Yep. I had so much making up to do.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Finn
“What the fucktime did you roll in last night?” Bax asked as I strolled into the kitchen to grab breakfast the morning after my reunion with Chessly. I rarely overslept, but after going a couple of rounds with Chess and trying not to break her bed while doing it, I’d come home and slept like a stone. When my alarm went off, I didn’t.
That meant I’d barely had a chance to gather up my books and shit in time to catch Bax for a ride to the facility.
“Late. Thanks for waiting for me.”
I snagged the hot breakfast burrito he handed me as we hustled out the front door.
“What’s your story? You’re usually the one who bangs on my door in the morning, not the other way round.”
I didn’t even try to stop the grin that spread over my face. “Chess and I are back on speaking terms.”
Sliding me a sly side-eye, he asked, “Do you mean speaking, or do you meanspeaking?”
“Yes.” I bit into my breakfast to stop myself from saying more. My roommates had a way of getting things out of me that were none of their business.
Instead of pressing me for details, he lifted a fist for me to bump and left it at that. I guess he’d figured out Chess was too special to discuss—kinda like the agreement we’d come to about his girl.
He might have broken a few laws on our way to the facility, but at least we were on time to lift. We’d all learned from Bax being late to weight training once that it was way better to show up drunk than to show up late. Coach Larkin’s punishment for tardiness—an extra half hour of burpees and laps on the track—wasn’t worth oversleeping.
Being on time did fuck all for Larkin’s attitude toward me though. He started in on me the second I walked into the weight room.
“Good morning, McCabe. If you’re planning to mail it in here the way you’ve been doing out on the field this week, you might want to skip ahead and go on out to the track.”
Clearing my throat, I said, “Don’t worry, Coach. I’ve pulled my head out of my ass.”
“We’ll see,” he growled.
I stepped over to the hand weights, picking up fifty pounds in each hand, and started warming up. Coach stood behind me, watching my form and counting my reps as though I were a rookie or something. He nudged Bax out of the way when it came time to spot my bench presses. When I asked for two additional forties above my usual weight to be added to the bar, he made a harrumph sound and started counting. By the time I’d finished the circuit though, with him bird-dogging every exercise and every rep, I think he’d figured out I was serious. My focus hadn’t wavered once.
“The question is, can you manage the same concentration on the field this afternoon?” was all Larkin said as I walked out of the weight room, second to last ahead of Callahan.
I deserved that. For the past couple of weeks, I hadn’t given anyone my best. In a sport that was all about “what have you done for me lately?” my production merited Larkin’s disapproval and Ainsworth’s pissed-off attitude. I’d dug a hole for myself, and it was going to take time and a whole bunch of effort to climb out of it. At least I’d stopped digging.
A picture of Chessly, gloriously naked and riding me hard, flashed through my head, reminding me why all was right in my world again. Now that I had her back in my life, I could count on football taking care of itself.
“What are you smiling about, Finnegan?” Callahan asked as he fell into step beside me on our way to the locker room. “From what I saw today, you were one step away from burpees till you puked up that fine breakfast burrito I spent all of last Sunday afternoon cooking up for you.”
“Yeah, Ainsworth might have told Larkin I needed some motivation. Yesterday, he was right. Today, not so much.” I stepped over to the bench in front of my locker and started stripping off my sweaty T-shirt and shorts.
The perplexed look on his face cracked me up. “What? Did you decide to move on?”
“Move on?” I knitted my eyebrows. “Move on from what?”
“Not what. Who. Are you over Chessly?” He grabbed a towel from the end of the bench.
Snagging a towel for myself, I followed him to the showers. “Not even a little bit. I doubt I’ll ever be over her.” I turned the water over to hot and stepped under the spray.
“What gives?”
“Your girl is a genius, you know that?” I ducked my head and let the hot water wash away an hour and a half of sweat and exertion.
“What does Jamaica have to do with your cheesy smiles?”
