16. Bryant

It"s the first game of the season, and the team is full of energy, ready to go.

"This is it, team! Today is the first day of our undefeated championship season!"

They roar with excitement, slapping each other on the back and shoulders.

"I don"t have to tell you what to do, you already know. You"ve spent the last three months working your asses off for this moment. You have all the tools. All you have to do is get out there and kick some Baylor ass!"

The team puts their arms around each other, jumping up and down and side to side, chanting and whooping. Coach Sanders takes my place, giving them his own pep talk, and next Lane will take his turn as captain and quarterback to get the team excited before he leads them out onto the field. I"m listening to Tuck give the team a play-by-play of some of the opposing team"s weaknesses when I see Jack slip unnoticed out of the locker room. Nodding to Tuck to keep it up, I follow him out the door and into my office.

"What"s going on, Perry?" I say, pulling the door closed behind me. He smirks, knowing my words are nothing more than show.

"Just some game jitters, Coach," he answers, leaning around me to turn the lock.

"Jack," I admonish in a low voice, "this isn"t a good time. You should be with the team."

"Well then, we better make this quick," he says simply.

"There"s no time for—" he presses his mouth to mine, cutting off my words. Like the last time he kissed me in my office, it turns heated quickly, and in seconds I have him pressed against the wall, grinding my thigh between his legs.

Shouting from the locker rooms infiltrates my office, interrupting the moment, and we stop, breathing heavily. There"s no mistaking the raw look of his lips, and I briefly panic over how we"re going to cover it. Jack picks up his helmet from the floor. He leans forward and gives my lips one last lick before pulling on his helmet.

"I"m going to win this game for you, and then I want you to fuck me tonight."

I cough, both incredibly aroused by his words, and terrified he could be overheard. Jack hits his hands against his helmet and slips out of my office, joining the others. I have to take a few minutes to myself, using an ice pack from my lunch cooler on my mouth to lessen the swelling. Then, when it doesn"t seem like it"s going to help itself, I put the ice pack on my balls to help my erection go down.

Fucking hell, this kid. He"s really not what I was expecting, that"s for sure.

I walk back into the locker room as Lane is yelling, "WHO ARE WE?!"

"JACKALS!" the team answers.

"WHO"S THE BEST?!"

"JACKALS!"

"WHO"S READY TO KICK SOME BEAR ASS!?" A few players snicker, but still answer enthusiastically.

"JACKAAAAALS!" They all yell before Coach Sanders is opening the door to let them know it"s time, and then they"re running down the hall and through the tunnel onto the field. Jack winks at me as he sprints onto the field, the crowd screaming for their team.

Because of Jack"s little pre-game tease, I"m on edge for most of the game. Thankfully, the rest of the team isn"t, and the Baylor Bears don"t stand a chance. It"s almost a complete shutout, but they manage to put up a field goal in the last minutes of the game.

Jack plays better than I"ve ever seen him. He is fucking unstoppable, and by the end of his first game, every Groveton College Football fan knows his name. The team carries him off the field on their shoulders, and I smile, knowing that even the holdouts like Grant Gipson are going to have to accept him eventually, on his merit alone. They might think he"s just a charity case now, but he"ll be making more money than any of them could dream of in the matter of a few years. I'm certain his first contract will supersede what any of them could expect. Jack looks back at me as his team carries him off to celebrate, and I wave him off.

I walk around the field a bit, shaking hands with the officials that I haven"t seen since last year. And of course, I have to pay my respects to the dean.

"Team looks great this year, Bryant."

"Thank you, sir," I nod, trying to think of how to escape his irritating presence when I hear someone calling out for me.

"Coach!" Lane runs back onto the field towards me. I turn to nod towards the dean before giving the quarterback my attention. "I thought you"d be inside already," he says. "I"m thinking Perry deserves the first game ball of the season."

I raise my eyebrows, surprised. The entire team played well, and both he and Gipson were partly responsible for the number of points that went up on the board tonight. They played as a team. But I can also see that Lane is being a good captain, and making a show of accepting Jack into this new, winning team.

"You know what, Masters? I think that"s a fantastic idea. Might help the rest of the guys come around." I pat him on the shoulder, gesturing him back inside to the team. "But, Masters—keep the celebratory drinks to a minimum, will ya?"

He laughs. "Will do, Coach."

I stare at my phone. Or maybe I"m staring at the $300 bottle of Macallan that it"s propped up on. Hell, I"m staring at both. Two things that represent the one thing I can"t have?—

Oblivion.

I"ve been sober for almost seven years now, but I keep this bottle to taunt myself. I get a twisted sort of satisfaction out of dangling something I can"t have in front of me, and I find myself staring at this bottle more often than not. It's familiar—the pain and the desire. No matter how much I want to open that bottle, to pour myself a few fingers of the amber liquid and roll the flavor around on my tongue, to submit to the numbness it promises, I won"t. The strength of my willpower is my comfort, even if the effort is excruciating.

I"ve let myself indulge in Jack Perry, let myself fall into this ridiculous fallacy of a relationship. He"s become a drug, addictive in the same way whiskey and Oxy used to be. The difference being that instead of numbness, the oblivion he promises is chaos and ecstasy. Blood rushing, heart pounding, bone deep lust. He"s an upper, and though I"ve only ever been addicted to downers, that is quickly changing.

Earlier today, he said he wanted me to fuck him, and it"s the only thing I"ve been able to think about since. I want to fuck Jack desperately. But that desperation is dangerous, as is this game we"ve been playing.

I've succeeded in making Jack Perry the best college football player he can be, but can I maintain progress without falling deeper into this situation? Is it too late to pull back the reins on the motivation that has worked so well? Now that summer training is over, I should pull back on all of it, expect him to follow through on his own now that I"ve laid the groundwork.

I"ve tried creating more distance between us. Hell, we barely spent any time in each other"s presence this past week since school started. But when he cornered me in my office with that hungry look on his face? I knew this was becoming more than just a game we"re playing.

I jump when the phone rings, a video call coming through. For a minute, I don"t move, watching it ring until Jack"s name disappears from the screen. Then I get a text notification.

JP: Answer. You know you want to.

It rings again, this time just a phone call. I answer like the weak sack of shit I am.

"Jack," I say expectantly.

"Jack," he repeats in my tone. "I was calling to see if you wanted me to come over and suck you off, or if maybe you"d enjoy a video of someone sucking me off."

I sigh. "You"re drunk."

"Eh, not really. I"ve got this annoyingly gruff voice in the back of my head that ruins everything fun I try to do. So not only have I said no to keg stands and every shot that"s been given to me, I also missed out on naked Jello wrestling with the cheer squad," he says wistfully.

I chuckle. "Where are you now?"

"On my way back to the dorm. The party was getting a little rowdy, and there are some boundaries we need to establish."

"What do you mean by that?" Jack's never been a boundaries kind of guy, so I'm more than a little curious to hear what he'll say next.

"Hold on a sec." I hear his footsteps echoing in what sounds like a stairwell, then a burst of noise. "This dorm is a bit loud now that there are other students here. I just have to get to my door."

Voices call out his name, congratulating him on a great game. I grin, happy to hear the other students accepting him. Even in the cheapest dorms, this university is full of spoiled rich kids who will take any opportunity to step on someone they consider lower than them.

Finally, Jack makes it into his room, switching his call to video. I worry over the notification for a minute, but then accept, propping the phone back against the bottle and leaning back in my chair. Jack plops himself back on his bed and holds the phone above him, so I"m looking down on him. I don"t hate the angle.

"What do you mean by boundaries?" I ask, keeping my face indifferent.

Jack"s mouth twists, like he"s not sure if he wants to have this conversation after all.

"If you like, we can go back to the regular phone. Maybe it"ll be easier to spit out whatever it is you want to say?"

He puffs out a breath, the front of his hair pushing up away from his forehead. "Nah, it"s good. I just don"t know where to start. I"m not drunk enough to be as blunt as I"d like." His Alabama twang sounds thicker than usual, and it heats my blood.

"I give you permission," I say, amused. "Say whatever you need to say, and for the length of this phone call, I won"t hold anything against you."

He quirks his lips. "What if I want you to hold it against me?"

"Jack…"

He makes a face, rolling his eyes. Look at me, not saying a word about this little indiscretion.

"Alright… If I"m not dating around, or at least making a show of dating around, people are going to start talking."

"About?"

"I have a reputation to maintain, Coach," he says with a saucy grin that I immediately want to slap off his face. With my dick.

He sighs and looks uncomfortable. "Tonight someone made an offhanded joke about me not messing around with any of the girls at the party, asked me if I turned gay. It was just a joke, and I played it off, but…"

It"s not surprising to me that word of Jack"s hijinks from his old school made it to Groveton, and if you add in his Fourth of July antics, I can see what he means about it being a noticeable change.

"I see what you mean, but what can you do about that? You can"t be drinking and partying and getting in trouble here. Is it not enough just to clean your act up?"

"I don"t have to be drunk or get in trouble to stick my dick in someone."

"Hmmm," is all I can say.

I don"t like it. At all. Not one bit.

But… he"s right. People might pay attention if he"s not acting like his normal man-whore self and spending all his time with me. Besides, this might be just the opportunity I need to break this link.

"Wear a condom. No drinking. No recording," I say, giving him a stern look through the camera. I don't want to see that.

He chuckles but nods.

"What about video calling?"