Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (31 page)

I'd given Tyce like a hundred chances. I kept, I don't know, waiting for him to look at me and say that he loved me, that he wanted me, that we could stop playing games and just be together. I should've known from that first moment I saw him in the park that things weren't going to go my way.

I shuffled through the pictures on my bed, looking at the progression of Tyce from child to teen to gone. All the shots of me after that moment looked different, felt different. My face got thinner and my smile drooped. My hair seemed less red. Or maybe I was just imagining that?
I wonder how pictures of me are going to look now?

I scooped the photos back up and shoved them under my pillow with a sigh, putting my face on my forearms. It was stupid to base my entire existence around Tyce and my feelings for him, but that's how I felt I'd been living my life for the past month and a half. And now, after that embarrassing situation back at Melia's, things didn't seem any better.

How dare he. How. Fucking. Dare. He.

Kiss me, hold me, say weird things about how I
owned
him—as if that meant anything—and know that the whole time he had these marks from some other girl on his neck. Somebody else, some random nobody, was allowed to touch Tyce like that? He felt like he belonged to me, and it made me sick. I was stupid jealous, and I was mad, and I was hurt. I knew it wasn't
that
big of a deal—I believed him when he said he didn't sleep with her—but yet … it was. While I struggled and fought against my attraction for him, while he jerked me around like a puppet on a string, he thought it was okay to go out and casually do whatever with whoever.

Nope.

Nope, nope, nope.

At least he's a whole eight hundred miles away right now,
I told myself as I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. The Ducks were in Salt Lake City, playing the Utah Utes, and I was enjoying a little casual text flirtation with Mason Fenna. I knew that I was only doing it because of Tyce, because he'd pissed me off, and because he'd had the audacity to tell me who I could and couldn't date, but it was fun.

Mason was silly, and his texts helped me fight the urge to keep exchanging messages with Tyce. When I'd powered my phone back on last night, I'd noticed he hadn't sent anything else since our brief conversation on Wednesday.

'You okay?'
this from Melia. I'd left right after Tyce had, but before I'd gone, she'd seen my face and known that something had happened. I didn't have the stomach to tell her what that was. It was more than just hickeys though, it was everything.

'Still alive,'
I sent back with a smiley face. We'd seen each other yesterday in class, but my mind had been completely elsewhere and she'd known it.
'How's the game?'

'Oregon, 37-20. Tyce is killing it.'

Of course he was. I frowned and dropped the phone back on the bed. There was a part of me that wanted to hear he was getting creamed, that even if the team was winning, Tyce was fumbling the ball and going offsides and screwing up his passes. I wanted to see
some
sign that he was upset.

I touched a finger to my lips and closed my eyes, feeling those warm, heady kisses as he pinned me to the couch, ran his hands over my body, rubbed our hips together and put enough pressure on my clit that I actually had an
orgasm.

If I hadn't seen the hickeys then, if we'd kept going, what would've happened?

When you talk like that, I feel like you own me.

Tyce was
this
close to admitting something, to opening up to me.

But I'd given him a hundred chances, and he just kept screwing up.

I guess I'd never get to find out what that something was going to be.

'We're still on for tomorrow, right?'

It was a text from Mason, sitting unanswered on my phone. I sneaked a peek at it while I was sitting at my desk, working on a paper for my technical writing class. Of course, when I peeked at the phone, it wasn't really Mason that I was looking for. It was Tyce. Of course it was Tyce.

I wanted him to try harder, apologize more, fight to have a relationship with me the way I'd been fighting to have one with him. And then I wanted to turn him down. I wanted him to feel the pain I was feeling, the desperate reach of my heart as I held my hand out to him and he let it drop.

He told me that he didn't love me enough—and then he proved it.

I sighed and pulled the phone into my lap. My paper wasn't writing itself and somehow, I didn't feel like I was going to be able to write it either. So I put my thumbs to the keys and typed up a quick response.

'Absolutely!'
The word felt so false, like I was telling a lie, spinning a story, instead of just agreeing to go to New Intentions with a friend. A friend that
definitely
wanted to be more than friends. But, like with Tyce, I was sure the
more
would only go as far as sex. I didn't see Mason as boyfriend material.
And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's all you need right now—a random hookup.

That felt like a bunch of bullshit.

I was in love with Tyce.

I didn't want to be, but there was nothing I could do about that. If four years apart hadn't killed my feelings, if disrespect and unrequited love hadn't, then nothing would. I was just going to have to learn to live with that.

'I can pick you up at seven-thirty?'
Mason texted back as I checked Tyce's Snapchat and Facebook and found nothing new. Nothing. Not a single post. I hadn't spoken to him since late Wednesday. It was Monday now.

I slid my hands down my face and sent Mason a thumbs-up before getting out of my chair and moving into the living room. Jia was having another party, blasting “Work From Home” by Fifth Harmony, and Chelease was on the phone with the cops again. It felt like some seriously hardcore déjà vu. I paused and stared at the back of Chelease's head as she complained to the operator about how many times she'd called and how little they'd ever done for her.

“Are they coming?” I asked as she hung up and stormed over to the front door, jerking her purse off the coat rack on the wall, the one that was made out of metal pipes. I hated it. When Chelease turned her dark brown eyes on me, I figured out what the answer was going to be.

“What do you think?” she said, slipping into her coat and tossing her phone inside her purse. “I'm going out. I can't deal with this crap tonight, I'm sorry.”

And then she was out the door and moving down the stairs. I kept it cracked and watched her walk to her minivan—yes, Chelease had a minivan. My fingers curled around the doorjamb as my phone buzzed in my hand.

'It's a date, beautiful,'
Mason said, sending me a selfie shot of him in thick dark shades, a smirk sprawled across his lips. He was shirtless, too, but it didn't do anything for me. Nothing. I made myself stare at it for several minutes. Nope. Still nothing.

I flicked my thumb across the screen and went back to Tyce's texts, his video. Butterflies. Even after all the shit he'd pulled. I groaned and put my forehead against the wood of the doorjamb as the music next door changed to something I didn't recognize.
Maybe I should go over there,
I wondered as I stared down at the screen and tried not to get upset. I'd been upset for
days.
I hadn't cried though. Points for me. But still, Tyce was in charge of me anyway.
Screw it, I'm going.

I stood and walked out the door, pulling it shut behind me and moving over to the open door of Jia's place. I wasn't sure, but I thought maybe she hated me. Oh well. With the number of people crammed into her place—a literal mirror image of my own—I doubted she'd even notice me.

I stepped inside to a sea of gyrating bodies, beer, pot. The usual. Nothing special.

“Well, look who it is,” Jia said, her voice barely audible over the blare of music from her Bose. I turned to look at her, standing in the hallway, her face painted up like she was wearing stage makeup. It was too much. I wanted to grab a tissue and dab some of it away. “What are you doing here? Did Chelease call the cops again?” she asked as she sauntered towards me in red vinyl heels and black leggings. “Or are you here to be her ambassador?”

“I just wanted to stop by and check things out,” I said with a smile. The way she was looking at me, like she was a viper and I was a mouse, I didn't like that. I might be putting on a good show, doing my schoolwork, saying no to the pot, but that didn't mean I was going to roll over. Not for Tyce, and certainly not for Jia. “Is it okay if I have a beer?”

Jia smiled wickedly at me, putting a hand on her hip as she looked me over in my new Ducks gear. Everyone else in the room was trashed, laughing and dancing and having a good time. That's all I wanted to do. Lose myself for a second. Was that so much to ask? I couldn't let Tyce steal all my fun.

“I didn't think you'd want to see me,” she said as she moved over and pushed some red hair back from my face. We were about the same height, but with heels on, she towered over me by several inches. “I mean, after what happened with your boyfriend and everything.” Jia looked me up and down and raised a curved brow. “You're still wearing his colors, so I'm guessing you guys made up?”

“I don't have a boyfriend,” I told her, my heart thumping and sputtering as I tried to keep my mind off of Tyce. Yeah, I'd seen him cupping Jia's ass, making out with her. So what. He didn't feel anything for her.
Nothing for me either apparently.
But I knew that wasn't entirely true. Tyce … wanted me even while he was running from me. He wanted me, just not as much as he wanted a career in the NFL. Not that I could understand how football and I were mutually exclusive.

“Seriously?” she said, grinning with her bright red lipstick. It matched her shoes. “Because Chelease was telling me you guys spend a lot of time together. I just figured you were a thing.” I pursed my lips. Even though she hated Jia with a passion, Chelease's gossip was notorious.

“Not really,” I said with a shrug.
Really
, I just wanted her to leave me alone so I could grab a beer. Somebody had started “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot and I was ready to get lost in some old school hip-hip.
Jesus, please, I just need a break from everything.

“That's good then,” she said, stepping back from me. “Because I felt real guilty when we were getting hot and heavy at the club.”

A chill skittered down my spine.

“So you're not mad that we hooked up?”

I just stood there staring at Jia Yang with my heart pounding and my stomach twisting into knots. She could see it, too. I could tell by the way the corner of her mouth twisted up and her eyes roved over me from head to toe. I had no idea why she hated me, but it was clear that she did—and that she was really enjoying this.

“You … made out,” I said, because I didn't believe Tyce would lie to me. “You didn't hook up.”

Jia rolled her eyes and shook out her thick, dark hair with her nails. Those were red, too.

I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach.

“I don't know what he told you, only what I did,” she said to me as I blinked slowly several times and tried to fight back that old anger, the kind that had gotten me into so much trouble back home. I was just like Tyce sometimes, full of pent-up rage and frustration. I'd just learned how to control mine. Mostly. Usually.

“Yeah, you had a drunken kiss, left some hickeys on his neck. Big deal. But don't go bullshitting people and acting like you actually fucked him.” I was taking some of my anger at Tyce out on Jia, but I didn't care. She was baiting me right now, and I was falling for it on purpose. “He wouldn't do that to me.”

Uh-oh. I'd just played my card, put my beating heart right in Jia's long, spindly fingers.

She laughed at me, seriously laughed and gave me another once-over. Clearly, she was not impressed. Maybe this all went back to that night on the balcony when he'd stopped kissing her because of me, hopped the balcony and left. I knew he hadn't been back since.
Still, how could he? At the club with her? Really? HER?

“Tell yourself whatever you want, girl. But you don't have an exclusive ticket to Tyce's game.”

She smirked at me with her glossy red lips, and I just snapped.

I shoved Jia with both hands, sending her crashing into the wall behind her. But I guess she was used to this kind of thing because she was on me in a second, shoving me back, knocking me to the ground when I tripped over a stray beer bottle.

“Stupid bitch,” she said as she looked down at me. I knew my fight wasn't with her. It
really, really
wasn't. It was with myself and Tyce and my feelings and our past. But that didn't stop me from standing up and slapping her open palmed across the face. Jia lunged at me then, raked her nails down my arms as we grappled and stumbled over solo cups while the dancing stopped and the music kept playing in the background.

Nobody tried to stop us. They were all too drunk and high to care. In fact, I think they liked it.