Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The Bet - Wyatt
If I hadn’t been so obsessed with hockey as a kid, I think I would have been a great wide receiver.
I run across the lawn of my fraternity, Alpha Xi Pi, and track back toward the football, which was thrown short. I go straight for the ball, which lands securely in my hands. Chase Adelson, my fraternity brother and impromptu quarterback for the afternoon, lets out a shout.
“Why aren’t you playing on the football team, Jacobs?” he calls out, grinning at me.
I throw the football back at him, a nice tight spiral he has to track back for. The ball is on the money, but it goes straight through his hands, hitting the ground.
“Because I’m even better on the ice,” I shout back.
“You’re an arrogant prick, Wyatt,” Chase teases good naturedly as he throws the ball back to me.
I run after it again. This time, the ball is a duck, and some of my brothers on the porch begin quacking as I track it down the weak, wobbling pass. Chase flips off the crowd gathered there, sipping cheap beer on this gorgeous day, with one purpose in mind.
To watch the girls of Phi Mu Phi move in across the street.
I get it. They’re a top-tier sorority, one of the best on campus. All the girls are hot.
I push down on the backward baseball cap I have on and glance across the street. Girls are everywhere, lugging boxes of belongings into the sorority house, dressed in their Greek letters and short denim shorts.
It’s a nice view.
“I need a beer,” Chase calls out. I follow him up the steps, where fifteen or so guys are gathered. He lifts a beer can and angles it toward me.
“No, thanks,” I say. “Can you grab me some bottled water, please?”
He digs around in the ice and tosses me a bottle of water, which I catch from across the porch.
I don’t drink whenever I’m driving. To be honest, I really don’t drink much in general.
I work too hard to keep my body in shape for the OCU hockey team to destroy it by pounding beers.
My goal is to be drafted by the NHL next summer, and that means staying in peak condition.
The sound of a car coming down the street gets my attention. It’s a light-blue G-Wagon, which turns into the parking lot for Phi Mu Phi. The SUV slides into a parking space, and I watch as a girl exits the driver’s side and opens the hatch to the car, giving me a full view of her.
Jesus Christ, she’s beautiful.
I can’t help but stare. She’s average height, with blonde hair piled up on the top of her head in a knot. She’s wearing a short pink skirt that shows off tanned, toned legs, and a tight white cropped T-shirt that gives just a flash of her stomach and hugs her breasts nicely.
I should shift my gaze away before my dick responds, but I can’t stop watching her.
Rob James, the captain of the lacrosse team, moves next to me on the porch and leans over the railing, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Hey, baby! Need help moving in?” he shouts.
The girl turns her head toward the house for a brief second, then goes back to looking inside her SUV.
“I see Grace hasn’t changed,” Rob says, taking a long drag of his beer. He looks over at me. “Don’t think you have a chance to hook up with her. That girl is frigid.”
“Why? Because she doesn’t like you?” I ask, unscrewing the cap off my water bottle and taking a long drink. It’s hot here in Southern California today. Not as hot as it is back home in Tucson, but unseasonably warm—so much so that I’ve taken off my shirt. “Maybe she just has good taste, James.”
It’s a joke. Kind of. Rob is a prick, so I don’t mind taking jabs at him.
“She doesn’t like anybody,” he sneers. He folds his arms across his chest, a look on his face I can’t quite interpret.
“I have an idea. We should have a bet here, between brothers. Let’s see if anyone can get the ice princess to drop her panties this year.
One hundred bucks apiece to enter. First one to bring her panties back to the house wins the bet. ”
What the fuck?
“In,” Reed Peterson says. “I’d love to hit that.”
A few more of the bigger douchebags in the house declare they’re in, too. I look at all of them in disgust. “You guys are dicks, you know that?”
“Serious dicks,” Chase adds.
“Dicks who might get laid by one of the hottest chicks on campus,” Rob counters, raking his hand through his dark hair.
“My kid sister goes to USC,” I say, thinking of Rachel. “And if there were a bet like this out on her, I’d punch every single guy in the betting pool.”
On days like this, I’m glad I live off-campus in a house a few blocks over, with three of my friends from the OCU hockey team.
I joined the fraternity to have a true college experience, and I do have some good friends in the house.
Part of it was also to annoy my dad, who always thought I should have played hockey in Canada instead of playing on a scholarship here.
When he found out I was joining a fraternity, he thought it was a useless distraction from hockey.
Which made it more even more appealing.
Regardless, I’ve made some good friends with good guys. But others are complete assholes.
Like Rob and his disciples.
“Oh, your sister would be off-limits,” Reed assures me. “But that hot piece of ass across the street is most definitely not.”
“I hope she remains as frigid as Antarctica,” I say.
“Fuck off,” Rob counters.
Chase and I head back out to the lawn, resuming our game of catch, but I shift my attention back across the street for a second.
Grace—I still haven’t heard her last name yet—is busy loading a dolly with another sorority sister.
I don’t know anything about the girl, but she absolutely does not deserve this.
If this bet were to go down, I’d be the first one hoping she’d leave them all with blue balls.
But this bet is so not going to go down.
Because I’m going to be the one to stop it.