by Tara Sivec
TARA SIVEC
First and Tension
Copyright © 2021 Tara Sivec
EPUB Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
License Notice
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Disclaimer
This is a work of adult fiction. The author does not endorse or condone any of the behavior enclosed within. The subject matter may not be appropriate for minors. All trademarks and copyrighted items mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Edits by KD Robichaux
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Interior Design by Paul Salvette, BB eBooks
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Cover Design by Michelle Preast Illustration and Design
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Cheerleader Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Book
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
It all started with a dare.
Emily Flanagan has been living her dreams the last four years as a professional cheerleader for the Los Angeles Vipers, thousands of miles away from her tiny hometown of Summersweet Island, Virginia. She’s got the world at the tips of her pom-poms… until she tells her boss to shove those pom-poms where the sun doesn’t shine.
After spending her last night in California with her biggest crush, Emily flies back home to Summersweet, resigned to her boring fate of running her parents’ business, never to be heard from again. Besides, there’s no use crying over a man who lives on the other side of the country, who she’ll never see again.
“Secret love affair for the new quarterback of the Virginia Beach Sharks, or a shocking tale of infidelity, leading all the way back to a birthday party Quinn Bagley threw at his previous home in Calabasas five months ago? New photos of the mystery redhead from the party surface, leaving fans to speculate all over social media, “Who is this woman who convinced Quinn Bagley to quit the Vipers and go to one of the worst teams in the league?”
Quinn Bagley is finally playing for a team that feels like a family, after years of playing with nothing but egos. Following an announcement that shocked the world—one he’d been wrestling with for months, if not years—it felt good to have that weight lifted off his shoulders. What he’s not happy about is that the woman who rocked his world the night she literally fell into his life turned out to be like every other crazy redhead he’s ever encountered, spreading lies all over social media and wanting to use him for something. He just wants to look her in the eyes and hear her admit it was all a game.
Except Emily Flanagan isn’t the hotheaded, rude woman he thought she was, out to screw him over. She’s sweet, sexy, and fun. Even if she does try to banish him from her island. She makes him feel normal, she makes him laugh, and she makes him want more.
He’s going to win her heart, even if he has to do it in overtime.
Let the real games begin, Miss Flanagan. I dare you.
PROLOGUE
Emily
“Oh my God, tequila, you suck!”
Five months ago
Somewhere in some valley in California… I think.
“…and then I told her she could take my pom-poms and shove them right up her stupid, fat ass.”
My friend Carson’s mouth drops open with a dramatic gasp when I finish telling him about the worst three minutes of my life, while I finish the best three shots of tequila of my life. I slam the empty shot glass back down on the temporary bar cart set up in the corner of this monstrosity of a home he dragged me to.
“I can’t believe I threw my pom-poms at her,” I mutter, fanning my face when the alcohol hits my bloodstream, the air in this room feeling like it just went up twenty degrees. The black, long-sleeved, cropped turtleneck I’m wearing suddenly feels like a fur coat. “I really wanted to keep those as a memento. They’re so pretty, and sparkly, and—Ow!”
My shout of pain from the smack of Carson’s hand against my arm cuts off my complaining, making several heads at this house party turn to stare directly at us and away from a flat-screen mounted to the far wall, where ESPN is showing highlight clips of the Vipers playing in the Super Bowl last season.
“You absolutely did not say that to Ellen Westwood!” Carson finally speaks, after I spent the last fifteen minutes quickly word-vomiting how I got fired from being a professional cheerleader for one of the best and most popular teams in the Professional Football League. Setting down his crystal champagne flute a waiter gave him when we walked in the door, Carson presses both of his hands over his heart dramatically. “Tell me you did not say that to the director of the Vipers Cheerleading Association for the last twenty-five years. A national treasure who had her own reality show on the making of the Vipers Cheerleaders, and who people love to hate. Whose daddy with one foot in the grave owns the Vipers football team and lets her do whatever she wants. Ice queen extraordinaire and someone whose level of pettiness I can only dream of someday reaching, whose photo is in the dictionary next to Resting Bitch Face, and whose job, rumor had it, you were in line to get when she retires next year.”
“Yep” is my only reply as I let out a deep sigh, while also trying to smile sweetly at the busy bartender, and point to my thrice-empty shot glass.
“It’s true what they say about redheads.” Carson sighs with a shake of his head as I turn to look at him while I wait for the bartender. His eyes never leaving mine, Carson reaches next to him and blindly dips his fingertips into his champagne flute on the bar. “You’re the devil.”
With that, he flicks his wet fingers at my face, followed up with a quick wave of his hand in front of me in the sign of the cross, like he’s trying to holy-champagne-water Satan out of me.
“Emily Jean Flanagan!” he scolds, while I roll my eyes and swipe at the dots of champagne on my face, his loud voice making people in our general vicinity of this boring living room that looks like no one has ever lived in it, stare at us again.
Normally, I enjoy being the center of attention, but right now, I’m too busy getting drunk on top-shelf tequila I don’t have to pay for, and I just want to be in my feelings without all eyes on me. Carson’s use of my full name just makes everything in my life right now suck even more, reminding me of my best friend Wre
n back home on Summersweet Island in Virginia, and how she always admonishes me this way.
And how she hasn’t been answering her damn phone every time I’ve called to tell her about this huge, life-altering event that happened over a week ago!
“Ellen Westwood is, like, really smart with a PhD and has a perfect ass!” Carson continues to scold me. Loudly.
“I know!” I cry, feeling worse every time I think about that day.
As the makeup artist for the Vipers Cheerleaders, hired for any promotional events or photoshoots, Carson has poured many a glass of alcohol for me over the last four years when I’ve missed my girls back home and our Sip and Bitch tradition of gathering at the local ice cream shop to drink and complain about our woes. He’s also let me pour my heart out to him during the many hours I’ve sat in his makeup chair. He’s like a friend and a therapist all rolled into one, who can do the most fabulous smoky eye I’ve ever seen in my life in less than a minute. He knows everything there is to know about the Vipers organization, since people seem to forget he’s in the room and get extra chatty on their phones in his chair. And he has idolized Ellen Westwood for probably as long as I had.
The bartender finally takes pity on me, walking over to refill my shot glass, kindly waiting for me to toss it back so she can fill it again before leaving the bottle within arm’s reach as she turns to serve someone else. While I stand here surrounded by people I don’t know, at the birthday party of a friend of a friend of Carson’s, because he felt bad about me being alone on my last night in California, getting scolded like a pee-wee cheerleader who flipped off the opposing team.
It only happened once, and it was only because my friend Tess told me one of their cheerleaders whispered that my toe-touch was trash, and Tess dared me to do it. A Flanagan never turns down a dare.
“Like, sixty-two years young, with a perfect, shapely, tight ass,” Carson goes on, making me feel even worse for throwing out an immature, cheap shot at my boss of the last four years, and someone I admired and wanted to be when I grew up when I was a little girl dreaming about the future. “I don’t even like lady asses, but my God. You have to give art the respect it deserves when you see it.”
I had my dreams in the palm of my hands, and with one wrong move, they disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“I was doing the lovely Ms. Westwood’s makeup one time before a news interview, and I asked her how she still managed to maintain such a firm, well-rounded derriere, and she told me to eat shit,” Carson muses with a wistful smile on his face as I down another shot. “I still don’t know if she was insulting me or if that woman actually eats feces to look as good as she does at her age.”
“I thought you brought me to this party to cheer me up and to cheer me on before I leave tomorrow on a new life adventure. Not to remind me how epically I failed,” I complain.
Tonight was supposed to be a fun, carefree evening out with a few of the girls from the team. One last night in L.A. to finally let loose and go crazy after four years of not being able to have a life. An hour into our night at a bar by my apartment, and they all ditched me for dates, reminding me I’m a thirty-four-year-old, washed up, ex-pro cheerleader, with no dating prospects anywhere in sight. Not that it would matter anyway, since I’m moving back home tomorrow, but still. I had four years to find everything I felt like I’ve been missing in my life, and I blew it. Professionally and personally.
“New life adventure?” Carson snorts, grabbing the bottle of tequila and refilling my glass, adding a few fingers to his champagne flute he emptied in between yelling at me, and then clinking our glasses together. “You’re moving back home to a tiny, shithole island in Virginia to run your parents’ business that you hate, with nary a makeup artist in sight to make sure you don’t go out in public looking like garbage, and a weird, arranged marriage situation that I still don’t fully understand.”
I do not follow Carson’s lead and throw back my shot, and not just because I may or may not be seeing two of Carson standing in front of me right now, and I’m afraid if I bring the shot glass up to my face, I might miss my mouth completely.
Is this my fourth shot or my seventh? I know it’s a number less than ten but more than three. We’ll call it fourventh. Numbers are hard.
My ass vibrates again with an incoming notification from my phone—the other reason I didn’t inhale more tequila right along with Carson. I quickly set down my shot glass and pull my phone out of the back pocket of my plum-colored miniskirt, hoping Wren is finally getting back to me. Carson has been a great Sip and Bitch fill-in, but sometimes, a girl just needs her best friend. I need her to tell me everything is going to be okay, I’m making the right decision by moving back home, and that I should definitely drink more tequila.
“It’s not a shithole island, and it’s not an arranged marriage,” I grumble, blinking a few times to try to get my drunk eyes to focus on the screen of my phone. “Summersweet is small, but it’s magical. Everyone I love is there, and I’ve missed too much while I’ve been gone. My friends all falling in love, one of them getting engaged, random forest fires…. It will be nice to be with everyone again and not miss out on everything because I’m so far away or traveling all the time.”
Don’t think about how much you’re going to miss traveling, being in the spotlight, the glamour of going to public appearances, putting a smile on people’s faces, helping raise money at charity events. Don’t think about how much it’s going to hurt to never feel the nerves and excitement right before the music starts, when you’re waiting in the tunnel of the stadium, knowing you only have one shot to execute every move perfectly in front of millions of people, and understanding without a shadow of a doubt that all the hard work and sacrifice was worth it. Don’t think about it, or you’ll start crying, and no one likes a drunk crier.
Instead, I think about Wren, and going with her to Owen’s baseball games, and helping put out the fires Tess starts, and hanging out with Birdie while she works at Summersweet Island Golf Course, and finally being able to attend a Sip and Bitch at the Dip and Twist in person instead of on a video call, and just being a few cottages away from my favorite people in the world who I can see, and hug, and cheer for during all their important moments.
“Oh, look, it’s your intended!” Carson quips after he moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me to look down at the text on my phone that is not from Wren. “Remind me again; has your father already negotiated the plot of land he’ll receive in exchange for you upon the marital union, or does that happen after the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral between all the potential suitors on the island?”
Carson laughs at his own joke, while my tequila eyes finally focus on the words of the text. A text that reminds me I have more than one problem to deal with when I get back home.
Ryan: Hey! I know you said you didn’t need a ride to the cottage after your plane lands and when you get off the ferry tomorrow, but if anything changes, just text me. Don’t worry. I haven’t said a word to Wren. Can’t wait to have you home again.
Not only am I flying back home tomorrow with my tail tucked between my legs, forced to tell everyone that I failed—and not just failed but got fired for the first time in my life—but I also have to admit to my mother that she was right. I didn’t find anyone better than Ryan Hutton. High school bowling coach to the Summersweet Island Wildcats, my childhood sweetheart, and one of the many reasons I ran away from home to try out to be a Vipers Cheerleader four years ago. He’s sweet, kind, handsome, thoughtful, and perfect in every way.
He’s just not perfect for me.
In a moment of weakness after not getting a call back from Wren this week, when Ryan sent me his usual monthly text checking in to see how everything was going, I told him I was moving back home without going into too many details. Wren would kill me if she knew I didn’t tell her first, but I owed it to Ryan to give him a heads-up after everything he’s put up with from me.
Shoving my phone back into my skirt pocket
, I grab the bottle of tequila and pour myself another shot, half of it sloshing all over the bar top when it takes me a few seconds to get my eyes to focus on my glass. I quickly toss it back, hoping the alcohol will wash away all the guilt from Ryan’s text.
“You okay there, Em?” Carson asks with a smirk, fully enjoying my inebriated state as I sloppily wipe tequila off my chin that didn’t make it into my mouth.
“I’m great.” I nod, pasting my best cheerleader smile on my face. “We’re not talking about Ryan tonight. We both agreed to date other people while I was gone so we could both see what’s out there, just like when I went away for college and every other time we got bored.”
It’s fine that we always just keep coming back to each other, because the dating world is bullshit, and clearly neither one of us has any game. It’s like coming back to an old, worn-out, yet adequate blanket you know will always be there. But, you know, in a nicer way than that.
“I have nothing to feel guilty about,” I remind Carson, and myself. “Now, be a good wingman and find me someone to make out with. I need one more thrill, one more breath of excitement before the lights go out, dammit!”
All of my furniture is packed and on its way back to Virginia, and my suitcases are waiting for me by the door of my apartment in Beverly Hills, where I’ll hand over the spare key to my roommate tomorrow morning. I turned in my uniform and ID badge to the main office at Vipers Stadium and said goodbye to all my teammates who weren’t able to come out tonight at practice earlier this afternoon. This part of my life is officially over, and yet none of it feels real. I’ve been living thousands of miles away from home and busting my ass for the last four years, barely sleeping, working my body to death, traveling all over the world with zero time for a social life, and missing out on everything important happening back home, so I could finally follow my dreams and do what I want to do with my life for once, instead of what my family expects me to do. I sacrificed everything for my dream job, and I screwed it all up, because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about something I believed in.