Score (Skin in the Game Book 1) Read online

  I muttered the words “Bright side”, over and over, like a mantra as I squish-squish-squished the rest of the way to Panther’s locker room.

  And, hey, at least this day couldn’t get any worse.

  2

  Cal

  You miss all the shots you don’t take.

  Of all the things to come into my mind while I sat in Coach Beal’s office, it was a fucking Gretzky quote. But this wasn’t hockey.

  This was football.

  And Beal seemed intent on keeping his star wide receiver—that would be me—from making any shots for the foreseeable future.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  Beal removed his cap and ran his hands through his thinning, bristle-brush hair. He screwed the hat back on his head and laced his fingers in front of him. “I don’t see how I can make it clearer, son.”

  “Yeah. But three more games? That’s what you said three games ago. That means I’m going to miss the game against Florida Tech.”

  I sucked in a breath, just imagining sitting on the sidelines yet again, watching my teammates log a W without me. It had been all right for the one game. I knew the knee needed a break. Plus, I had a great view of the cheerleaders’ asses from the bench. But that got real old, real fast.

  I wanted to play.

  No. More than that. I had to play.

  An image of Weber, the fast-as-lightning sophomore, with his four-foot vertical leap, plucking a sixty-yard bomb out of thin air at Saturday’s game played through my mind for the thousandth time. I could almost feel him breathing down my neck.

  “I need to play.”

  “Not going to happen, Samsky. It’s short-term suffering, long-term gain. We rush your comeback, and it’ll be more than just a meniscus tear next time. I need you for the post-season.”

  “But it’s good.” I held my leg out in front of me and flexed to demonstrate. It was still a little tight, but barely hurt anymore. Especially when I didn’t move it. “See?”

  “Hmph.” He didn’t even look up from the papers scattered on his desk. He picked up a pen and scribbled something down, then handed me the paper.

  I studied it. “What is this?”

  “I’m stepping up your therapy.”

  I groaned inwardly. Each therapy session only made the itch to get back on the field worse. Anytime I was anywhere near my teammates, I felt it. The other wide receivers were good, too. Not as good as me, but if I stayed out long enough…

  “I already go twice a week.”

  “Bob will keep up your regular therapy schedule. And one of the upper-class PT students will supplement that. Five sessions a week, starting now. Got it?”

  My stomach clenched at the idea of being prodded and poked by a wannabe doctor. That could do more harm than good. “Five? Are you serious? Like I said, I’m feeling strong. I’m back to my regular lifting schedule, too.”

  “Look, make up my mind, son. You want to get out on the field faster, this is the way to do it safely.”

  Beal stood up from his desk and opened the door in a this conversation is over kind of way. He already looked pissed off enough that I knew I should let it go, but I couldn’t.

  “Can’t we at least talk it over?”

  He pointed my way out the door. “We just did.”

  No. No, he talked. I just sat there and watched what was left of my football career—what was left of my life—fly out the window.

  If I’d learned anything from my three plus years as a Panther, it was that once Coach Beal made up his mind for real, it’d take a tornado, a death certificate, and a declaration of war to change his mind. But, obviously, Coach Beal hadn’t learned a thing about me in those three years, because if he had, he’d know that he was ripping out what was left of my soul.

  First and foremost, I played ball. From the time I’d been old enough to strap on a helmet for my hometown Pop Warner league at five years old, I did nothing else more, or better.

  Football was who I was. It was everything.

  And now it was gone for another two weeks, minimum. There was only a handful more regular season games left in my college career. and I could almost hear the clock ticking.

  Shit.

  “All right,” I said finally. But it wasn’t all right. Not at all.

  I followed him out to the locker room where Bob Sanders, our team’s PT, was waiting. I started to wave at him, just as a ponytailed girl in an oversized sweatshirt jumped up from behind one of the therapy tables, holding a messy pile of papers in one hand.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled distractedly, handing them to Bob.

  Bob gathered them up and stuck them under his clipboard as I blinked twice. Not that she was anything to look twice at. She wasn’t full-on, cock-raising sexy like the girls I normally went with. She was cute, I guess, the way squirrels were cute but still, I had to do a double-take.

  I knew her.

  It was the girl from outside the Kappa Beta Chi house.

  Quasimodo.

  It’d been obvious she was one of those brainy chicks who probably raised her hand in class to remind the prof that he forgot to collect the homework that day. But what had she said? She was a Kappa?

  Seemed highly unlikely. I’d been to plenty of their parties and I had never met a Kappa like her.

  When she finally looked up to meet my gaze, she wrinkled her nose and took a step back.

  Nice to see you, too, sweetheart.

  At least she was on my turf, now. But why?

  The four of us stood between the rows of lockers, and a second before Coach Beal could make the introductions, it hit me.

  Miss Clumsy Know-it-All with a chip on her shoulder was the upper-class PT student. The one who’d be treating me, three days a week.

  Oh, hell no.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked, hoping like hell I was wrong.

  Bob set down his clipboard and gave Quasi’s shoulder a pat. “This is Bee Mitchell. She’s one of our best Physical Therapy students. Bee, this is Callum Samskevitch, our number one starting wide receiver.”

  Even girls who didn’t like football had some reaction when they heard that, but “Bee” here didn’t look impressed. She just nodded tightly.

  Bee, like the insect. What kind of name was that, anyway? Still, there was no way I was going to be able to worm my way out of this, at least until I showed Coach that I had tried, so I stuck out my hand.

  “Call me Cal,” I said. After staring at my hand like she’d never seen one before, she shook just the tips of my fingers, like I was infected.

  “Well, we’ll leave you to it,” Coach Beal said, and he and Bob left me alone with her.

  A tense silence fell over the room and I wondered if I should mention the whole falling down the stairs thing to break the ice.

  “Might as well get it over with,” she muttered under her breath. Then she jerked a thumb toward the table. “Up you go.”

  I climbed atop it and rolled my sweatpants up to the thigh, then leaned back on my palms. If I had to be there, I might as well make the best of it.

  “So, Bee…is this gonna sting, or?” I cracked.

  She rolled her eyes. “How original. I’ve only heard that about a million times.”

  “You’re real chipper,” I observed.

  She didn’t respond. Her focus was on my injured knee.

  My PT had always been with Bob, a middle-aged, balding guy with warm, sweaty, sausage-like fingers that meant business. Bee’s fingers grazed my knee lightly, and unexpectedly, my cock twitched.

  What the hell was that about? I shifted forward as the pressure of her hands on my muscles increased and caught the scent of something like vanilla sugar. Maybe it was the Pop-Tart I’d seen her eating earlier, but Quasimodo smelled delicious.

  I tried again, motivated to find something to focus on besides her scent. “Is Bee short for something?”

  She scowled at me. “Yes. It’s short for, ‘Beefuckingquiet while I’m working, please.’”

>   I put my hands up in mock surrender. “Whoa. Okay, okay. Easy.”

  She put her finger and thumb to her mouth and turned them in the universal sign for “Button your lip” and then swung her attention back to my leg.

  Her fingers traveled up to my thigh. All standard stuff Bob had done. Not that I thought she’d be copping feels or anything. If I was going by the look in her eyes when she’d first seen me, I would’ve said she’d relish the opportunity to torture me a little. But her fingers were a different story.

  They felt good. Damn good. Like she’d located a knot of tissue that I hadn’t even known was aching and tense until she massaged it out.

  I let my eyes drift shut as she continued to work her magic. A few minutes later, she nudged my leg aside to check her clipboard.

  “When did you have your surgery?”

  I clamped my mouth closed and pantomimed my regret at not being able to talk, under her wishes.

  She rolled her eyes and gave me the glare of death, enough to damn near slice me a new one.

  “You can talk now.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Whatever the hell I did to this girl in a former lifetime, it could not have been good. She’d chosen this major. I was the one who was stuck in therapy with her. “Three weeks ago.”

  “And the coach wants you to stay out another three weeks?”

  “Unless you have magic healing powers and can change that, yeah.”

  “Hmm. Let me think.”

  She didn’t.

  “No.”

  I smiled at that, but she just scowled. I couldn’t say why, but there’d always been something about an attitude that turned me on. Okay, she wasn’t Blake Lively or anything, but maybe she had something more going on beyond the tough exterior.

  She picked up her pen and scribbled something on the clipboard as I drummed on my thighs, waiting.

  “So what made you decide to rush Kappa?”

  She ignored me and wrapped her fingers around my upper thigh, bringing the knee closer to my chest and sending a jolt-jolt-jolt right up to my dick.

  Down, boy.

  “You doing your regular exercises? With the bands and on the weight machine?”

  “Daily.”

  “Great.” She clearly wasn’t impressed and patted the cushioned table. “On your side.”

  I rolled over and one of her hands snaked under my knee and gripped my lower thigh. The clumsy girl who had tumbled down those stairs was long gone. She knew her stuff, for sure, because she went through all the stretches just the way Bob did. She had me pretzel myself in all the usual positions, one after the next, and after about ten minutes, my knee felt looser than it had since the injury.

  But hell, I never had to worry about hard-ons with Bob, and the longer Bee touched me, the harder things got.

  More scribbling on the clipboard as I took the break to regroup.

  “So,” I started, filling the awkward silence. “Magic pill or no, you can at least put in a good word, right? Tell the coach I’m good to play the next game?”

  “Not a chance,” she mumbled.

  It was worth a shot.

  “What made you want to have a career in touching hot football players?”

  “Excuse me?” She jerked her head back to glare at me so quick that she hit me square in the jaw with her cranium.

  Pain rocketed up the side of my face. “Ah, fuck,” I groaned.

  She reeled back, holding her head. The perma-scowl got even scarier as her eyes bored into mine. “Believe me, I don’t want to be doing this,” she snapped.

  “Oh, really? Couldn’t tell,” I muttered, all sarcasm as I flexed my jaw and checked for loose teeth with the tip of my tongue.

  She stared at me, still holding her head, and the scowl started to fade, making room for a sliver of regret. What was this? The ice-queen had a heart?

  “Here’s a tip: You could work on your bedside manner some,” I added, milking the kernel guilt I’d seen for all it was worth.

  She nodded, exhaled, and then shook her head.

  “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, and it’s not fair to take it out on you.” She put the clipboard down. “I promise to work on it, okay?” Her cheeks turned pink as she reached down for her backpack and pulled out her phone. “Is this time good for you, usually? We can do Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays if that works with your class schedule?”

  “Saturday mornings.” Weird how just wiping the frown off her face made her look almost pretty. I swung my legs over the side of the table, determined to stay on track. “Instead of Fridays, if you can manage. I’ve got practice Friday.”

  She handed me her iPhone. “Put in your number, and I’ll text you back, that way we have each other’s contact info in case something needs to change.”

  Just as I thumbed my number in, her phone began to buzz with a new call. Suddenly, the locker room was filled with song. And not a good song, either. Josh Fucking Groban, belting out You Raise Me Up in all his choirboy, full-lunged glory.

  I cocked an eyebrow at Bee as her face went from pretty pink to the color of my crimson jersey.

  “Nice ringtone choice. Someone named Flo calling for you,” I said, holding out the phone with a smirk.

  “That’s…it’s not…” She snatched the phone from me and fumbled to quiet it. Back to the scary look of death, but at least this time, there was a layer of embarrassment as well.

  She grabbed her bag and high-tailed it out of there quicker than I could blink again.

  “See you later, Honey Bee,” I called after her.

  Personally, I thought I deserved some kudos for that one. It was the perfect ironic nickname for a girl who had not an ounce of sweetness in her, but she didn’t turn around.

  Oddly, I found myself grinning after her anyway. If I had to be stuck in therapy with her, I might as well enjoy myself a little and try to figure out exactly what made this Bee buzz.

  3

  Bee

  “See you later, Honey Bee.”

  I couldn’t get it out of my head and by the time I got back home, I was sweating bullets and completely out of breath. Not something that happened often, considering I could usually run laps around the track pretty much forever without feeling winded. But the second I climbed up the Stairs of Doom and got myself safely inside, I threw myself at the door with all my weight and just slumped there, my heart beating out of my chest.

  Funny. I never thought the Kappa house would feel like a refuge. After going two rounds with Callum Samskevitch today, though, I just wanted to curl up at home and lick my wounds.

  It only took three seconds for that fantasy to crash and burn.

  Pretty much all the Kappas were lounged on the sofas, wearing cute, matching but not too matchy PJ’s and watching a Zac Efron movie. They were one pillow-fight away from looking like the cast of a cheesy B flick on Cinemax.

  Ugh.

  “What’s up with the heavy breathing?” a girl named Allison called to me before I could make my not-so-graceful exit. Pert, pretty, the envy of all the other beauty contestant wannabes in the world, Allison made me cringe on a daily basis. “Was a rhinoceros chasing you or something?”

  I groaned as a bunch of her groupies tittered.

  “Yes,” I deadpanned. “Oh, wait. I’m sorry. That’s just my ass.”

  “Oh, come on,” one of the girls piped up. “You’re not even close to being fat, Bee.”

  Maybe true, but I wasn’t skinny, either. Not like these girls. I had curves, something most of my sorority sisters wouldn’t know a thing about. But that was my defense mechanism. I hid in humor. I made fun of myself before anyone else could. It was part of my charm, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was also one of the only reasons they even put up with me at all.

  I spotted Flora lying upside down on the sofa, holding her cell phone over her face and scrolling through it. If I had the skills, I’d program that sucker to play Britney Spears’ I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman every time sh
e breathed. I snapped my fingers at her and motioned her into our bedroom with an urgent wave of my arms.

  To her credit, she hopped right up and trailed behind me without a word.

  I shut the door behind us and she launched herself onto her daybed before squinting at me.

  “Do you know you still have Pop-Tart crumbs on your chin?”

  I did?

  I raced to the mirror. Sure enough, there they were, plain as day.

  Kill me now.

  I mentally replayed my movements of the past couple of hours. Who’d witnessed my Pop-Tart beard? Professor Maxwell. Dr. Sanders. Coach Beal.

  And Callum Samskevitch.

  Oh, God.

  I collapsed face forward on my bed, wondering if I could bury myself in it and die there. Might as well give it a try. I wiggled myself deeper into the mattress like a pathetic caterpillar, silently praying for it to swallow me whole.

  Ten seconds later, I looked up. Flora was still paging through her phone, waiting patiently for my internal crisis to either pass or become external.

  “You also have, like, all this white stuff on your ass, too…”

  Of course, I did.

  “I fell down the steps on the way to class. Must be salt.”

  “Oooh,” she murmured with a sympathetic wince. “So your day isn’t going well, I guess?”

  Understatement of the century.

  “Well. Let’s see.” I rolled up into a sitting position and tucked my knees against my chest. “I took a header down the stairs in front of the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. After which, he assumed I was only coming out of Kappa house because I was there tutoring one of you guys. I subsequently missed all of class and got a bullshit clinical assignment—a football player— from Maxwell. On the way over to the locker room to meet my new assignment, I stepped in a slush puddle and ruined my brand new sneakers. Then I got there only to realize that the hottest guy I’d ever seen—the one who witnessed my graceful face-plant—was my new assignment.”

  She cringed and set the phone on the bed beside her. “And he saw you like…that?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said with faux-brightness. “And it gets better. I whipped out my phone to take down his number and what song comes blasting out of it? I’ll give you three guesses.”