Page 27
The coach’s methods had worked for the most part, but I’d never been able to get past these fucking hangovers after high-profile failures.
When I finally couldn’t stand under the water one more minute, I forced myself to dry off and return to the room to put up with whatever bullshit Vaughn had in store for me.
But when I opened the door, there were no girls there. Only Vaughn scrolling his phone in bed.
“Tough game,” he said without looking up from his phone.
“Fuck off.”
“No, I mean it. Can’t be easy to kick a—”
“Thirty-five yarder?” I snapped, throwing down my towel. “Yeah, it should be. And we both fucking know that, asshole. Don’t you think I know that? Jesus fucking Christ! People miss, okay? Sometimes people fucking miss.”
His eyes widened. He took in a slow breath and then let it out. “That wasn’t what I was going to say, but it sounds like you’re in the zone. Go ahead and play both sides of this conversation. I’m super here for it.”
“Fuck off,” I said again, this time too tired to even give a shit or consider arguing with him. Instead, I tossed the rest of my shit down, dropping my damned tux into a pile on the floor, and slunk into my bed, groaning in relief as soon as my hot skin hit the cool sheets. “Fuck.”
Thankfully, my asshole roommate was quiet. I was just on the verge of sleep before he decided not to be.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
I don’t know why I answered the way I did. Maybe it was because my filter had already drifted off to sleep. “Not my girlfriend anymore.”
“Oh. Shit.” A pause, and then, “Sorry.”
“Mpfh.”
I didn’t add it was for the best. Or that I hadn’t been able to get hard for Arden in ten fucking days. Or that she seemed more interested in impressing my parents than me. Or that I was pretty sure my football career was going to crash and burn if I couldn’t block all of it out.
“I’m sure you’ll find someone else soon,” he said with utter condescension. “Chicks dig the football thing. Probably.”
“Will you shut up? Don’t need another girlfriend. What I need is for you to stop talking.”
He shifted in his bed. I tried not to remember the way his broad chest looked in the low light from the lamp on the table between our beds. “I think you need an orgasm. You seem tense as fuck, no offense.”
“Offense taken. Mind your fucking business.”
My eyes were closed, but I felt his gaze on me, hot like a spear of sunlight on an August afternoon. After a few more minutes, he spoke again. I immediately groaned in frustration.
“Maybe I’ll jerk off, and you can just listen along and join in if the spirit moves you.”
“Oh my god, shut the fuck up. I don’t need your pervy sex shit in my ears. I’ve had more than my fair share of it already, and it’s barely September.”
I kicked off my covers. The sheets were no longer cool, and this room was stifling.
“Mm. But it feels good. I sent those girls away so you could sleep, but now I’m hard.”
The sound of his provoking voice made me want to murder him. But for some reason, it did not make my dick feel the same way. I immediately began centering exercises to get my shit in order. Imagining my safe place. A run on the beach at sunrise—
“Oh fuck, that feels good,” Vaughn rumbled. “Put your hand in your shorts. You don’t even need to jerk off with me. Just touch it.”
The rhythm of my feet pounding on the sand. The sound of the surf. The cool breeze before the heat of the day—
The feeling of my dick soft as shit in my shorts instead of whatever the fuck this throbbing mess was.
“Bet those baby-soft hands have never done a day’s work, have they? What do they feel like on your dick?”
“Shut. The fuck. Up,” I gritted out, now imagining callused hands on my cock.
