Next Man Up (Making the Score Football Romance Book 2)

by Tawdra Kandle

  “Hardly,” he responded dryly. “I never even thought of her that way, until one day, in the middle of us studying for a biology exam, she asked me if I’d ever thought about kissing her. I blushed and stammered and said of course not. She asked why not—was there something wrong with her? She got all upset and squiffy, and she stormed out of my room. From that minute on, all I could think about was kissing her. When I finally got her to see me again, you better believe I didn’t waste any time.”

  “Hmmmm.” I wheeled back a little, getting out of the way as my dad stood up to retrieve some more uncut pieces of wood. “Interesting. I can’t believe you never told me this.”

  “You never asked,” he retorted. “And I’m kind of wondering why it came up right now. Is there a special someone in your life, son?” He cracked himself up saying the words, and I couldn’t help laughing, too, even as I rolled my eyes.

  “No.” The moment I said that, an image of Zelda popped into my mind, the way she’d looked that last night, her blonde hair cascading over me as she bowed her body down to suck my dick.

  “You didn’t bring girls home back when you were in high school, but I always got the feeling you weren’t lacking for female company.” He shot me a meaningful look, and I felt my face heat. Only my father would put it that way, would use that language to intimate that his son had been a man-whore back in the day.

  “I wasn’t a good guy back then, Dad.” My voice was soft, tentative. “I wasn’t the kind of man you would’ve wanted me to be. I was arrogant and conceited—and I treated girls like shit. A lot of them, too. I wish I could go back and undo it—but I can’t.” I fell silent for a few beats, struggling to find the words. “I think maybe that’s why—this—the injury, the wheelchair—that’s why it happened to me. It’s a punishment because I was a dick.”

  I expected him to rush to reassure me that I was wrong, but he didn’t speak right away. Instead, he lifted a plank and examined it closely, a small frown line forming between his brows.

  “This is going to be the seat,” he announced absently. “I need to make sure it’s cut just right.” Glancing my way, he exhaled long. “Eli, son, you’re a smart kid. You’ve got your mother’s brains, as well as her looks. So I hope you can hear the idiocy of the statement you just made. You’re in a wheelchair because you took a bad, unfortunate hit on the football field. It’s nobody’s fault—not yours, not the kid who tackled you, not the coach, not your teammates for failing to block better for you. We talked about this right after it happened. It was an accident. It sure as hell doesn’t have anything to do with who you were or what you did. It’s not a consequence of sleeping around or of being a jerk to girls.” He paused, smiling a little. “Now, if a girl came up and slapped you across the face, or if, God forbid, you’d ended up with an STD, we’d be having a different conversation. But this isn’t your fault. And if you’ve internalized some need to beat yourself up—stop it. You’re better than that.”

  I fiddled with the handle brake on my chair. “Maybe. Maybe the injury isn’t the penalty. But maybe I used up all my mojo with women back then, and now I’m never going to find another one to tolerate me.”

  “If you’re talking about a relationship, Eli, it might take some doing. You’re going to have to think about how to treat a woman, about whether or not you’re ready to be in love with someone else. That means putting her feelings, her wants and needs, ahead of your own. It’s nothing you can take lightly.” He rested one hand on his hip and smirked at me. “If you’re only talking about sex, though, I don’t think it would take much to find your mojo. Stop moping, start smiling, and the women are going to come flocking.”

  I thought about that. I pictured myself living that way again, hooking up with a different girl every night, sometimes more than one girl on the same night. It made me shudder, and it made me feel just a little nauseated.

  “I don’t think I want that anymore,” I heard myself saying. “But I’m not sure I know any other way to relate to women, other than trying to get into their pants.”

  “Be a friend, Eli.” Dad picked up a paper pattern and laid it carefully on the sheet of wood. “Start there. And if you’re lucky, that friendship could become something more. If it doesn’t, you’re not out anything, because you’ve still got a friend, right?”

  I thought about Zelda again. I could hear her voice, the way it had sounded that night, as she’d told me about her family and the way she’d grown up. I saw the vulnerable light in her eyes and the way she’d trusted me. I recalled the warmth that her trust had kindled in me.

  I wanted more of that. I wanted to hear Zelda tell me more about herself, more about her deepest thoughts, what made her tick. I wanted to tell her my stories and feel her soft hand smooth over my chest as she comforted me. I wanted to stroke her hair as she lay her head in my lap, both of us content in the restful silence.

  “From the look on your face, I’m thinking there’s already a girl. You have someone in mind.” Dad sketched around the pattern.

  “I don’t know if I’m good enough for her, though.” I didn’t plan to say the words, but they tumbled out anyway. “She’s pretty incredible.”

  “Eli, let me tell you a secret. None of us are good enough for the women we love. Not one single joker among us is worthy of them. But sometimes they cut us a break and let us love them anyway, and they love us back. If this young woman is as special as you say she is, I’m betting she’s smart enough to see the man you are. Then you just have to make sure you can live up to the potential she sees in you.”

  I gripped the arms of my chair. “Can I do that, do you think? Am I capable of being that man?”

  Dad looked up at me, his gaze steady and filled with shining belief. “Only you can answer that question, son. Only you can make that decision.”

  Chapter Seven

  Zelda

  “Have I mentioned how happy I am to be back with you guys?”

  On the other side of our suite’s small living room, Gia bit into a slice of hot pizza and spoke around the stretching cheese, wincing as it burned her fingers. Next to me, Quinn laughed.

  “Maybe once or twice.” She paused. “In the last five minutes, that is.” Leaning toward the coffee table, she lifted her own piece of pizza and nibbled on the end. “Was your summer seriously that awful?”

  “And worse.” Gia leaned back and propped her bare feet on the arm of the narrow sofa. “I thought staying with my dad in New York would be exciting. Spoiler alert: it was not. He’s totally obsessed with the new girlfriend.”

  “That sucks.” I ran one finger around the edge of my slice, nabbing bits of pineapple. “So you left.”

  “Yeah, and that whole out of the frying pan, into the fire deal? That describes the rest of my summer. Staying with my mom at her new place was hell on earth. Being that close to all my sisters was torture.”

  Quinn made a small noise of sympathy and sipped her bottle of water. “Did you . . . see Matt at all?”

  Gia groaned, kicking at the poor defenseless couch. “God, yes. I made the mistake of coming down one weekend when I couldn’t stand to be with my mother one more second. Matt’s grandparents were away, and he said I could crash with him. Which I assumed meant we’d actually spend time together, hang out—you know, boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. Silly me.” She shook her head. “He was partying the whole time. And I wasn’t always invited.” She exhaled a long, frustrated breath. “He . . . he brought girls back to the house. I could hear them in his room, hooking up. Fucking. And there I was in this pretty little guest room, miserable and wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.” She grabbed for a napkin and swiped it over her face. “Needless to say, I got out of there as fast as I could.”

  “You should’ve come down to the shore and stayed with my mom and me.” Quinn sighed. “It was just the two of us most of the summer, and my job didn’t take up all my time. Nate visited now and then, but mostly, we were on our own. We would’ve loved to have had you
stay with us.”

  “Thanks.” Gia managed a smile. “But I didn’t want to be the pathetic friend with nowhere to go.” She took another huge bite of pizza. “Anyway, it’s over now. Trust me, I’m never putting myself in that position again. I’m going to stay on campus the next couple of summers. I’ll get a job or take summer classes—but I’m not going to live with either of my parents.”

  “Probably a good idea,” Quinn agreed. She shifted a little to glance my way. “How was life in Lancaster, Zelda? Did you enjoy your family?”

  “I did.” I finished my slice. “I worked hard, helping out on the farm, but mostly I did a lot of reading and a little research. Oh, and I cooked, too. My grandmother had a little bit of a health scare, and I was glad to be there to help out.”

  “Is she okay?” Gia frowned, her eyes searching my face.

  I nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t life-threatening . . . she said it’s a wake-up call to eat less pie and more broccoli.”

  “That would be threatening to my life.” Gia raised her beer to me and took a long drink. “But I’m glad she’s going to be all right. She sounds like a great lady.”

  Quinn’s phone buzzed, and she tugged it out of her pocket, glancing down at the screen. “Oh, it’s Nate. He and Tuck want to know if we all want to come down to their room and watch something tonight.”

  Immediately, my stomach clenched and my heart went into overdrive. I took a long pull of my beer—technically illegal in both the state and our dormitory, but procured for us tonight courtesy of Gia’s fake ID—hoping that my hand didn’t shake.

  I would have loved to have claimed that Eli Tucker never crossed my mind all summer. I would have been happy to convince myself that my first few hook-ups back in Lancaster—which weren’t easy to pull off, with my family so eager to spend time with me—had erased the memory of that last Saturday night of our freshman year. But neither were true.

  The sex I’d had with a whole parade of locals in Lancaster hadn’t made me forget the expression on Eli’s face when I’d taken him into my mouth. All the time that had passed since that evening hadn’t kept the memory of his voice, his biting self-flagellation or his gentle kindness to me from haunting my daydreams.

  I’d wanted to forget Eli Tucker. Hell, if I was honest, I’d been trying to forget him for years now, and no amount of fucking around had done the trick. I wasn’t sure why I’d thought sucking his cock and having a heart-to-heart was going to make that any easier.

  But I wasn’t an idiot. I was resolved to continue my avoidance policy from last year. None of our friends had any clue that we’d spent that evening together. At least, I hadn’t said anything to Quinn or Gia, and since they hadn’t pounced on me about it, I assumed Eli had stayed mum with Nate, too. I could just keep things the way they’d been. Eventually, the sense memory of Eli’s hand on my head, the rasp of his voice crying out as he’d erupted into my mouth . . . all of that would vanish. Or at least dim.

  A girl could hope, right?

  “I’m in,” Gia announced. “I’m going to enjoy this last night without any homework or reading or shit. My course load is heavy this semester. There’s not going to be much time for fun.”

  “Okay.” Quinn slid her eyes my way. “Zelda? You coming?”

  I pretended to think about it before I shook my head. “Nah. I’m not quite finished unpacking, and I need to get things settled before classes start tomorrow.” It was a total fib, and Quinn knew it, because she knew me—I had unpacked and put everything away as soon as I’d arrived at the dorm this morning. Letting things linger and go undone was not my style at all.

  Still, good friend that she was, she didn’t call me on the lie. She only nodded, her eyes resting thoughtfully on me.

  After they left, I wandered around the suite, making small adjustments here and there. I loved that we each had our own bedroom and then we all enjoyed the small common space and tiny kitchen area. That had been one of my criteria for sharing this suite with Gia this year; we needed to have separate rooms, because I knew that Gia was a pig. I loved her sweet and kind heart, but the girl couldn’t pick up her shit to save her life, and I wasn’t entirely convinced she knew how to make a bed. Passing her open door, I gave a little shudder.

  I was strangely restless. I should have gone out and walked around the campus—there were bound to be a couple of moving-in parties where I could flirt with guys and probably find one to distract me with a decent fuck. But the idea of doing that just now felt like too much effort.

  At the same time, I didn’t want to stay here, alone. I clicked the television on and off—nothing on there held my attention. I picked up a book and tried to read, but I couldn’t focus. I knew why, and it pissed me off beyond measure.

  I was thinking of Eli.

  How I felt right now was much too reminiscent of the days—and nights—after my visit to South Jersey when I was a sophomore in high school. After Hannah, Becca and I had left the party, I’d been too numb to do anything but react on autopilot. I’d given automatic answers before I’d convinced the girls that I was feeling sick, giving me an excuse to hide in bed.

  Hannah, who was suspicious by nature, had peppered me with questions all the way back to Lancaster the next day. I’d stuck to my story—that I’d gone upstairs by myself to wait out a killer headache—until she finally dropped the subject.

  It wasn’t until I was home in my own safe bedroom that I’d fallen apart, crying silent sobs deep into my pillow, mourning my lost innocence and the pain of having trusted someone who’d turned out to be utterly unworthy. I’d allowed myself a solid twelve hours to weep and wail and rail, and then I’d gotten up the next day and gone to school, pretending I was still the same girl—Zeb and Alice Porter’s granddaughter—the smart one who was a good girl and made her family proud, despite her dubious beginnings.

  But within a week, I’d known I wasn’t the same. At first, despite Eli’s use of a condom, I’d harbored an irrational fear that I was somehow pregnant. I felt vulnerable, as though the world was staring at me. I thought that everyone could see what I’d done, that I’d been ruined. Dirty. Stupid.

  Thankfully, I learned pretty quickly that I wasn’t pregnant, which was a huge relief. Still, something was different. As it turned out, I realized it was me. I was different now.

  I was more aware of how boys looked at me. Maybe they always had, but now, I was looking back. Instead of glancing away, I held the eye contact, and more often than not, they ended up coming over to talk with me. I figured out what they liked to hear—how to flirt—and about ten days after I’d come back to Lancaster from Franklin, I had sex with a senior guy I’d just met. We did the deed in his dad’s finished basement, and this time, I didn’t cry afterwards. I didn’t feel numb.

  But I did learn something important. Having sex—not dating a guy, just hooking up with him—gave me power. The idea that I was willing to let him fuck me with no strings set me apart from the other girls who wanted wooing and attention. I liked that.

  The sex itself . . . well, at first that had been incidental. The allure had been the act and the power. I hadn’t even had my first orgasm during sex until three months after I’d slept with Eli—and that was only because I’d hooked up with a young substitute teacher who was working at the high school. Despite his fear of being discovered, I’d teased and flirted until he gave into me one night in the backseat of his car. But he hadn’t let me take control the way the high school guys did. Instead, he’d insisted on going down on me, my legs tossed over his shoulders. I’d been terrified at first, remembering how scared I’d been when Eli’s mouth had been between my legs.

  But the substitute had been gentle and insistent, not letting me move and not giving up until I was moaning and writhing, until the climax had ripped through me, leaving me breathless, shaken . . . and completely addicted.

  From that night on, I’d insisted on taking my own pleasure along with what I gave to my partners. I prided myself on teaching the males
of my high school how to make sex good for women, too. It was kind of like my own special form of public service—even though it wasn’t something I could include on my college applications.

  In time, I didn’t blame Eli for what he’d done that night. He hadn’t forced me, and he hadn’t intentionally gotten me drunk in order to lower my inhibitions. Or at least, I didn’t think he had. His biggest sin had been in using me and leaving me. But he’d also opened a door for me, setting me free to live an entirely new life without the boundaries that had held me back.

  It was true that I’d had to tread carefully. Our community wasn’t that large, and I knew that if I were too outrageous, word would get back to my grandparents. I had a dread of disappointing them, so I was careful to have my fun with guys who had something to lose, too, if they blabbed about our one-time fuck. I was discreet, and even if the whole school knew on some level that Zelda Porter fucked random boys often, no one made a big deal about it.

  It didn’t hurt that I began taking classes at the community college as well as the high school during my junior year. Those two days a week at the college three towns away had offered me a wider pool of potentials, and I’d taken advantage of that. Sometimes I didn’t even tell them my last name, just to be safe.

  I sighed now, standing in front of our window and looking out onto the campus, gray in the gathering twilight. As careful as I’d been back home, it had been a huge relief to come to college last year and know a sense of freedom. It had been so easy here, too. There were parties every weekend, and college boys had dorm rooms with beds we could use. They weren’t shy about telling their roommates to stay gone for a few hours, either.

  I had a strict rule about not bringing guys back to my own place. My room was sacrosanct. It was my safe and peaceful place, where I didn’t have to juggle the Zelda the world saw with the real me. Plus, last year I’d never wanted to make Quinn uncomfortable, and having a parade of strangers traipsing in and out of our room would’ve done just that.