Chapter Twelve

Finn

O n New Year's Eve Bax and I hit the Molly to shoot pool, drink beer, and watch bowl games on their big screen. Danny and Callahan weren't rolling back into town until New Year's Day—not that we could have counted on them to join us anyway. At least Callahan and Jamaica were public about their relationship. Danny was still pretending he was "just friends" with his high-school prom date—like any of us believed him.

I leaned on my cue and swigged a drink of beer as I watched Bax line up his shot. Right as he let go with his stick, I cleared my throat—loudly. Didn't fuck up his aim even a millimeter, damn it. Two balls dropped into their respective pockets, and he stared me down with a sardonic expression.

"That all you got, Finnegan? Lame, dude."

"'Bout as lame as your shirt."

The T-shirt my teammate was wearing for this fine evening read "I am currently unsupervised. (I know. It freaks me out too.) The possibilities are endless."

"Possibilities, my ass." I glanced around the bar filled mostly with dateless guys exactly like the two of us. The few women in attendance didn't hold much promise—not that either of us were in the mood to pick someone up. The server was cute and flirty, and on any other night, I might have tried to make a run at her. But phantom tingles of Chessly's lips on mine haunted me, reminding me of how little I knew about kissing until she showed me and stole away any notion I might have entertained.

With a chuckle, Bax lined up another shot and dropped another ball into a corner pocket. At the rate he was going, that dollar resting on the table was going into his wallet.

Yeah, we played high-stakes pool.

His phone buzzed with a text right as he let go for his next shot. My antics had made zero impact on his concentration, but that vibration in the back pocket of his jeans sent the cue ball careening recklessly toward his target, grazing the seven ball rather than hitting it cleanly. It limped to the side of the table, gently bounced off the board, and rolled to a sad little stop an inch from the edge.

Bax's eyes lit up as he read the text that stole his focus. He snorted a laugh and glanced up from his phone to me. "Piper and Chessly are having a good time tonight—especially Chessly, from the looks of it."

He held out his phone so I could see the video Piper had sent him. Onscreen, I watched Chessly dancing on a tabletop in some bar. She did some hip-swinging move that emphasized her sexy short skirt. Black tights covered her endlessly long legs, and my mouth went dry as I remembered how perfectly those legs had wrapped around me when I pinned her beneath me on the couch.

I grabbed my friend's wrist and poked the screen again for another round of torturing myself as I watched my dream girl entertaining a bar full of people cheering on her dance moves. This time I noticed the douche standing behind the table and obviously trying to see up her skirt. My hand flexed with the need to punch the perverted son of a bitch in the mouth. What the fuck did he think he was doing trying see up my girl's skirt?

My girl?

In my dreams, for sure. But after the way the evening had ended the last time she was at the house, I worried about ever scoring another chance with her.

"It's not that far to Harlo from here," I said as I gave Bax his hand back.

"Right. We already established that in this weather—and in the dark—it'd take hours to make it there. By then the bars will be closed and Piper and Chessly will be—" His lips thinned. "Hopefully, they'll be all tucked in at Chessly's place." He checked his phone again. "Piper says the dude in the background is someone from Chessly's high school class and kind of a dick."

"That much is obvious in the video," I grumbled.

A tiny grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Piper's tipsy, but she says they're headed home with Chessly's dad."

At Bax's pronouncement, air gusted out of me. From the looks of things, the girls were having a bigger night out than my buddy and me, but at least they weren't hooking up with assholes from Chess's hometown.

"Maybe it's time for us to call it a night too. This place is making me feel kinda pathetic." I finished off my beer and set the empty bottle on a nearby table.

"We're kinda pathetic." Bax laughed. "We still have a dollar on the table. Shoot your last shot. See if you can win it."

"'Cause I need a buck that bad. Jesus."

Still, I chalked my cue stick, lined up my shot, and banked the ball into the side pocket. Following that success, I ran the table. With a triumphant smirk, I waved the dollar with a flourish and stuffed it into my pocket. Bax rolled his eyes, but I caught his grin as he racked his cue stick.

"You should prolly add that buck to the ten-spot you're leaving for the waitress."

With a sigh I fished it out of my pocket. "Yeah. We might be pathetic, but that poor woman had to wait on all of us sad saps all night."

I slipped my winnings and a ten-dollar bill beneath my empty beer bottle and followed Bax to the door where some girl met him and tried to chat him up. Bax stammered something about it being nice to see her again, but we were on our way out. Her whine of protest was one we'd all heard at some time or other with girls we had no intention of hanging out with. The boys—and a certain hot physics major—thought I harbored an unhealthy interest in jersey chasers, but even I had standards when it came to girls with a propensity for clinging. It took him a minute, but Bax finally dredged up the girl's name. From the sound of it, "Emily" was a first-class clinger.

I knew my friend well. If I didn't step in and fix this, Bax and I would either be stuck with two girls we didn't want to be with, or "Emily" would pop off with a social media tantrum that could do real damage.

In one of my rare moments of smoothness, I said, "Ladies, any other night, we'd jump all over what you're offering. But Coach has us doing a team-bonding thing tomorrow." I added an epic eye roll for emphasis. "He doesn't want us twisting off and getting into trouble on New Year's, you know?" Throwing my arm across Bax's shoulders, I tugged him with me to the door. "Sorry we can't hang out."

The Emily girl seemed only marginally mollified. Her mousy friend looked starstruck, but like her friend, she only had eyes for Bax. The door to the Molly closed on their last protests as Bax and I escaped into the frigid snowy night.

"Let me guess. You had a one-night stand with that Emily girl," I said as we waited for Bax's truck to warm up enough to defrost the windows.

"Nope. I drunk-kissed her at a party—can't remember which one—and she made sure that even in my inebriated state I could figure out she was a clinger. I didn't even try for second base." He blew on his hands and rubbed them together.

The steam from our breath made it hard for the defroster to keep up, and he revved the engine a couple of times to build more heat.

"Guess that explains why you struggled to come up with her name." I slid him a sly grin. "Might have been easier to escape if you'd told her you didn't have a clue who she was."

"‘Asshole' is not a reputation I want to cultivate, Finnegan." His tone had an eye roll in it as he put the truck in gear and took his time pulling out of the icy parking lot. "Good on you to think so fast though. Team-bonding on New Year's Day even sounded plausible to me."

Grinning, we fist-bumped over my quick-witted awesomeness. Then I cranked up the radio, and we drove the rest of the way home to the sounds of Lainey Wilson and Kane Brown, each of us in our own heads.

After the second week of break, I wanted to climb the walls. Bax and I played so much COD we finally had to take a break from killing zombies and each other and switch to Madden . Hitting the gym on the daily helped to relieve some of the boredom, but more than once I wished our coaches remembered we weren't preparing for a national title. It would have been nice to have spent a little more time at home on the ranch.

Sure, I had no interest in horning in on my sister's domain, but that didn't mean I didn't enjoy checking on the cows, bucking hay, and eating all of Mom's luscious food. Hanging out with my family also meant I had a lot less time to think about a certain blonde physics major with eyes so blue I could swim in them.

It didn't help that following our collective return to the house after Christmas, Callahan and Jamaica spent all their free time holed up in 'Han's room with occasional forays to the kitchen where I caught them on more than one occasion lip-locking while their food came perilously close to burning. Danny wasn't any better, spending all his time outside the gym either at his part-time job at the tire shop or over at his high-school "friend" Taryn's place. From the way he smiled to himself when he thought no one was watching, I could tell he was making progress toward moving from the friend zone to the end zone.

Then today, Bax bailed on me too. Piper had finally given him her number sometime over break—hence the video on New Year's Eve—and she was back in town. Now the king of one-night stands was going on dates, for fuck's sake.

Being the odd man out sucked. Big-time.

I flopped back on my bed, shoved my hands beneath my head, and stared at the ceiling. I'd always thought the inevitability of my friends finding someone special would happen after we finished college. While we played for the Wildcats, we'd all hang out together, party together, have the occasional one-night stands with consenting ladies who knew the score. Common sense said guys with NFL aspirations needed relentless focus on the game, and serious romantic relationships stole some of that focus. I should know after the ay my ex, Hannah, had fucked with my head all of freshman year.

Besides, jersey chasers didn't stop chasing players once they left the college ranks to enter the pros. It stood to reason players should show up to the NFL single until they figured out the league and how all the travel and community service and endorsements expectations would play out. Take advantage of some of the fun before settling down with someone whose life they'd have to uproot if a trade happened or if the player asked for a different opportunity.

Honestly, what was the deal with jumping the gun and pursuing a relationship in college?

Quick on the heels of those dark thoughts, heat warmed my chest and climbed my neck to my cheeks as a sudden memory of Chessly kissing me floated through my head. Fuck! Why couldn't I stop thinking about that girl? Hadn't I just laid out all the reasons why I shouldn't give her a nanosecond of headspace?

Punching my fists into the mattress, I sat up and stared out the window at the fat flakes of snow fluttering down outside as though nothing in the world mattered. With all my roommates out somewhere with their women, the house was so silent I could almost hear each little crystal as it joined the others on the ground.

"Fuuuck!"

The word echoed in the unnatural quiet of the house. I tugged at my hair and jumped up from the bed. After pulling my last clean hoodie over my T-shirt, I dropped down the stairs two at a time, stuffed my feet into my boots without bothering to tie them, and headed out the door. Even if I was the only one sitting in our usual booth, at least other people would be around.

Hitting Johnson's number on speed dial as I waited for my truck to warm up, I hoped he and Fitz were bored enough to join me for a beer at Stromboli's. Relief flooded through me when he picked up on the second ring and said they'd beat me there. At least I still had some friends left who weren't mothered up.

As I strolled up to the front door of the pizzeria, I saw Johnson and Fitz headed in my direction from the opposite end of the block. Grinning, I raced for the door, jerked it open, and rushed inside. With a nod to Jason, the bouncer who sat on his stool in the foyer, I kept moving. Behind me I heard my friends jostling as they tried to walk through the door together. Tossing a glance over my shoulder, I shook my head at the sight of Fitz squeezing Johnson against the doorframe.

I slid into our usual booth at the back a second before my friends joined me, Johnson scowling at Fitz as he rubbed his shoulder.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Tarvi. When are you going to learn that in close quarters, size trumps speed every time?" I laughed and bumped Fitzy's fist.

"What he said," Fitz echoed.

"Fuckers," Johnson muttered as he slid into the booth. "Where's Bax and 'Han?"

Tilting my head with a narrow-eyed stare, I said, "Out with their girlfriends."

"Wait. Since when does Bax have a girlfriend?" Fitz asked as he signaled a passing server.

After we ordered a pitcher of beer and a double order of wings, I answered Fitz's question. "Bax has a girlfriend since his unicorn turned out to be that purple-haired hottie he dedicated a pick-six to at the end of the season. She's the one who spent the night after our party celebrating our win over the Golden Bears."

Our server appeared with a pitcher and three glasses, and I busied myself with pouring a glass with a perfect head. After passing it over to Fitz, I poured a second and passed it to Johnson.

As I poured my own glass, Johnson asked, "What about 'Han?"

"That's a whole other deal. He and Jamaica met each other's families over break." I shuddered.

Across the table Johnson tapped out a beat on the table and began singing "Another One Bites the Dust."

I shook my head. "I can't figure out what the hell either of them are thinking. They're NFL prospects—why would they want to join the league while dragging a ball and chain?"

A picture of Chessly Clarke flitted through my mind, her eyes sparkling with sass and her sweet, compact body tantalizing me from beneath my hoodie, and I gulped half my beer down in one swig.

"They get to hang out with hot women on the regular—unlike, say, certain linemen I know." Johnson slid me a sly grin.

Putting some drama behind the lift of his brow, Fitz said, "Hotness isn't the only thing those women have going for them." He drank some beer and ran his tongue over the foam on his lip. "They're smart, funny"—he shot me a glare—"and they ain't chasin' anybody's jersey."

Now Johnson narrowed his eyes at me too. "Speaking of jersey chasers, what came out of your captains' meeting with Coach before break?"

"He agreed to meet with Buzz Miller to thank him for his generosity to the football program over the years." Fitz coughed into his hand. "And to tell him he's welcome to keep contributing to it. But he won't be allowed access to any player at any time for any reason. If he interferes with any of us again, the team will turn down his money." I sat back against the booth. "That mess Tory Miller caused for 'Han and Jamaica at the end of last semester finally tipped it for Coach."

Johnson shifted his narrow-eyed glare from me to his roommate. "I thought the plan was to shut down that particular gravy train now, not allow that asshole to have any more influence."

Fitz patted him patronizingly on the shoulder. "Politics, man. You can't cut the guy off at the knees without handing him an out to save face. He's given the team too much cash." He swigged back the rest of his beer and reached for the pitcher to refill his glass. "But once he has no say in anyone's NIL opportunities, no VIP invitations to team events and whatnot, he'll make up his mind to move on. When Daddy moves on, it's a good bet Tory will move on too. That'll be good for all of us—right, Finn?"

Though I tried not to, I squirmed a bit under Fitz's stern stare.

"I might have had my own problem with her little group of jersey chasers," I mumbled into my glass.

Johnson sat up tall, a wide grin splitting his face. "Oh, this oughta be good."

Jeremiah leaned his forearms on the table. Even when he was teasing, our nose tackle was formidable. "Does it have anything to do with that cute blonde who hangs out with 'Han's girlfriend? The one you get all tongue-tied around?"

I slid down a bit in the booth. "Fuck off, Fitz."

"You can't leave us hanging now, dude." Johnson laughed.

The arrival of our monster-size basket of wings couldn't have been timed better. I piled my plate and stuffed my face with barbecue chicken, pointing at my full mouth when Tarvi said "Well?" as he tried to imitate Fitz's stern stare. Tarvarius was a nursing major, not pre-law like Jeremiah, so he hadn't perfected that I-can-make-you-talk stare Fitz had down pat. When he raised his brow, I stuffed another wing into my mouth and kept chewing.

"You'll tell us eventually, Finn," Jeremiah intoned. "You always do."