17

Ryan

Twenty Minutes Late

The first step to being a football player's girlfriend? You show up for practice. Freshman, sophomore, and during the start of my junior year, I'd witnessed it. All of the girlfriends on the bleachers. Wearing the dark blue jerseys. It was an unofficial rule that might as well have been chiseled into the side of the training center.

On her first required practice, the practice I'd texted twice to remind her about, Kassie was nowhere to be found. She wasn't in the parking lot. She wasn't on the bleachers. Absent without leave.

The best way to ignore that was to throw myself into training.

"I'm going again," I informed the guys and steadied into position. Fifteen minutes after six, I hooked up to the lateral speed machines once more. "Olsen, keep your arms locked. Windows, we're ready?"

"You're a fucking beast, Cross."

"One more and I'll give somebody else a turn," I promised, rolling back my shoulders.

The whistle screamed and my sneakers pounded against the grass. We tore up the field, racing off toward an end goal marked by one of the leftover yellow pads. My breathing labored, but I kept it steady. I had to beat my record, had to push myself. Had to stop focusing on the fact that Kassie wasn't—

" Damn! " an assistant coach shouted when my fingers grazed the pad.

"New record?" I panted, looping my fingers over the wrap on my side.

"Five seconds faster and I'll send you to the track team!" He clapped me on the back and waved the stopwatch in my face. "Just joshing with you. Don't tell coach I said that. Back to it! Olsen! Get moving! Windows, I see your mouth moving - if you can talk, you aren't going hard enough!"

I tried walking back with them, but the assistant coach shook his head.

"Lawson wants you training right runs in ten. Get some water."

"Got it." I bumped his fist when he offered it.

I took my time across the field, commenting on forms from the other players and upping the weights. I held up a hand before they could object.

"If I wanted opinions, I would've asked, Blanc. I know you can do better than this. You've had this for a week now. And Miles! Stop staring at Cleo's office!"

We'd accepted some freshmen and transfer players for the semester, but they seemed surprised when I demanded more from them. I had no idea what kind of workouts they were used to and I couldn't care less. Everybody had to learn how to swim. Either they knew already, or I'd dunk them into the deep end. There wasn't room for anything else on my team.

And still, no Kassie.

I scanned the field, the front entrance, the tunnel to the lockers, and the first three rows of bleachers, covered in dark blue jerseys and bleary smiles.

No Kassie.

"Cross," Adam cleared his throat by the water cooler. His words were careful. "Lawson has the timers—"

"Fuck off, Adam."

My reply was short. All my replies to him were short. I still couldn't believe it. It wasn't missing the photoshoot that bothered me. Emergencies come up. In fact, King skipped out of a sneaker signing event to take his mom to the hospital. Did I yell at King during a frat party? No. The two of us skipped the sneaker event and I watched his little sister for the afternoon.

But Adam lied to Cleo. He lied to Coach Lawson. And he lied to me . After I swore to the coaches that he was cleaning up his act. How long had Adam and I known each other? How many times did we have each other's backs when nobody else did?

That wasn't even the worst part.

Why the hell did he pull that shit in front of her?

For years, we were the faces of our football team. There were certain expectations placed on us. But it was different with Kassie in the picture. I didn't want her to see me as just a quarterback. I wanted her to see me as a team captain. And the team captain isn't lied to. A team captain isn't the last person to learn about something like that. A team captain doesn't shout at a teammate in the front yard of a freshman vomit site.

Adam cleared his throat. "Ah, I wanted to say…I'm—"

My eyes flickered over to the back exit. I jerked up.

Kassie.

She was the only girlfriend without a jersey and I could see her curves through her white t-shirt. Her hair was thrown up in a messy bun that let my eyes wander to her bare neck. And the lipstick…

Of all the things to think about - lipstick? I had to get my attention back to practice.

"Ragar." I strolled over to her. "Where've you been? You're…" I checked my watch. "Twenty minutes late."

"I'll be on time tomorrow." Kassie took a moment to steady her breathing. Loose strands had come undone from the bun, framing her face. "I thought you were supposed to shower or something."

"We begin at six o'clock."

"Right at six tomorrow? Okay."

She tried to hide how out of breath she was. Why was that? She wasn't the one doing drills.

Behind me, I could feel all eyes on us. I already heard the whispers about the frat party. But these guys had to see me as team captain. Rolling over for someone who I'd just met wasn't team captain behavior.

"Six o'clock, on time." I folded my arms over my chest. "Where are you coming from?"

"What?"

I frowned. "Where are you coming from?"

"Where? Nothing."

"Did you sleep in?"

"Let's talk about this later." Kassie shuffled something into her backpack between sentences and pressed her lips together. With a quick look behind her shoulder, she zipped up a pocket. "I had to grab something from the design office."

Something's not adding up.

"They don't open until nine," I said slowly. Besides that, I had her schedule saved on my phone, and I double-checked her art account before practice. "You're not working in the design office today."

"You're damn right I'm not," Kassie gave me a long look. "Thanks for telling them I could snap and go on a rampage. That's exactly the kind of thing girlfriends love to hear. Real awesome on my first day for an internship."

"Well, it's not a real internship."

She tried to ease past me. "Have fun with practice."

With an outstretched hand, I prevented her escape. "What did you do before you got here?"

"What did I do? "

"I'm not asking again."

"I didn't…" A blush colored her cheeks and it would've looked nice if she hadn't been twenty minutes late to practice. "Ryan, they won't let me do anything." With a sigh, Kassie fished the item she'd been hiding. She held up a bright blue flash drive with half of a frog sticker stuck to the plastic. "I just…downloaded a couple of programs."

"A couple of programs."

"Um…yes."

"From a closed design office?"

Kassie grimaced.

"Let me get this straight." I paused while one of the new additions to the team dipped a few feet away, notably trying to catch an earful. "Washington, if you don't get your ass out of my conversation, I'll have you running laps until ten."

All of my teammates are out to embarrass me in front of her .