by L A Cotton
He played the one sport that had ruined my life.
Crap. How had I missed that?
“Football? Hell, no. Surely you know Steinbeck is a basketball school?”
Oh, I knew, I would just have preferred not to.
“I don’t really follow sport,” I said, trying to keep a neutral expression.
“But it’s... basketball. Everyone here loves—”
“Ladies,” Joel sauntered over to us as we reached the steps leading up to the porch. “It’s nice to see you again, Calli.” His gaze travelled lazily down my body, as if he was checking me out. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t exactly hate it either.
Knowing Joel played basketball was a huge bump in the road. I didn’t date at the best of times, but I definitely didn’t date basketball players. It was one of my life rules. You know, like never eat yellow snow or never put your hand into a hole you couldn’t see into.
There was also another glaring issue with Joel now I knew he played for the Scorpions, but I wasn’t about to bring that up.
“Hey,” I kept it cool.
“Okay, J, you can put your tongue away now.” Josie tapped his cheek. “Me and my girl need drinks. Well, I need a drink and I want to introduce Calli around.”
“Stay away from Brad, Jos.”
“The guys know I’m off-limits.”
“Damn right, they do,” he growled, and it was so at odds with the goofy happy Joel I’d met earlier, I wondered what I was missing.
“Come on.” Josie yanked me away, and we slipped into the house.
The music hit me first. Like a bass drum, it reverberated inside me, making my bones rattle. “It’s loud,” I yelled, and Josie snorted.
“You really don’t get out much, do you?”
“I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly at high school.”
Understatement of the century.
“Good thing this isn’t high school then. Look.” Josie pulled me into the first room we came across. It was quieter in here, people sitting around chatting and drinking. “I didn’t have many friends in high school either. I’m too much for a lot of people, but it’s like my armor, ya know? I get...” She inhaled a deep breath. “Bad anxiety.”
“You do?” I could hardly believe what she was saying.
“Yeah.” Her smile was uncertain. “I always hung around with Joel and his friends at school, so last year was hard for me. I don’t find it easy to make girlfriends, so I’m really hoping I haven’t come on too strong and scared you off already?”
It was so weird. Josie was everything I wasn’t. Confident and bubbly and beautiful. But I guess you never knew what was going on for a person on the inside.
It was right then, I decided that I liked Josie Molineux. Maybe I could be the friend she needed and maybe she could be the push I needed to make the most of college.
But I should have known by now that life wasn’t usually that kind.
“Eeek, there is he,” she whisper-shrieked, clutching my arm to steady herself.
I inhaled a deep breath, steeling myself to face my brother. I didn’t know how I knew it was him, but something inside me did. I guess it was those old familial ties stirring to life.
“He’s so fucking hot.”
Slowly, I turned to greet him.
Callum James.
My estranged brother—the first guy to ever break my heart.
Only it wasn’t Callum at all.
A ghost from my past stared back at me instead.
“Z- Zach?” I choked out, sheer panic flooding every inch of me.
“You know him?” Josie glanced at me. “But I thought you said you didn’t—”
“What is he doing here?”
This was bad.
Very fucking bad.
“Wait a minute, I’m confused.” She glanced from me to Zach and back again.
Zachary Messiah.
My first best friend.
My first love.
My first everything.
Including the worst heartache I’d ever experienced. And that was saying something for the girl who was abandoned by her father and brother, only to lose her mom a few years later.
I felt his hard stare. Felt his soulless gaze drilling holes in the side of my face. But I couldn’t look at him again. I wouldn’t.
This cannot be happening.
“I need to go,” I rushed out.
“Go?” Josie blanched. “But we only just got here. Don’t worry about Zach... see, he’s leaving.”
I risked peeking over at the door, and sure enough, he and his friends disappeared into the hall, taking the air with them.
“Do you want to talk about what just happened?” Josie asked.
“No,” I said, feeling the icy claws of the past wrap around my throat.
I needed to go.
I needed to run back to Abrams and hide inside my room and figure out how the hell this happened.
But I did none of those things.
Instead, I looked at my new friend and said, “I need a drink. Something strong.”
Because the boy I’d fought so hard to forget was here.
He went here.
And it was the worst possible thing that could ever have happened to me.
Zach
“Zach, my man, ready for a kick ass season?” Saul, the Scorpion’s shooting guard, held out his fist and I went through the motions.
Fist bump.
Guy hug.
Slaps on the back.
I’d gotten good at playing the part the last couple of years. This year was different though. That part was the same, but I wasn’t.
“Shit, man,” Saul’s friend said. “You must have grown two inches.”
Fucking idiot.
I hadn’t grown.
Physically, I was the same Zach I’d been when I’d transferred here in the spring. But emotionally... emotionally I’d checked out a long time ago.
“Hey.” Joel joined us, chugging on his beer. Joel, I liked. No, that was the wrong word. I could tolerate him. He didn’t push for more, happy to let me stew in my own thoughts.
I wanted to believe he got it. But I knew he didn’t.
How could he?
How could anyone?
No one could know what it was like to live in the shadow of your big brother, only to be thrust into his place, like some fucked up version of the body snatchers.
“Yo, J, when’s Josie getting here?”
“You keep your dirty fucking hands away from my sister.” He gave Saul a pointed look. “That goes for all of you. You know the rules, she’s off-limits, so don’t even think—”
“Whoa, dude, relax. Although you know she’s free game now she’s a freshman, right? If it isn’t me or one of the other guys from the team, it’ll be some jock thinking he can—”
“I need to piss.” I moved around them, heading down the hall to the bathroom.
This was Joel’s house. He lived here with some other guys from the team. They’d asked me to move in, but I’d drawn the line at that. Instead, I’d opted for a studio apartment just off-campus. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. The one place I didn’t have to worry about keeping up appearances.
I’d also been given a room in the Delta Pi frat house, but I had no desire to live with a bunch of frat brothers either, playing house in my brother’s old stomping ground.
As I moved down the hall, guys called out my name, and girls let their eyes linger too long. I’d never really enjoyed this, the worship and adoration, but I enjoyed it even less since arriving back at SU a couple of weeks ago.
“Hey, Zach,” a cute blonde stepped in my way.
“Hey,” I ground out. “Uh, Steph—”
“Sapphire. We met before the summer, at the party, remember?”
I couldn’t remember much about the weeks leading up to summer vacation.
Everything was hazy. A dark black mist cloaking my memories.
But it was better that way.
“Hm
m, not really, sorry.”
“That’s okay.” She wrapped manicured fingers around my arm. “You were going through a lot.”
Understatement of the fucking century.
“Maybe we could get reacquainted?” Sapphire made a show of licking her lips and batting her lashes at me. She was hot, and my dick seemed to like her given the way he was straining against my jeans.
But I wasn’t looking for that tonight. I needed to keep a level head if I was going to survive the party.
“Not tonight.” I pushed her hand away, and dejection glittered in her eyes.
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I’m sure you would, but the answer’s still no. Now I need to go take a piss. I’m sure one of my teammates would be more than happy to take what you’re offering.” My brow lifted as I moved around her and took off toward the bathroom.
Part of me contemplated ducking out early and going back to my apartment. But it wasn’t worth the shit the guys would give me. I was their star transfer, the guy tipped to take the Scorpions all the way. The newly crowned King of SU. That came with certain expectations. Ones you didn’t just walk away from. No matter how much the need to escape burned through me.
After using the bathroom, I found a group of guys in one of the quieter rooms. “What’s up?” I said, approaching them.
“Zach, get over here. We were just talking about the season now we’ve lost some of our more experienced players...”
Silence fell over the five of us.
“Shit, man, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all good,” I clipped out, my chest tightening with every word.
Of course it was a lie.
Everything was not good; it was a fucking mess. But no one wanted to hear that. They wanted to hear I was strong, that I was ready to carry the team to greatness.
That I was ready to represent the Messiah name.
“Holy shit,” one of the guys whistled, “Is that Joel’s sister?”
I glanced over at where he was looking, my eyes going straight to Josie’s friend.
No.
Fuck no.
“Who’s that girl with her?” I asked because it couldn’t be.
No fucking way.
“Hell, if I know.” He shrugged. “But I wouldn’t say no to a Josie and Josie’s friend sandwich.”
His words were drowned out over the roar of blood between my ears as I watched the girl. She finally lifted her eyes to mine—whiskey eyes that haunted me in my sleep—and shock instantly registered on her face.
My hands curled into tight fists, my nails digging into my palm.
It was her.
Calliope James.
The girl who had once been everything to me.
Until she’d betrayed me. Broke everything we’d had, everything we’d shared.
It was three years ago, back when we were just kids, but it didn’t stop hate filling my veins, turning my blood to ice.
She wasn’t supposed to be here.
So what the fuck was she doing, standing here, in my teammates’ house?
“Zach, my man, you coming?”
“I, uh, yeah, let’s go.” I needed to get the hell out of there.
I needed to figure out why the hell Calli was there, at SU.
It was the last place I ever expected to find her. Her brother Callum, my teammate—although our relationship was strained at best—went here. And there was one person Calliope hated more than me.
Him.
I followed the guys into the kitchen where a bunch of dudes were taking body shots off a girl I vaguely recognized as one of the cheerleaders.
“Messiah, let’s go,” Brad yelled.
“Nah, man, I’m good.” I held up my beer.
“Not optional, Zach. It’s the first party of the year. We always take body shots off the cheer captain.”
“Yeah, Zach, I don’t bite.” The girl—Jenny, I think her name was—smirked. “Unless you want me to.” She pushed up onto her elbows and her tits jiggled, barely confined in the tiny bikini top she wore.
“Messiah, Messiah, Messiah,” Brad started chanting and soon everyone joined in, the words rattling around my skull like bricks.
It’s what they’d called him.
Declan.
My brother.
Their friend.
Their point guard.
But now he was gone, and I was here.
I wasn’t Declan... yet, they were treating me as if I was.
It was fucked up, but I was the only one who seemed to give a shit.
Stalking through the crowd, I thrust my beer at someone and said, “Fine, let’s do this.”
Brad slapped me on the back. “That’s the spirit, Messiah. Now for the fun part. Tits or pussy?”
The girl giggled as Brad glided a full shot glass down the valley of her tits right down the apex of her thighs. She had a skirt on, but it was so short it left nothing to the imagination.
“Tits,” I grumbled.
“My kind of man.” Brad expertly placed the shot there and stepped back. “On three, man. One, two—”
I dipped my head, closed my mouth around the glass and tipped it back. The tequila burned but I welcomed the sting. It was the small things that made me remember I was alive.
Shaking my head, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, accepting everyone’s applause.
“Nice, my man.” Brad squeezed my shoulder. “This year is our fucking year. I can feel it in my bones.”
Nodding, I shirked out of his hold and grabbed another beer. I was supposed to be taking it easy, but the weight of responsibility crushed my chest like a sack of bricks. At least if I had another couple of beers my body would relax, even if my mind remained tense.
“Saul, let’s go.” Brad started the routine all over again and I slipped into the shadows.
At least there, I could breathe for a minute.
Somewhere close to midnight, I finally made the decision to leave. I’d stayed there, on the periphery of the drinking games, forcing the odd smile, acting arrogant enough for most people to give me a wide berth.
A lot of girls loved an asshole though. They gravitated to that shit, but my answer was always the same.
Not. Interested.
Ever since laying eyes on Calli, I’d searched the party for another glimpse of her. If she knew what was good for her though, she’d already be tucked up in her bed, far away from here. What I felt toward her wasn’t healthy. It sparked anger in me so overpowering my body trembled.
Relax, she’s no one.
But that was the thing.
She wasn’t no one.
She was always there, in the back of my mind, taunting me. Her whiskey eyes haunting my dreams.
And now she was here.
It was some fucked up karma.
Dragging a hand down my face, I slipped around the bodies grinding to the music, dodging a couple of my teammates who were professing their bromance to one another, and left the house. The air was thick and balmy with the blistering summer heat.
It was about a fifteen-minute walk to my place, but I appreciated the quiet. Being around the constant noise… the questions… and conversation, it was exhausting.
I was exhausted.
But I didn’t make it very far. There, in the shadows, falling over her own feet was Calli.
Fuck, she was beautiful. All delicate lines and soft curves, with a long slender neck I could imagine closing my hand around. But it was all a lie. She was nothing more than a snake wearing a swan’s clothing.
“Come on, drunk girl.” Her friend, Joel’s sister, said, trying to hoist Calli into her side and pull her toward the path leading to the dorm buildings.
I watched as she struggled to put one foot in front of the other, unable to fight the smirk tugging my lips. She was so fucking pathetic. A fish out of water. A lamb in the lion’s den. It would have been so easy to storm over there and torment her. To whip out my cell phone and document the ri
ghteous Calliope James’ fall from grace... literally.
She went down like a ton of bricks, splattered on her back on the sidewalk. Josie looked to the sky, cussing to the heavens. I smirked to myself. You won’t find any help there.
I watched for a few seconds as she tried to help Calli to her feet, and then took off down the sidewalk that led straight off campus. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before; girls unable to hold their damn liquor, embarrassing themselves for all to see. So why, as I kept walking, did the image of her lying there refuse to get the fuck out of my head?
“Fuck,” I hissed, coming to a sharp stop. I dragged a hand down my face and let out a long breath.
Just leave her.
Just fucking leave her there and let someone else deal with her.
Without overthinking it, I spun around and marched back toward the girls. Josie’s eyes widened the second she saw me emerge from the shadows. “Z- Zach?”
“Where is she staying?”
“Abrams.”
“Grab her purse.” I barked as I stared down at Calli.
She invoked so much emotion inside me, but none was more prevalent than hate.
I hated her.
I hated everything she stood for, everything she was.
So why I did what I did next, was beyond me.
Crouching down, I pushed her hair out of her face, and said, “Sweet pea, you alive?”
“Sleep, I just sleep riiiight here.” Her eyes rolled.
“Okay,” I slid one of my arms under her shoulders and the other under her knees, “up we go.”
She barely weighed one-hundred and twenty pounds, and a strange memory hit me in the gut. I couldn’t remember her being this light.
Don’t. Fucking. Go. There.
Calliope James was woven into my soul. A dark stain that no matter what I did, who I fucked, I couldn’t get rid of.
For a second, I contemplated dropping her on the ground and leaving her there. I had no business being there, doing this.... and yet, in that second, she looked so fragile. So innocent and pure.
She looked like something I wanted to ruin.
“Zach, what the hell?” Josie called after me as I took off down the sidewalk. Steinbeck campus was a sprawling place, and the dormitories were located past the main buildings.
“Zach, I said—”
“Do you want to get her back to her room or not?” I ground out, not bothering to slow down.