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ONE

CALLY

Two stalls down from me, a tall guy with a thick Boston accent was describing, in vivid, disgusting detail, the twins he’d hooked up with the weekend before. It was obviously bullshit, but his audience was eating the story up anyway.

Directly to my right, a guy wearing headphones hooked over his ears was singing a song in a language I didn’t recognize but which sounded vaguely Eastern European. From across the room, a guy with a buzz cut made eye contact with me, his gaze flicking to my neighbor. His eyebrows lifted as if to ask, “What the fuck is that?” I shrugged, he smirked, and we both went back to what we were doing.

The Marauders had assembled a strange mix of players for these first few days of training camp, though I supposed that was to be expected for an organization trying to cobble together a team that might actually win some fucking games for once. Whatever they’d been doing for the past few years clearly hadn’t worked.

Which was where a twenty-three-year-old Harvard graduate came in.

The Marauders had drafted me after my freshman year with the understanding that I’d stay in school to finish my degree. Now that I was here—“finally!” and “thank god!” fans and press alike exclaimed—my job was to grow into a cornerstone player for the franchise, someone management could eventually build a team around.

Frankly, I had my doubts. If the team hadn’t been able to create a culture of winning with Stryker Bell as captain, I didn’t know why they expected I’d be any different.

No fucking pressure or anything.

My eyes drifted to the corner where Kyle Dawes, a second-round pick in last year’s draft, shoved his phone into his bag for the third time, only to fetch it back out so his thumbs could fly over the screen.

It might have been Kyle’s frantic texting that caught my attention, but it was the curly-haired guy at the stall next to him who kept it. He was about six feet tall, with a strong, muscular build, and he looked about three seconds away from yanking Kyle’s phone away.

He was also really fucking hot, though that was something I wished I hadn’t noticed.

When Kyle dropped his head back, blew out a breath, and started typing again, Curly clapped his hand to his shoulder. “Hey.”

Kyle jumped, letting out a literal yelp, nearly dropping his phone in the process.

“Lemme guess,” Curly said, dipping his chin toward Kyle’s phone. “Texting your girl?”

Kyle’s face flushed. “That obvious?”

Curly shrugged. “You’ve got that look.”

“Shit.” Kyle stared at Curly for a beat, his lips pursing as if considering whether he should say anything. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked.

Curly chuckled. “Sure, kid.”

“She wants to move out here.”

“Lemme guess—you don’t want that?”

Kyle shook his head. “Fuck no. She’d have to drop out of college.”

“There are colleges here she could go to,” Curly pointed out. “If you love her.”

Kyle snorted. “Look, I do love her. But she’s at Johns Fucking Hopkins, okay? That’s as good as it gets.”

Curly’s chin rocked back, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead in surprise. “Oh wow. Your girl’s smart smart.”

Kyle stood up straighter, his chest—what there was of it—puffing out. “She’s going to cure cancer.”

“Nice,” Curly said, holding out his fist.

Kyle bumped it, but then instantly deflated. “That’s why she can’t move here, you know? She’s doing really important work, while I might not even make the team. Then what would happen?”

Curly nodded as if considering the gravity of the situation. The issue was, most of the guys in this room wouldn’t make it, though you weren’t really supposed to say that out loud.

“Have you told her that?” he asked. “If she’s as smart as you say she is, she’d probably understand.”