Enchanted by a Soccer Rival

Chapter 1

one

I had a bad habit of biting off more than I could chew.

Teaching myself to crochet so I could give everyone gifts made with love (by a deadline I barely made).

Agreeing to book clubs I had absolutely no time for, but I was no quitter.

Signing up for multiple school clubs and for ballet classes, even though there was only ten minutes between the class times and it was an eight-minute drive.

Personally, I didn’t think this was a flaw.

My brother, however, disagreed.

“Would you quit kicking me?” Sebastian snapped. He shoved my ankle away from where it was pressed against his headrest. With my leg now flailing in the air between the two front seats and my pink tights only halfway on my legs, I lost my balance and went sprawling onto the floor of his car.

I wish I could say this was a one-time occurrence.

“Maybe if you were capable of driving less than a hundred kilometres an hour, I would have an easier time back here,” I retorted.

I finished pulling my tights all the way up and grabbed my black ballet leotard, shimmying it on under my dress.

Sebastian was under strict order to never, ever look behind him on these drives (my exact words the first time we did this was “I would rather someone rear-end us because you didn’t look in the rearview mirror than have you see me in just a bra”), but I still preferred not to fully undress in the backseat, so I always changed under my clothes like this just to be safe.

“I’m counting down the days until you can get your license,” Sebastian grumbled. I shifted to my knees and leaned over the center console to smile at him.

“I have my learner’s permit. Move over and I’ll drive us there instead.”

The horror on his face made me laugh out loud.

I couldn’t drive us, anyway, since he wasn’t old enough to be considered the licensed driver in the passenger seat for me, but I still liked the mental image of me driving his sports car while trying to get ready for dance practice as he sat in the passenger seat and prayed for his life.

I hadn’t gotten as much driving practice as I would have liked since getting my learner’s permit five months ago.

The day Sebastian got his license, my dad took him to an empty parking lot to practice.

The day I got my license, my dad called me for the first time in months to tell me his mistress was pregnant and he hoped I would be happier about it than my twin sister had been.

I hung up on him and cried for the rest of the night.

“Sixty seconds,” Sebastian warned. I mumbled a curse as I finished changing in record time, pulling my dress off and swapping it for the ballet wrap-cardigan and skirt.

With the practiced ease of somebody who had been doing this for the last eight months, I finished changing, pulled on my shoes, and grabbed my bag just as Sebastian pulled up to the dance studio’s front door.

He’d barely stopped the car when I flung the door open and jumped out, calling out a thank you over my shoulder as I ran.

I now had approximately eighty-five seconds to run inside, drop my bag off in the changing room, and get my place at the barre, acting totally not out of breath and like I’d been there for ten minutes already.

It was a process I’d more or less perfected over the last eight months. Of course, that process relied largely on nothing and nobody being out of place, and today, it was—because as I ran in the door, I walked straight into a chest. A male chest to be exact.

I mumbled an “oof!” as I stumbled backward, slamming into the glass door I’d just walked into.

The bobby pins holding my perfect ballet bun in place dug into my skull from the pressure and I winced, but the pain was no worse than the embarrassment crawling up inside me as I realized who exactly I’d run into.

Justin Vaughn—AKA the hottest boy on my street and the boy I’d imagined marrying no less than a hundred times—stared at me with a bemused expression on his face.

I stared straight back, barely registering the sound of my bag hitting the floor with a loud thud, because holy crap, I’d just walked straight into Justin.

“Are you okay?” The words didn’t come from him, which meant that it took me a good minute to realize they were directed at me. My head was too busy spinning as I tried to memorize the feeling of his shirt when I’d brushed it and the way he smelled.

Finally, I turned my gaze just far enough to the right to notice Justin’s eight-year-old sister, Leah, staring at me. She was still in her ballet leotard, her pink dance bag hanging from one shoulder, and she looked concerned.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You ran into him really hard.”

“Leah,” Justin said, a hint of amusement in his voice.

“What?” She shrugged. “She did. That’s why Miss Portia says you’re not supposed to run inside.”

Justin raised his eyebrows at me, his bemused look turning a shade more annoyed. “Why were you running anyway?”

The words weren’t what I was expecting, so it took me a second to remember, and I straightened.

“I’m late,” I said. I gestured over his shoulder. “For my ballet class. I’m supposed to be there like… now.”

Despite the obvious urgency of my words, he didn’t step aside. I probably should have minded since I hated nothing more than being late for my ballet class, but how could I be upset when I was breathing the same air as Justin?

“You live down the street from me, right?” Justin asked.

“Uh-huh,” I said stupidly. He recognized me. My heart did a stupid little flip.

I mean, sure, I’d lived there for the past five years and we went to school together, but he was so much cooler than me that I wasn’t sure he would.

“I’m having a party tomorrow night,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me as he spoke, instead pulling his phone out of his pocket and checking something on it, his attention already somewhere else.

My heart kicked up another notch. Was he going to ask for my number? Maybe he wanted to send me something for the party.

I tried to push down the excitement. There was no point in getting excited about something that hadn’t happened yet, only to be disappointed when it didn’t.

“Tell Sebastian, would you? It would be great if he came.”

I blinked a couple times, not sure if I understood him correctly. “And… me, right? Like you want me to come and bring my brother?”

“Yeah.” He glanced up at me, apparently realizing from my expression that he’d left something out. “You, too.”

You, too. Two of the most insignificant words Justin Vaughn had ever spoken, and yet my brain immediately promoted them to the top five most important sentences in my life.

“Okay,” I said, trying not to smile too hard. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Cool.”

He slipped his phone back into his pocket and took Leah’s hand. “Anyway, we should…”

He trailed off and I realized he was staring at me. No, not at me—at the door. The door I was currently blocking.

“Oh.” My face heated. “Right.”

I skittered out of the way, tripping over three pairs of shoes on the front mat in the process. When Justin reached a hand toward me, I thought for one glorious second that he was going to catch me.

Instead, he grabbed the door handle and held it open for Leah.

Right. Of course he wasn’t going to catch some girl he barely knew.

I grabbed my bag and hurried toward the studio where my class was probably starting without me, but before I could turn toward the changing room, I glanced back through the glass.

They were walking toward a dark SUV parked in the front row, where Leah climbed into the backseat, but instead of climbing into the driver’s seat like I would have expected, Justin climbed in the passenger’s side.

I realized why a moment later as another boy came around from the front of the car and stepped up to the driver’s side—Justin and Leah’s new step-brother, Rhys.

Their mum had married his dad six months ago, and though he still went to the rival school, Crofton Academy, I’d seen him around quite a bit.

From what I knew of him, he was Justin’s opposite in pretty much every way: while Justin had dark hair and brown eyes, Rhys had dirty blond hair and green eyes.

While Justin had a smile that could melt hearts, Rhys had a smirk that made eyes roll.

While Justin had a sense of humor, Rhys had… none. .

Not to mention, Rhys was Sebastian’s biggest rival on the soccer field.

In the last year, they’d started to have a “who can get a yellow card sooner” competition in every single soccer match.

Tripping and pushing, grabbing each other’s jerseys, charging to mess up plays, they did it all.

Three months ago, in the first major game of the spring season, Rhys’s taunting had gotten into Sebastian’s head so much that he’d missed a penalty shot for the first time ever.

Basically, he was the last person in the world I’d ever want to hang out with.

Honestly, I was surprised either of the Vaughn siblings were willingly spending time with him now, since from what I’d heard, none of them got along all that well.

I wondered if their parents were forcing them to spend time together to encourage sibling bonding.

I could only imagine how well that was going to work.

I shook off the thought and ran down the hall toward my class. I had approximately five seconds left to make it to the barre, and apparently that was plenty of time for my brain to start obsessing over the fact that Justin Vaughn had invited me to his party.

Or, technically, invited Sebastian.

But still, he’d said you, too. That had to count for something, right?