Sworn Enemies: A Small Town Enemies To Lovers Sports Romance (The Football Boys Book 3)

by Rebel Hart

  “Sorry, cap,” Hollie replied. “Lila’s trouble. I’ll admit she’s got something special when it comes to the sport, but this team isn’t only about football. It’s about the relationship we all have. Even George and Max do better when she’s not here.”

  I rubbed my head. It was starting to pound under my players’ scrutiny. “Well, what do you guys suggest? You wanna not play anymore? She’s our twelfth.”

  Kris, Jansen, and Hollie went quiet. Hollie made an attempt, holding up a finger and opening her mouth to speak, but then she closed it back up and dropped her hand into her lap, so I continued. “That’s what I thought. Look, I don’t wanna fight with her every week, either, so if someone can bring me a stacked to shit tackle, I’d be more than happy to do a facelift. Now, can we please go drink? Because I’m not drinking, and that’s a real problem for me.”

  I packed up our practice materials with Hollie’s help while Kris finished patching up Jansen, then we all piled into Hollie’s GMC. Montpelier wasn’t a large place, and most people drove for convenience’s sake. I only lived about a ten-minute walk from MontRec, so I didn’t even own a car. Kris probably also drove, as she actually lived just outside of Montpelier, but it was easiest to drive together. Hollie would bring Kris back after the game, and Jansen would either walk home or catch a ride with Kris.

  Straight Street was Montpelier’s premier sports bar, by which I meant it was the closest one to MontRec and had a bartender that would slide us discounted drinks all night. We walked through the door, which announced our presence with a bell jingle, and the bartenders looked over.

  The bar owner’s girlfriend, Sennica, saw us first. She was mixing a drink and smiled over at us. “Hey, Widows!”

  A few people in the bar lifted their drinks at us. Only Straight Street’s regulars, who saw us often, would recognize us as football players. It was likely none of them had even seen our games, but Sennica knew us from my brother, Alec, and so we came to be known as the Black Widows, a group of women who like to drink a lot.

  The bar was a giant rectangle situated in the center of the space, which had tables littered around two sides of it and a couple of pool tables, arcade games, and a dartboard on the other two. Flat screens were hung above the bar’s materials on the side of the rectangle, one on each side for the patrons to watch and enjoy. It had subtle smells of booze and cigarette smoke mixed with the smell of fried food from the small kitchen in the back.

  “Hey, Sen.” I walked over to the bar and took a seat, and Jansen, Hollie, and Kris filed in next to me. “How’s it?”

  “Oh, you know. Another day, another dollar.” She slid the drink she was making to one of the patrons on the bar perpendicular to where we were and came to stand directly in front of us. She saw Jansen’s face and winced. “Ow, that looks painful.”

  “Cost of doing business,” Jansen replied. “May I please have one alcohol?”

  Sennica laughed at Jansen’s phrasing. “Of course. Anything in particular?”

  “As long as it tastes like liquor, I’m fine.”

  Sennica nodded. “You got it. What about everyone else?”

  “Just a beer for me. Miller Lite,” Hollie said.

  Kris held up a hand. “Same.”

  “I’ll have a Long Island,” I added, and Sennica laughed.

  “Long day at practice?”

  I nodded my head toward Jansen. “Is it that obvious?”

  Sennica didn’t reply and instead moved to make our drinks. When she passed me by, going for some ingredient, she grabbed the remote from the TV we were facing and set it on the bar top. I grabbed it and quickly flicked through the channels to get to the channel where the Vipers would be kicking off any second. I heard a few of the bar patrons protest, but they were quickly shushed by those who knew us, and eventually, I landed on the channel. We were still a bit early thanks to Lila and Jansen’s antics, and a local news reporter was interviewing the Vipers’ captain and quarterback, Zeke Matheson. I pressed the button to turn it up enough for us to hear it, but not so much that it would drown out the music playing throughout the bar’s speakers.

  “We’ve duked it out with this team before,” Zeke said, answering a question I hadn’t heard. “Minnesota has power, but they’re disorganized. We’re confident we’ll take home the victory today.”

  “I don’t know what Minnesota he’s talking about,” Kris commented, sipping her beer. “Last time I watched them play, it looked like a video game. Everyone moved exactly how they were supposed to.”

  Jansen rolled her eyes. “Matheson’s always been over-confident. You’d think with the Vipers’ record this season, he’d know better than to talk trash.”

  I waved my hand at them. “Shh.”

  “Don’t you guys know by now not to interrupt when Quinn’s watching the Vipers? Even the pre-game interviews are sacred.” The familiar voice preceded a head of light brown hair breaking out from around the bar’s center pillar. Alec walked down the bar, sliding a plate of food to someone as he moved, and came to stand in front of us. He leaned over the bar to give me a kiss on my cheek and turned around and flicked the television off.

  “Hey!” I squeaked.

  “Pipe down, shorty,” he grumbled back at me. “He’s saying the exact same thing he said last week and the week before that. There’s still ten minutes until kick-off. Socialize.” I tried to lift the remote and turn the TV back on, but Alec snatched the remote out of my hand. “Socialize. Ten minutes.”

  “Ass,” I hissed.

  “Good to see you, too.” He turned his attention to the others. “Hey, ladies!”

  Alec was my brother, adoptive brother, to be more specific. We were best friends in school, and somewhere around middle school, Alec realized that his attraction to people wasn’t specific to women. He dated women, lots of them, but when his parents caught him making out with someone in their garage, it was his first boyfriend, Daniel. His parents were so livid that they kicked him out of their house that night. He showed up on my doorstep crying, and my parents took him in without a second thought. The day before we started high school, they adopted him formally, and he’d been my brother ever since.

  I was drumming my fingers against the bar, not yet having received my drink to distract me, while Hollie and Kris were already deep into their beers. “Can you put the game on now? It’s starting.”

  “I turned it off sixty seconds ago,” Alec responded. “Will you relax?” He put his elbows on the bar and bent over at the waist to put his head in his hands. “I’m happy to see you.”

  My irritation at wanting to watch the game dissipated, and I smiled. “I’m happy to see you, too.”

  “I drove today, so get tanked if you want. I can drive us home.”

  Alec and I also live together. He opted out of college and moved into an apartment right after graduating high school, and when I graduated college, we upgraded to a two-bedroom in the same building. He wasn’t just my brother or my best friend, he was kind of my whole world. Probably the only thing I loved more than football.

  “Good, I could use a few extra drinks. In fact, Sen, can you just get two of those mixed up for me?”

  Sennica was in the midst of making my first Long Island and reached over without looking to grab a second glass. She held it up in the air, set it down, and went to work.

  I did as told and socialized while I waited for my drinks, but soon I was an all-out brat. Alec finally scooped up the remote to turn the TV on and stuck out his tongue at me, a gesture I returned to him immediately.

  The game started not long after that, and I tuned everything else out. The Montpelier Vipers were Montpelier’s only semi-pro team, only one of three in the entire state of Idaho. They had a pretty good record but had a wild horse for a captain and could let their arrogance get to them. That considered, they were still my favorite football team to watch play. I could get into college ball or the pros, but something about the fighting hunger that semi-pro teams had was exhilarating to me
. They weren’t getting the six-figure paychecks, and the rules were much more strict than the pros, so at the end of the day, they were all there because they loved football.

  Sometimes, I felt like my obsession with the sport isolated me, but when I watched the Vipers play, it was a nice reminder that there were people who thought like me not all that far away. I caught stadium games when I could, but the Widows’ practices usually got in the way. As much as I enjoyed seeing the Vipers play up close, it didn’t compare to playing myself, so when it was a choice between the Widows or the Vipers, the Widows won out every time.

  The first quarter of the game was expected, if not slightly slow. It was a battle of the defenses as both teams managed to advance a handful of yards before running out of downs and having to turn over the ball. Minnesota was a more controlled team than the Vipers, however, so a shift came at the beginning of the second quarter when the Vipers tried for a play on fourth down and got sacked. They had to give the ball back to Minnesota right where they stood, leaving Minnesota within field goal range.

  “Goddammit!” I barked at the screen. “Why would they go for that play? None of them has the control for that!”

  “That’s Wild Zeke for you. Give him an inch, and he’ll try to take a football field,” Hollie replied.

  Things went from bad to worse. It was like Zeke was the only one who cared to play solid ball. Minnesota got the ball up the field for a touchdown and successful two-point conversion, and about five minutes later, they intercepted a pass and ran it back sixty yards for another touchdown. Kris scooted her barstool a bit down the bar from me, no doubt feeling the anger permeating off of me. By the third quarter, the Vipers were playing like middle-schoolers. They were fighting more amongst themselves than with the other team, and all of their plays were plagued by a hundred and one mistakes that no one this late in the game should still be making.

  “Turn around!” I screamed when Zeke tossed downfield to his receiver, who was still running with his back to the ball.

  One of Minnesota’s players got in between the ball and the receiver and jumped up for a killer interception. Zeke bolted out from the pack and tackled the receiver to the ground, but that didn’t stop Minnesota from jumping up and chest-bumping one another triumphantly at another successful turnover. The camera cut away from the fray on the field, but not before Zeke threw his hands up in anger at his team. The third quarter ended with an embarrassing score of twenty-nine to three.

  “Jeez,” Alec murmured, leaning against the bar with his eyes on the TV. “They’re stinking up the place.”

  “Please get me more booze,” I grumbled. Without even looking back at me, Alec reached below the bar, and when his hand came back up, it had an already-crafted Long Island in it. “I love how prepared you are.”

  “I know how you get when they lose.” Alec turned to walk down the bar. “I’ll get started on another one.”

  I lifted the new drink to take a sip. “They could still pull it out.”

  Kris looked over at me with one eyebrow raised. “Sure, if by ‘pull it out’ you mean they’re going to lose. Badly.”

  I groaned and watched. The fourth quarter was more of the same. Zeke was starting to lose his cool, so the little bit of skill they had on the field quickly evaporated. When the final countdown started, the teams stood around and let the clock run down. The Vipers scored no more points that game, but Minnesota took another touchdown and field goal, bringing the final score to a horrendous thirty-nine to three.

  “You guys could play circles around them,” Alec commented. When he wasn’t working at the bar, he was helping out with the team. He took Fridays off so he could be there for games, and he usually had the late shift on Saturdays, so he could attend Saturday practices, too. He knew our team as well as I did. “Too bad you guys can’t be semi-pro.”

  The sentence was uttered as nothing more than a passing notion, but it drove straight into me like a stake. We drank our way through the end of Alec’s shift and then packed up to leave. Kris, Jansen, and Hollie all climbed into Hollie’s truck and were off after some tipsy goodbyes. Alec pulled me over to his old Jeep Cherokee and opened the door to let me in. He tapped the top of my head like I was a dog.

  “Don’t brood so hard. You’re going to peel Benny’s paint.” Benny was the name he gave his car. He shut the door, walked around to the driver’s side, and climbed in. “Teams lose sometimes. It’s okay.”

  “Do you really think we could go semi?” I asked.

  Alec recoiled a bit. “Huh?”

  “You said it’s too bad we can’t go semi-pro. Do you really think we could?”

  Alec went quiet as he mulled the question over and then shrugged, starting up the Jeep as he did so. “Yeah. If they can with that dumpster fire, you guys can do it.” He pointed at my seatbelt, which I’d yet to pull over. “Come on. Let’s get you home so you can sleep it off.”

  “Actually, can you bring me back to MontRec?” He tilted his head in confusion, but excitement was already flooding into me. “I have something I need to do.”

  3

  Quinn

  I almost choked on my coffee when I looked at the time and saw that it was five in the morning. I was just shy of having been awake for twenty-four straight hours. That was probably why I kept confusing my pen for the banana I told myself to grab at least three times and never did. I was delirious and exhausted, but it was worth it. I leaned away from my computer and looked at the blocks of text that I’d filled into all of the boxes on the screen. Who knew that submitting an application for semi-pro status would be so arduous?

  “Okay,” I grumbled to myself as I leaned back in.

  I scrolled all the way to the top of the screen and scanned all the fields one by one. The first several boxes were okay, but the further down the page I got, the more grammatical and numerical errors I came across. It wasn’t a shock that I lost my mind a little bit as it got later in the night, but toward the end, things really stopped making sense. It took much longer than I wanted it to for me to sort through my thoughts, figure out what I was trying to say, and get the words down in a way that was easy to understand. I felt like only a blip in time had passed, but suddenly, the doors to MontRec’s employee entrance creaked.

  One of the morning instructors, Tabby, walked past my office and then backed up when she noticed me sitting there. “Quinn?” She checked her watch. “I assumed you weren’t here. Everything is still locked up.”

  I checked the time again, and it was eight o’clock. “Holy crap.” I blinked a couple of times to try and push the tiredness away, but I was unsuccessful.

  “Wait,” Tabby started, stepping into my office. “Are you still here from yesterday?”

  “No.” I downed what was left of my coffee in one gulp. “I left to go watch the Vipers play.”

  “But you haven’t been home to sleep?” She looked around my office. “Or eat?”

  “That stuff’s for the dead,” I responded and went back to looking over my application.

  “Which you will be if you keep on like this.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m calling Christine and telling her you’re gonna be off today.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. Just let me finish this, and I’ll get things opened up.”

  “Christine? Hey, it’s Tabby. Yeah. I just got to MontRec, and Quinn isn’t doing so well. Yeah, I know, she’s being stubborn and won’t go home. Uh-huh. Okay, thanks. Bye.”

  Tabby pulled her phone from her head, and half a minute later, my phone rang.

  “You’re welcome,” Tabby said, before walking away.

  It was Christine, the owner’s daughter. I answered. “Hey.”

  “Hi. I just talked to Tabby. She says you’re sick?”

  “No, I’m—”

  “Go home, Quinn. Now.”

  “Really, I’m—”

  “It wasn’t a suggestion. I think I spend, like, one day a month in the rec center. I’ll come in and keep an eye on things today
. Wrap up what you’re doing and go home. I’ll be there in thirty minutes, and you had better be gone.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Fine.”

  “Bye.”

  The phone went dead, and I shoved it into my purse in irritation. I didn’t like skipping work, but as my head lulled forward and my eyes drifted shut against my will, I conceded it was probably a good thing. I finished looking over the application for errors, and when I was confident it was good enough not to get us disqualified from consideration, I submitted it. My stomach did a little lurch as I watched the page refresh to tell me that my application had been sent and was being reviewed. I had no idea how long it would take for someone to get back to me about the requirements, but I officially didn’t have any brain capacity left for figuring it out. I powered down my computer, grabbed my backpack and purse, and started the painful walk back to my apartment.

  I didn’t live far from MontRec, but on twenty-seven straight hours with no sleep, the walk could have been a military-grade obstacle course. I tripped on everything there was to trip on and nearly put my face in the concrete as I climbed the few stairs to my apartment building. I was grateful for the elevator when I finally climbed onto it, but if it hadn’t dinged when it got to my floor, I wouldn’t have woken up from my doze on the short ride to the third floor.

  I trudged off down toward my apartment and then remembered that my keys were buried at the bottom of my purse. I threw my whole body against the door instead of knocking and stepped a few feet back. A couple of seconds later, the door opened, and Alec, still wearing his bed hair, looked at me in confusion.

  “Oh my god, are you just getting home?” He grabbed me and pulled me inside, and I didn’t stop on my way to faceplant on the couch. “Where have you been?”

  I could already feel sleep trying to take me, but I didn’t want to fall asleep on the couch. It was probably a bad idea to lay down with that in mind, but I couldn’t have stayed on my feet for another second. “MontRec.”