Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
KERIAN
He’s not moving. I can see it from where I’m standing on the sidelines. I almost felt the impact when Easton slammed into him. Fucking dirty late hit.
I should get up and kill Easton, but I can’t.
I can’t, because Zander isn’t moving.
He’s lying on his back and his team swarms around him… and it takes me a second to realize that the angry shouts are from those same men as I shove them to the side and drop down to my knees beside the prone man. I didn’t even realize I’d gotten up and taken off at a run across the field until I hit the grass beside him.
“Zander?” I say his name softly, ripping my helmet off so I can drop my forehead against his and whisper, “Fuck, baby? Are you okay?”
“Get the fuck off him Slade, he?—”
“If you fucking touch me, I’ll break your goddamn arm.” I snarl the words out at whichever asshole teammate of his thinks he can make me leave. But the venom in my words dies when there’s a small shift of movement beneath me and Zander groans.
“Coach is gonna kick your ass if you talk to him like that again.” His voice is weak, the tone dazed… but his eyes slowly open and he tries to smile at me.
The streak of pain that crosses his features tells me he took just as hard a hit as I thought he did.
Hopefully it’s not a concussion.
I’m not sure if anything is broken .
I don’t know if this is something minor, or something that’s going to fuck with his chances of getting drafted.
I just know that I want to kill Easton for hitting him so hard.
It’s almost impossible to tear my eyes away from Zander’s face, but I do long enough to look up… and I see that asshole smiling. Easton looks like Christmas came early, and I don’t realize I’m moving until I feel a faint sensation of fingers on my wrist.
I look at Zander’s hand and frown.
“I’m okay.” He mutters it, but his voice sounds so dazed I know he isn’t . And judging from the expression on Easton’s face, that was the plan all along. He’d wanted to hurt him.
That motherfucker pretty much signed his own death warrant.
I stay by Zander’s side as he slowly blinks up at me, and the small flash of pain that shoots across his features when he tries to sit up lets me know he’s probably hiding more behind a brave face.
“Slade, you need to get back to?—”
I turn to my coach with narrowed eyes, and I watch his expression morph from one of concern to fear… and then a streak of understanding when he glances down and sees my fingers linked with Zander’s own. I hadn’t really cared how he would react if he realized we were together, but his head tilts and he frowns.
“I’m staying with him.”
“I’m fine, babe. Really.” Even as he says it, Zander’s fingers flex in mine like his body wants to argue.
“He needs to see the doc. You can follow him after you get changed, kid.”
Follow him .
He isn’t telling me to fuck off, or leave him alone.
He’s just telling me to take a shower and get out of my gear.
My gaze flashes around us again—to all the eyes on us.
To Easton’s smug smirk.
And I realize Coach is right. There is something I need to do before I go with Zander. Especially since I have a feeling they aren’t going to let me pack him into my car and drive him to the hospital myself.
“Okay.” I nod once, squeezing Zander’s fingers again. “You’re right. Sorry, Coach.”
Thank fuck this shit happened near the end of the game, so I don’t have to go through the motions while he’s getting carted off and checked out.
“I’ll be fine,” Zander murmurs, squeezing my hand one more time. “Just—” He winces when he smiles, like the motion hurts. “No bragging if you win. Not fair.”
My jaw clenches as I’m forced to stand and make my way back to my side of the field like I’m not leaving my heart lying there on the fucking grass waiting for the fucking athletic trainer to come out.
In the end, I don’t care who wins. I just care about the smug expression I see on Easton’s face when I walk by him and the look he shoots across the field like he’s done something worth getting praised for.
* * *
The minutes it takes for the game to end feels like hours, and this is the first time I don’t care that we won. By the time I can get to my coach to ask where they sent him, Zander’s already gone. They wanted to send him to get scans, to double check that he didn’t have a concussion. My first instinct is to follow right behind him, even though I know he’s probably going to be back in a room in some huge machine, maybe flirting with the nurses out of instinct and nerves.
And I intend to—I really do. But I have to see something first. Because as much as I have my suspicions about Easton, there’s something bothering me. It’s the way he jerks his head when the game is over, like he’s signaling something to someone.
I shoot Zander a text and he tells me he’ll let me know once he’s done getting looked over. I want to go to him right now, but he insists I wait until he’s finished with the doctor.
It makes what I need to do a little easier, because the bastard who hit him is smirking when he answers his phone with a quick “We can meet up once I’m back . ”
He sounds fucking smug.
I keep an eye on Easton all the way back to school… and I watch him peel off as soon as he gets the chance. There’s something about the set of his shoulders and the way he keeps looking at his phone that tells me I’m not imagining things.
And my instincts are never wrong.
I follow him silently as he slips into a nearby restaurant, and it’s easy enough to grab the booth behind him.
It’s easier still to realize that he’s not sitting there alone.
“Fuck, that worked better than I thought it would. Did you see Slade’s face?” Easton sounds smug, and my jaw clenches. I have to remind myself I’m in a public place, and there’s no way I can do what I want to do right now. Not when I need to get to the hospital to check on Zander.
“Yeah, well… I don’t think you hit him hard enough, you asshole. He got up and walked . You were supposed to fuck him up, not give him a love tap.”
I’m trying to sort out who the second voice is when Easton does it for me.
“Come on, Justin. That was a solid hit. I held up my end of the deal.”
Deal.
Justin… Justin was the asshole who started all of this. The fucker who slept with Zander’s girl and had him coming across the field to kiss me. In another world, I would have been slapping him on the back and telling him that his fuckup was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
In another world, I would never have given him a second glance.
In another world, he hadn’t fucked up this bad. Because from the way the two are talking it’s obvious… They’ve been planning this for a while—they wanted to hurt us both. I could understand Easton—that asshole has had a problem with me from the second we’d met.
I don’t get why Justin wanted to fuck with Zander, though.
It doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, they’re both fucked and they just don’t know it. A part of me wants to wait out by their cars, to make sure they pay for this tonight . If it weren’t for the fact that I needed to get to Zander—if it weren’t for the fact that I needed to plan this out — I would have done it.
I guess being in love really did make me a better person, because the old me would have gone around the table and forked those motherfuckers’ eyes out for touching something that belonged to me.
* * *
He’s fine . If there’s a concussion, it’s so mild nothing showed up. Nothing is broken, and the bruises on his ribs and sprain in his ankle are already fading by the time a week has gone by. I can see what they were aiming for—the low hit, the way Easton twisted his body when he took him to the ground.
He was trying to break something.
He really was trying to end Zander’s career—fuck his leg or his arm up so he’d get looked over during the draft because he was in PT.
The thought eats away at the back of my mind like a black cloud, even as I insist Zander pack a bag and come stay at my apartment while he recovers. He laughs at first, but his roommate seems fine with having the dorm to himself, though he makes us promise to call and let him know how Zandy is doing.
And all I can think of as I tuck Zander into my bed and brush his dark hair out of his face is that there’s no world where I’m going to let Easton and Justin get away with this.
Honestly, they make it too easy. I was thinking I was going to have to come up with some elaborate scheme where I made Easton call Justin so I could get to them both… but I hear the fucker on the phone with him, planning some night out to go drinking together a week after the game.
I’m careful—I leave my phone at my apartment and Zander asleep in my bed. I’m on my way out when Asher’s voice catches me off guard. I didn’t even see him in the kitchen.
“You really love him, huh?”
My gaze flicks to my roommate. I’m ready to make him part of my list for tonight if he has shit to say about it, but his expression is… soft.
A little wistful.
“Yeah. I do.”
Asher looks me over once, his eyes dropping to the keys in my hand and then rising back up to my face.
“Be careful out there. Maybe take my car… less flashy. And I’m parked on the street, so no one will notice.”
Does he know what I’m going to do? Is it written across my features? Is it because I have on an oversized hoodie and jeans I never wear? Maybe it’s the black bag I have slung over my shoulder. I don’t know.
I don’t care.
I just know where these two fuckers are supposed to meet up, and I want to make sure I catch them off guard. I grab Asher’s keys as he tosses them to me and I wonder again…
I think about the expression he had when he threatened my mom before… Is there a part of Asher that really is just as fucked up as I am?
It’s something to think about later. For now, I drop my keys onto the counter and head out.
It’s just my luck the run-down bar they picked is a few towns over and in a seedy area—maybe they didn’t want to be seen together like the little fucking co-conspirators they are. Whatever the reason, it means I shouldn’t run into anyone I know while I’m waiting in the parking lot for them to come out.
It takes a few hours, and they’re swaying when they push through the door, fucked out of their mind on beer and stumbling toward the back of the lot where they parked. They were probably trying to be inconspicuous, but it means I don’t have to lure them into some dark alley. It’s even better because as far as I can see, there aren’t any cameras anywhere. Even if there are, I have the hood of my dark jacket up to hide the black Halloween mask I have on. They parked facing an empty building—no one behind us, no reason for anyone to see what I’m going to do.
I just have to be careful.
Fast.
A blitz attack.
I’m quiet when I get out of the car, and I can hear them murmuring.
“Maybe we should just corner him next time—if you take a bat to his knee, you can break it.” That’s Easton, slurring like he can’t hold his liquor at all. Which means the voice that grunts and responds is Justin.
“Or his arm, that way he can’t catch anything again. Then I?—”
I don’t say shit when I come up behind them, but the swing of the old practice helmet I’m holding takes Justin in the back of his head and he falls to the ground instantly. Easton starts to turn, so I drop the helmet and reach out, wrenching his arm behind his back hard enough that he can’t move.
“W-what… what the fuck do you want?” He can’t turn his head to see me, and as much as I want to whisper in his ear that I’m here to ruin him for even thinking he can fuck my boyfriend up, I know I have to be careful.
I know if I screw up my football career now, Zander will never forgive me.
So I give a sharp jerk upward and hear a loud snap as his arm breaks. The scream that tears out of his throat means I don’t have much time, so I wrap my arm around his neck and squeeze hard.
He goes limp in seconds and I toss him carelessly to the ground. By the time he opens his eyes again, I have gloved hands clenched into fists, and the first hit takes him square across the jaw.
The pained sound that escapes his chest isn’t enough—it’s an echo of the sound Zander made, and it’s not enough.
It will never be enough.
Three hits isn’t enough.
Six hits isn’t enough.
And I realize in that moment how easy it would be for me to kill Easton. How much I want to wrap my hands around his throat and strangle the life out of him.
But…
Justin groans beside him and I let out a low growl. My hand lands on Easton’s face one more time, and the satisfying spatter of blood spraying from his nose as he falls unconscious has to be enough.
Broken arm.
Broken face.
I turn on Justin as he looks up at me, his eyes wide and pleading. It’s obvious from the way he stares up at me he doesn’t know who I am.
Good.
“My wallet is in my pocket. I… you can have my car keys. You can—” I don’t even stop to listen to his pleading. I take careful aim and land a kick on his knee, hard enough that I can see when it bends in a way it’s not supposed to. The crack sends a surge of joy through me, and I take aim and land another kick, hard enough this time that the impact jolts through my thigh and up my side.
The sound that tears from his throat tells me I have to go if I don’t want to get caught. He’s retching, his body shuddering in pain and nausea.
Not enough.
It would never be enough, though.
I land one more hard stomp on the ruined limb for good measure then jump over Easton’s prone body and take off. As I run, I lower my head and yank the mask off, stuffing it into my pocket while keeping my face to the ground in case there are any cameras.
There are sirens in the distance as I hop into Asher’s car and head home.
* * *
I’m careful on the drive back—I go the speed limit and take back streets where there aren’t any traffic lights. Some part of me is pretty sure that Justin and Easton are too fucking prideful to admit they got their ass jumped by me . Not that it matters—I’m positive they didn’t recognize me. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to be careful.
Still, I park Asher’s car a few blocks over, stripping out of my hoodie and stuffing it into the black backpack along with the gloves, mask and helmet. I get out and head back to the apartment building—I’ll tell him about the clothes tomorrow. Either he can dump them for me, or I’ll do it myself.
It’s quiet when I come in, and my eyes flick to Asher’s door. It’s shut tight.
If he knew what I was going out to do, he probably knew what kind of mood I’d come back with.
I slide silently into my room, and Zander is still there on my bed, asleep like I haven’t just spent the last few hours getting revenge for someone even thinking about trying to hurt him.
It doesn’t matter that they fucked it up and he’s already feeling better.
What matters is that they thought they could touch what’s mine.
It’s never going to happen.
If I had it my way, I’d climb into bed and flip Zander over, fuck him open with my fingers, then fuck him until he was screaming.
But…
He’s still on the mend. They’re letting him do light practice until his next game, which means I probably shouldn’t mess with that by fucking him straight through the wall because of the pent-up energy pulsing through me.
So I’m going to have to settle for something a little less… rough.
For now.
I climb beneath the covers and wriggle his basketball shorts down before he wakes up, and by the time he realizes I’m in the room with him, I already have my lips around his cock and it’s getting hard in my mouth.
He lets out a groan, his fingers scrambling for the sheets and diving beneath to thread through my hair. The feel of him pulling strands makes a low growl rumble from my throat, and I take him to the back and swallow around him.
“Fu… fuck, Kerian. Are you trying to swallow me whole?” He gasps the question, but he has no idea. I feel like I’m on fire—I fucked up that guy in the parking lot for touching him before, but this…
This was different.
I put myself at risk for him.
I know it was dangerous.
And I don’t care . I’d burn the entire world down for Zander Braithe, and if I had to start with two assholes who thought they could hurt him, I’d roast fucking marshmallows over their bodies while they screamed.
The thought makes me growl again, and Zander’s hips flex up and into my mouth.
“At least… mmmfuck, Kerian.” His words cut off in a whimper when I lift my hand and roll his balls in my palm. My other hand slides up, running along his bare chest like I can find the answer to all the swirling emotions that still confuse me in the divot of his hips and the hard lines of his abs.
I take him all the way into my mouth until my nose hits his pelvis and my throat constricts, forcing me to swallow again or gag on him. He tastes good—clean like soap and a little salty from being under my giant comforter. I suck him until he’s squirming, until his fingers are knotting painfully in my hair and his legs come up, flinging over my shoulders like he can get me closer that way.
I suck him until my body is pulsing in need from how much I need to get off… and when the first splash of his salty cum hits my tongue, I groan.
“Kerian, oh… oh fuck , babe. You’re too good at that. I wanted… mmm… oh, don’t stop .”
My cheeks hollow and I work his dick until my tongue is coated in his orgasm and my senses are reeling from his taste. I pull off and watch one last little spatter of cum as it spills onto his abdomen… and then I’m straddling his hips and letting his mess spill from my mouth to my palm so I can use it to stroke myself off.
“Oh, holy shit .” Zander’s sleepy expression is dissolving into pure fire, pure lust… and he watches me jerk myself with his cum as lube until my back bows and my body tenses a second before I burst, spilling into my palm, all over his waist… marking him.
Making him mine.
“Fuck.” He whispers it again, and then his cock gives a twitch when I bring my hand up and lick the taste of us both from my fingers. His touch is greedy when he pulls me forward, his tongue even greedier when he plunges it into my mouth so he can taste us together.
I kiss him hard, licking into him and wondering if I could write my confession there in that warmth— I just broke two men for you, Zander. I did it, and I’d do it again —I could write it on the roof of his mouth with my tongue and he’d never know that he was keeping my secret.
We kiss until I’m breathless, nearly dizzy, and then I collapse on the pillow beside him, dragging my fingers idly through the mess I made on his stomach.
“I’m going to need another shower now,” he rumbles, his voice thick with sleep and desire, and I glance up at him through my hair.
“Are you complaining?”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “No.” Zander pauses then, searching my face like he can see something there. “Are you okay, Kerian?”
I put my future in jeopardy for you.
“Yeah, I’m fine, Dimples. Just… mmm…” I slide my fingers through the mess on his waist one more time and paint his lips with it. “You looked too good not to touch.”
I think he knows I’m lying, at least on some level. But I think he’s starting to know me well enough to know that if I lie to him now, it’s for a good reason. When I rise up and kiss him, he kisses me back.
“Mmm… I’m sure you’ll tell me eventually.” He whispers it when I break the kiss, then pulls me against him so we both fall back again.
“Thought you needed a shower,” I grumble against his neck, and I feel it when he laughs.
“You just sucked my motivation for the next three days out of my dick, Slade. I’ll take a shower later.”
“Good. Remind me to blow you before our next game.” I grin against his skin when he laughs again.
“I’d still kick your ass.” Zander’s arms slide around me as I bite his shoulder and he squirms.
“Yeah right, Braithe. Keep dreaming.”
When he pulls me up for another kiss, I know this is good . That we’re good. That Zander sees all the dark places in me now, all the breaks and snarls, tangles and shadows and flaws… and he loves me anyway.
He loves me because of it.
And I’ll do anything to make sure I get to keep that love for the rest of my life.