t get this yet, but you’re my number one priority. There’s nothing more important than making you happy. Nothing.”

“Didn’t you hook up with that hot lacrosse player two nights ago?” She pressed her palm against my mouth. “Don’t call another guy hot. Parker will somehow hear you. And I like that guy. I don’t want him to disappear.” I rolled my eyes. “Parker’s not going to make anyone disappear.” Nat smirked. “You think that. But it’s always the hot ones that are crazy.”

“What? That’s your response to me telling you I’m keeping my soulmate in my basement?” He blinked at me like I was stupid. “As a fellow No Drama Llama member, I need to be prepared in the inevitable event that I have to bail you out. Which means my stocks need to be better.”

For my entire life, I’d wanted someone to see me. I hadn’t expected it to come in this form, though. But maybe broken things needed extraordinary measures to fix them.

“I love you more than anything. You own my…soul.” I watched as a tear slid down his cheek, the happiness radiating off him making me light-headed, like we now existed in our own little world. “You’ve owned my soul since the moment I saw you, baby,” he finally whispered in a choked voice. “I’ve just been waiting for you to realize it.”

I understood now how his mother could have faded away after she lost his dad. If she’d had something anywhere close to this, how could she exist when it was gone? I wasn’t sure that I could. It was terrifying…exhilarating. It was everything.

I didn’t have to say a word, didn’t have to explain the way he made all the broken pieces of me feel like they belonged. He already knew. Somehow, he’d known all along.

And maybe that’s what love really was—not just filling a void, but building something beautiful out of the empty places.