Chapter 22 Zander #2
He flicked his fingers, and a girl holding a tray of shots sashayed over to us. Hodgkins grabbed two of them, handing me one and holding the other up in the air.
“To hot women!” he yelled, throwing back the drink, then looking at me expectantly.
I gazed at the glass in my hand. I’d never had hard liquor like this before.
I’d drunk beer at high school parties, but that was as far as we took it.
Gripping the tiny glass in my hand, I looked around me, feeling every expectant gaze like a laser beam. Glancing up at Hodgkins once more, I caught that hardening in his expression and held up the glass with a weak smile.
“To hot women.” Throwing back the liquor, I struggled to hide the fact that it was burning my insides raw.
I let out an awkward cough and Hodgkins started laughing, then pounded me on the back. “That’s our boy!” He raised his hands, and the entire party cheered for me as Hodgkins ordered another shot down my throat.
I took it, because what the fuck else was I going to do?
I was all too aware that every eye was on me.
The pressure was intense, and as I downed my third shot, I had to remind myself that I wanted to spread my wings.
I needed to fit in and become part of this team.
I had to prove I belonged there, so I partied it up, acting crazy and winning my way into Hodgkins and Williams’s good books.
I don’t remember all of that night, but I’m pretty sure I tricked myself into believing I was having a fucking fantastic time.
Until I woke up the next morning, lying naked in a room full of passed-out bodies. I felt like total shit, my head pounding, my brain a fuzzy mess. A girl I didn’t even know was draped across me, and my insides turned to ash on the spot.
What the fuck?
Shit, was she the one who’d been licking my face on the dance floor?
Nudging her away from me, I scrambled to find my clothes, humiliation and deep regret burning inside me when I noticed a used condom on the floor. Was that mine?
Fuck, no. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t have—
Bile surged up my throat as I wrestled to do up my pants, reeling that there was a chance I’d just had sex with a girl I didn’t even recognize.
“Please don’t let that be true,” I muttered to myself over and over again as I tried and failed to remember everything that had gone down the night before.
Sienna’s beautiful face whistled through my mind and that bile burned like acid. Had I seriously slept with someone else?
“No.” I squeezed my mouth until it hurt.
What the fuck was in those drinks I threw back?
Why were the details so fuzzy? I remembered the cheering and then we were jumping around a lot and girls were pawing me.
I didn’t want that and tried to push them away, but they wouldn’t leave me alone and then…
“Fuck,” I whimpered, sucking in a shaky breath, my mind a complete blank.
I’d never felt like such a shitty human being before. I must have been so out of control. Did that chick seriously take advantage of me when I was obviously wasted? Or had she been wasted too? What the fuck had I let myself get into?
I groaned, stumbling out of the house and getting lost on my way back to my dorm room.
It was the worst hangover of my life, and I didn’t know how I was going to perform at practice that afternoon.
I fell asleep in one of my classes and was nudged awake as everyone was leaving.
I felt like throwing up most of the day, but just before practice, Williams took me aside and gave me a combo of No Doze and Red Bull.
Fired up on the energy buzz, I worked my ass off at practice and didn’t crash until later than night, when I staggered to my room in a haze.
I wanted to close my eyes and never wake up again.
But I did… and I was swamped with so much regret that I would have done anything to kill that feeling.
So the next time Miguel offered me a drink, I took it.
I made him promise not to let me hook up with any random girls—I was here for football.
I was doing this to get field time. He laughed in my face, but then told me he’d watch my back, so I downed the drink with him, and then another.
He kept passing them to me and the more I drank, the more it helped.
It didn’t hurt so bad when I was buzzed, so I went along with it.
And I attended the parties and smoked the weed and threw back the liquor like they all wanted me to.
It got me field time and I played my best despite my shitty lifestyle and before I knew it, I was sucked into a vortex of bad decisions and regret so deep I wasn’t sure I’d ever find my way out of the darkness.
Running into the Nolan U stadium, I shed my jacket, slipping into the back of the briefing room as the coaches start up their run-through of our upcoming away game.
They talk strategies and tactics most of the time, and guys flip through their playbooks.
I scan the backs of heads as I lean against the back wall and wish like anything that I’d started my college career here.
Thank fuck Coach Jones took me with him when he left.
I would have been sunk without him, and I swore I’d never go that low again.
When I came back from Everett that Christmas, I dove headfirst into the party lifestyle. Angry and confused over Sienna’s disappearance, I threw myself into becoming a core member of the team… until I found out just how sick their games were getting, and I couldn’t play by their rules anymore.
Shit.
Crossing my arms, I try to shove down my past, wishing like hell it’d never happened. Wishing I could bypass that year of my life and pretend that Nolan U is the only college I’ve ever attended and my Football Frat brothers had my back from the start.
I know they have my back now. Grady was my salvation when I first started here, and I love him like a brother.
Glancing over his shoulder, he can obviously sense my gaze on his back, and he gives me a questioning frown.
Shaking my head, I glance at Wily, who is also silently checking on me.
A big smile spreads across his face, and the second the meeting breaks up, he saunters over with a high five and asks me, “How’s papa bear doing? Did you get your little cowgirl down for a nap?”
“What the fuck?” Carson jerks to a stop beside him. “What the hell did you just ask him?”
“Subtle. Thanks, man.” I lightly punch the blond giant in the arm and then have to explain his weird-ass question to the only Football Frat guy who didn’t know.
We walk to the locker room to get taped up for practice while Carson gapes at me, all bug-eyed, and then hounds me with a constant stream of questions.
By the time I’m running out onto the field, he knows as much as I do… except for the part about Sienna seeing me lost in a threesome and all the shit that followed.
None of the guys can know about that.
They’ll never look at me the same, and I’m their captain, dammit. I need them to trust and respect me… and how can they ever do that if they know what an asshole I was?
Shaking it off, I throw myself into practice, giving football everything as I prep for our upcoming away game and try to dodge my undying shame… and the look on Sienna’s face this afternoon.