Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (24 page)

I let Tyce stop by between practices on Friday.

Neither of us mentioned what had happened between us the last two nights. Wasn't that the point? To get out our sexual frustrations and desires without actually letting anything happen again. And when I said happen, I meant
bullet dodged.
I'd freaked out yesterday thinking I was pregnant. My period was a little late, and I'd belatedly realized after all this drama that I'd failed to even consider the possibility until now. But three pregnancy tests said I was definitely
not
pregnant.

I felt like such an idiot. I let Tyce come inside of me, and neither of us had even considered what could've happened. I was so stupid relieved about that. A baby … that would've been the dreaded anchor to tie and trap him that he was so freaking terrified of. Besides, both Tyce's mom and my mom had been young and pregnant, and both had gotten screwed over by life.

I debated on whether or not I should bring it up.

“Good news,” I said as I ate a pint of ice cream and Tyce chowed down on some sugar free sherbet stuff that his coach liked. I stared into the strawberry pink perfection of my food and tried to act casual. We were sitting on my bed. Him, leaning against the headboard. Me, cross-legged on the end. On my desk, a Netflix movie played that neither of us was really watching. Didn't matter. It felt good to sit here with him, talk about stupid crap, laugh, eat. When he'd left home four years ago, this easy nothingness was what I'd missed the most.

“Yeah?” Tyce asked, scooping up a colorful swirl of pale yellow and pink. I watched his lush fuller lip slide along the bottom of the spoon as he put it in his mouth. “And what's that?”

I hesitated just long enough that he looked up at me with those sapphires he called eyes. They glittered like jewels as he studied me, arching a brow in question. I tried to come up with something random to say, but my mind had just gone inexplicably blank.

“I'm not pregnant,” I said cheerfully, like this was a conversation I'd had a dozen times before. I turned back to the movie, twisting my body away from Tyce completely and eating another bite of my ice cream. It tasted like fucking ash. I felt him move closer to me, the bed dipping and adjusting itself as he scooted up to sit directly next to me.

I looked down and sideways, at his thick muscular arm and the black, gray, and red tattoos that decorated it. Just pushing a spoon into ice cream made his muscles flex and bunch, turned my insides to jelly.

“What?”

His voice was harsh and weird again. Crap. If he got pissed at me over this, I swear to God …

“I'm not pregnant.” I flicked my eyes up and stared at his face. I hoped the twirling green vines I'd painted up my eyelids and across my cheeks would distract him from what I was actually saying. “We did it without a condom,” I explained when he looked like he was about to throw his ice cream against my already paint splattered wall and carpet. Chelease still hadn't seen that, thank God. “I could've gotten pregnant. But I'm not.”

Tyce kept looking at me, the gold around his irises contracting as his pupils narrowed and the pulse in his throat started jumping. When he swallowed, his Adam's apple moved. It made me want to kiss the warm stubbly heat of his throat.

A few seconds ticked past, so I dug into my ice cream again. My tummy was twisted in knots, and I felt droplets of sweat on my forehead.
Maybe I just screwed things up between us?
I wondered as I stared into the nearly empty tub. I tried really hard not to think about his voice oozing through the speaker on my phone.

“That's it, Tea. Let me have you, all of you. Let everything else go.”

The last thing I expected was to feel a hard, warm arm around curl around my neck. Tyce was … hugging me. My breath twisted and caught, and I felt my heart suddenly beating inside my ears. His body felt so good pressed against mine, like we'd been sculpted as matching pieces, designed to fit in each other's arms. His fingertips were rough and sensual against my bare upper arm as he engulfed me, close enough that I could smell the clean fresh scent of his clothes, feel Tyce's heartbeat against my cheek. It felt so good, so much better, so much more complete than anything I'd experienced in a long, long time that I found myself closing my eyes and breathing all of him in.

The hug lasted for a long time. How long, I'm not sure, but when Tyce finally pulled away, I felt the lack of warmth like an arctic breeze. My chest got tight and air seemed like a difficult commodity to come by.

“What was that for?” I asked as Tyce sat back up, dressed in a pair of jeans and a Ducks t-shirt. The fabric stretched across his wide chest, pulling in all the wrong places. It so didn't fit. I so loved that. I tucked some hair behind my ear and turned back to the laptop screen. The characters were starting to get hot and heavy with one another, so I hopped up and changed over to an episode of
Orange is the New Black,
one that I knew didn't have any sexy scenes in it.

“It was a sorry for being an oblivious a-hole,” Tyce said, finishing his sorbet and standing up. He couldn't stay long on Fridays, not with the game just a half day away. Tyce smiled at me, and my heart flip-flopped. I wanted to hate him, but I was crushing so hard I felt like my soul was going to get pushed out of my chest from the pressure. “I bet you're still curious about tomorrow?”

“Yeah, actually,” I said as I turned to face him, my bare legs dangling off the edge of the bed. I was wearing a pair of black running shorts that had seen better days. I'd worn them into a public pool once, and the chlorine had leached a good portion of the color out. Still, when Tyce looked down at me, his eyes following the pale lines of my legs, he didn't look disappointed. “What am I going to be doing while you're playing the Cardinals?”

Tyce smiled at me, a wicked dangerous shit-eating smile that made me want to choke him. It was the same look he'd given me that first day in the park, when he was pulling the casanova dickwad act, the one that probably filled his bed every weekend—and several times during the week. I choked back a wash of jealousy and decided not to think too hard about that.

Besides, if Tyce was sexting me … then he wasn't sleeping with other girls.

A thrill traveled through me as he moved over to the door of my bedroom and put his hand on the knob.

“Guess you'll just have to wait and see,” he told me in a frustratingly sexy voice. “See you tomorrow, Tea.”

I heard Tyce's footsteps as he made his way down the hallway and let himself out.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?
I never saw Tyce on game days. Never. Well, except for on the TV with people screaming and shouting about how amazing he was, watching replays over and over and over again.

I decided not to worry about it and cracked open my climatology homework. Don't ask me what climatology had to do with computer sciences; I was just following the degree requirements and powering my way through my gen ed.

About an hour later, I got another knock on the door and heard Chelease call me in from the living room.

“Package!” she shouted as I closed my laptop and stood up, stretching my arms above my head and wondering what the hell I'd be getting in the mail. I
never
got any mail except from the university. I didn't have any living relatives and paid Chelease directly for my rent and utilities. I definitely didn't order anything because I couldn't afford it.

“This better not be anthrax,” I joked as Chelease practically threw the box at me. She didn't laugh. When I looked down at the shipping label, I saw that it was from Tyce. He'd shipped it directly from the dorms.
What the hell?
I looked up and watched Chelease head into her room without a word. Her lips were pursed and tight, but I didn't know how to broach the subject that was lingering between us, stretched thin and brittle and broken.

“Be careful, okay? Keep a hand over your drink at all times.”

When the door to Chelease's room slammed shut, I sat the box down on the counter and grabbed a knife, cutting through the tape and opening up the cardboard to find a manila envelope on top of a folded mound of clothes.

When I flipped the envelope over, I saw Tyce's scrawling writing in thick black Sharpie.

You looked like you could use a new wardrobe,
it said. I put it aside for a moment and dug in, pulling out a U of O hoodie in green and yellow. My heart skipped a beat and I felt a funny feeling building my stomach. For a second there, I felt like a woman in a scandalous romance novel, one who'd just gotten a designer dress delivered to her from some billionaire CEO or something. Only my cocktail dress and jewelry was replaced with Ducks themed merch—a few different tank tops, running shorts, sweatpants, socks, even a bathing suit and a dress. There was enough in there to fill up the three empty drawers on my dresser. On the very bottom, there was a jersey with the number eight on it. When it lifted it to my face, I could smell Tyce on the fabric, that colorful mix of deodorant and sweat from a hard day's work. I recognized the black and gold jersey from the first game I'd ever seen him in against the Huskies.
Game used,
it was called, and believe it or not, these things were actually worth a lot of money online. During a random bout of searching, I'd seen one listed for three hundred and fifty bucks.

I set it aside and tried not to smile.

But I did anyway.

Big and stupid and happy. I felt my mouth curl up at the sides as I slipped a brand new hoodie over my head and reached for the envelope. My heart was light but twisted, tangled up with feelings that I didn't know how to deal with. I just wanted Tyce here so I could kiss his lower lip, bite it, run my tongue along his strong jaw. I wanted to take his cock in my mouth, flick my eyes up and watch him watching me—for real this time. Not our pretend pseudo-phone sex.

And all over some sports merch.

Well, not really. In my heart, I knew how much deeper my feelings went.

I tore open the top of the envelope and pulled out a note, a ticket, and a lanyard with my name on it. It was all so official looking that goose bumps broke out over my skin.

This is for the family and friends section on the sidelines. Get there early. I want to see you in full gear with full face. Paint yourself up and come watch me play.

I stared at the words for a long moment, tracing them over and over with my eyes before I looked at the ticket and the lanyard again. My heart rate picked up speed until I was panting. I didn't know why. It was just a football game, right? It'd be fun, a cool college experience to add to the memory book of my brain, but that's all it was, wasn't it?

It felt like so much more.

I sent Tyce a quick text.

'Got your package,'
I told him as I waited with bated breath for a response. In my head, I was already planning out what to wear, how to do my makeup.

'See you on the field, Tea,'
he sent back, followed by a naked photo of his body in the locker room, gray lockers lining the walls behind him and framing his bronze form.
'I'll be playing my best game for you.'

I stared at his body, at the thick muscles of his calves, the graceful way they curved into his thighs. His cock was rigid, balls tight, like he was about to come or something. I bit my lower lip and closed my eyes, opening them up again right away so I could keep staring. His chest piece bled into a gray and black tattoo on his side, a Virgin Mary with a cross that I wanted to ask him about but never had. There were so, so many things I wanted to ask him. Why his body made mine turn into goo, why his eyes looked at me like I belonged to him, why I spent every spare second of everyday thinking about him.

Why we had to be just friends.

I almost texted him back, told him I was okay with being number two, that I wanted him here inside of me as soon as practice was over.

Instead, I just said
'thank you, Tyce'
and left it at that.

If I said anything else, the dam of my heart would burst and it'd all come tumbling out.

I had so much trouble sleeping that I ended up getting out of bed at the crack of dawn. I took a long, hot shower, blow-dried my hair, and started my makeup. This time, I didn't give one half of my face to the opposing team; I kept it all for Tyce.

I covered my lips in black and painted a gold '8' across the center. On one side of my face, I put the Pac-12 symbol in black and green liner, and on the other I put the famous 'O' logo. Fake lashes made of green and yellow feathers decorated my lids and a wash of sparkling black eyeshadow completed the look.

In my Ducks care package, there'd been a pair of 'O' earrings that I hooked on my lobes, pulling my hair over my shoulder and braiding it so it didn't get in my face. I wanted him to see it when he looked over at me, open and bare beneath the colored cosmetics.

“I see you've got plans today,” Chelease told me when she got up an hour later and started making coffee. She was clearly upset, but I felt like I couldn't broach the divide between us right now, not before the game. Afterwards, I could be all ears. This morning, I needed to live for this.