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“Right.” I forced my knee not to bounce because Bett McNeely, ice-in-his-veins kicker, didn’t lose his shit. “He’ll be at the game. I’ll talk to him then.”

“Good. So tell us more about your dick of a roommate,” Garrett said, eyes on the screen. “Sounds like he’s getting more pussy than all of us put together.”

“More than Bett, for damn sure,” Marcus laughed. “You even remember what sex feels like, bro?”

“Fuck off,” I muttered, which only made them laugh harder.

My dry spell was just another source of stress on top of everything else—my father, my finances, my football commitments, my grades, and my asshole roommate.

It had been ages—July, maybe?—since Arden and I had actually slept together, like truly fucked. We still messed around when we could, but stolen hookups in her car weren’t cutting it.

Clearly, since every damn night, it was getting harder not to come just from listening to Vaughn’s antics.

Yet there was no way for me to get relief when there was no place for the two of us to have sex. Guys weren’t allowed upstairs in her sorority house. Her car didn’t have a back seat. I couldn’t use my friends’ rooms because all of a sudden, they were rule followers, and I sure as shit couldn’t fuck her here in the Calhoun Street living room with everyone around.

Garrett nudged me with his elbow. “Why not fight fire with fire? Take Arden to your room tonight and make Vaughn listen to the two of you fucking for once.”

I immediately shook my head. I wouldn’t use Arden like a weapon to win a war. I wasn’t Elliot Vaughn.

And I damn sure wasn’t my father.

Though he and my mom had been married for fucking decades, the senator didn’t hesitate to flirt with women, especially young, pretty ones. I’d seen good ol’ boys slap his back and call him a legend. I’d watched him flatter my girlfriends till they blushed.

My mom had zoned out a long time ago and didn’t seem to notice, but I fucking did. I’d even warned Arden repeatedly to keep her distance from him before she’d interned at his campaign office over the summer. I didn’t want him saying anything that might make her uncomfortable.

“We have a game tomorrow,” I reminded Garrett. “Maybe Vaughn will be at the Pit tonight, and I can finally get some sleep in my own bed. Besides, Arden would kick my ass if I fucked her with an audience.”

He snickered. “Dude. She dated Frankie Warren two years ago and blew him right there in the middle of the Pike House lawn. She fucking loved it. That chick’s crazy—uh.” Garrett seemed to realize he was talking about my girlfriend and grimaced. “I mean, she used to be.”

I stretched my neck side to side and tried not to think about it. “I need to fucking get laid.”

“You need something.” Papi Pearce strolled in from the kitchen, scratching his stomach with one hand while shoving a sub sandwich in his mouth with the other. “Don’t think we didn’t see that shank in the last preseason game, McNeely. You were all over the place. Get your shit together if you wanna keep that impressive record, yeah?”

I was in such a foul mood, the only reason I didn’t bitch back at him was because the defenseman outweighed me by a hundred pounds and took football more seriously than all of us.

“Yeah,” I muttered, standing up and reaching for my backpack. “See you at practice.”

I headed to my public speaking class and suffered through an hour of fighting off sleep before the professor noticed and assigned me the first time slot for our presentations next Monday. Little did she know, the selection was a relief since it meant I could get the damned thing over with.

When I walked out, Arden ambushed me. “Baby! I feel like I haven’t seen you all week.”

I dutifully leaned in to kiss her, regretting it instantly when I felt the sticky sweetness of her lip gloss. “Hey.”

She looped her arm through mine and waved goodbye to the friend she’d been talking to. “We going back to yours?”

I nodded as a plan came together. “Yes, please. I’ve been dying to see you.”

This was partly true. I was dying to see her mouth wrapped around my cock. That made me a terrible person, but I didn’t have the mental fortitude at the moment to enjoy the other parts of her I liked. Her energy, her ability to handle herself in any social situation. There were plenty of times I enjoyed hearing her gossip, but what I needed right now was an orgasm.

“Vaughn has class,” I added. “We’ll have the room to ourselves for at least an hour before practice.”

She grinned up at me, and I could see the heat in her eyes. “Oooh, perfect. I know exactly what I want to do with you.”

As we walked, I let her familiar, happy chatter flow over me.

Even though our families only lived about twenty minutes away from each other down in Roswell and she’d spent the summer interning at my dad’s campaign office, I hadn’t seen much of her since last semester. She’d worked long hours, and I’d done the same, juggling LSAT prep, an internship I’d earned at a big public-interest litigation firm in Atlanta, and volunteer hours at a social justice service committee.

Now that we were back on campus, we would finally be able to see more of each other. Which was great… but was also one more thing that made me feel overwhelmed and scattered.