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I scraped my teeth over my lip and nodded.

He tilted his head toward my towel and shower stuff. “Grab your shit and meet me in there. Stall on the end if it’s free, okay?”

The shared shower was almost better than the sex had been. Looking down at his long fingers splayed against my stomach while his other hand moved the soap suds lazily over my hips and chest. The low murmur of his voice as he teased me about enjoying being pampered, about how I would do well with an entire fleet of personal servants like an Egyptian pharaoh or something. About how he’d fantasized during one of his classes earlier in the day about fucking me up against the large glass windows in the student center, making me show off for everyone and display just how much I liked taking his cock.

It was enough to make me drop to my knees on the disgusting tile floor and suck him off, enjoying the hot shower spray, the steam thick and warm around us, and the satisfying sounds of his grunts and gasps before he came down my throat.

Later, after we’d split up to get some schoolwork done and were back together again in his bed with the lights out, he surprised me.

“I’m going to an expo in Nashville this weekend. I’ll be gone Thursday afternoon through late Sunday.”

I turned to face him. “What kind of expo?” It had to be important if he was missing the Friday night fights.

Vaughn looked uncharacteristically self-conscious. “The Ivory and Iron Moto Expo. It’s kind of a big deal. Invite-only motorcycle and design show. Mostly custom builds and high-end restoration. They asked me to present a bike I rebuilt last year.”

“You’re kidding! Vaughn, that’s amazing. Tell me about the bike.”

He scratched the edge of his jaw. “It’s kind of a cool story. I found it a few years ago when I was helping a friend of my uncle’s who had a busted harvester in one of his barns. I noticed the familiar line of the tank first. It was buried under a bunch of junk. I asked the guy if I could check it out, ended up offering him some money for it when I realized it was a 1974 Honda CB750.” He shrugged. “I worked on it whenever I could, rebuilding it and modernizing it with the idea I’d sell it as a ridable bike, not a showpiece. It wasn’t my first restoration, but it was probably the one I enjoyed the most. And when I took it to a car show in Birmingham last summer, a guy went apeshit over it. Turns out, he’s got friends in the restoration community. He showed it off to them, and I got on their radar.”

“That’s amazing. Is this what you want to do after graduation? Like, flipping bikes?”

He nodded. “I’d love that, but it’s a pretty small world. You have to have experience and cash. I’ve got one but not the other. The hope is that I can maybe meet some people at this show—and the one I’m going to in February—to maybe find an investor, or at the very least find someone willing to hire me to do this stuff under their own banner for a while.”

“Do you have pictures of the bike?”

We spent the next hour flipping through photos of motorcycles while he told me about the work he did and the stuff he outsourced. About people he knew who did custom upholstery in exchange for repair work and the times he’d really struggled to make deadlines while also trying to pass his classes.

“Makes sense why you’re going for a business degree, then,” I said.

He nodded and tossed his phone back on the bedside table, giving me a much-appreciated noseful of his clean armpit.

“Want to open my own restoration shop. But you gotta have the degree to get investors or loans. And I’m terrified of fucking up accounting and tax shit. Definitely not my strong point.”

I thought of all the resources I had from growing up with a rich and powerful family. Attorneys, accountants, consultants. And how far away that world was from the one he’d grown up in.

Everyone on campus knew about Grace and Elliot Vaughn’s mom. She’d been a beloved member of the university facilities staff who’d passed away from cancer. My first year here, there’d still been old flyers posted in random academic buildings about her memorial service, though it had happened two years before. There was a framed photo of her on the wall in one of the administrative buildings under a “Blues Gone Too Soon” banner.

I knew that the man who owned the Pit and Vaughn Automotive, Dalton Vaughn, was their uncle, and I got the feeling Vaughn’s dad had never been in the picture.

Twins born to a single mom who worked in the facilities department and had a mechanic for a brother.

Vaughn’s life was so different from mine, it kind of explained his initial resentment toward me. I was a spoiled jackass. At least, I had been. And privilege wasn’t easy to recognize until you lost it.

“Maybe I should try and get an NFL contract, and then I can invest in your garage,” I said. It was meant to be a joke, but it came out sounding way too real.

Or maybe it just felt real. Because in my gut, I knew I’d do anything I could to help Vaughn follow his dreams.

He lifted my chin up until I could see his eyes. “Maybe you should try and get drafted because you fucking love playing football.”

I shook my head once. “I’ve already started sending in my law school applications.”

“That’s good. You’ll have options.”

He made it sound so easy. So possible. Like I was a person who could have the things he wanted… and maybe even some things, like Vaughn, that were better than any dream I’d ever let myself dream.

When I fell asleep Tuesday night, I felt like everything would be okay. If Vaughn believed in me, I could believe in myself.

And maybe I let it distract me too much. Because of his words—and the extra hours he spent at the garage prepping for the expo—I threw myself headfirst into practice and focused 110 percent on making sure I was prepped for Saturday’s game.