When Gracie is humiliated after following her best friend's brother to college and finds he's moved on without her, she grows closer to his rival--the captain of his basketball team--the infamous Kalen Rush, and suddenly Gracie wonders just what len...
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Gracie was speaking to my father across the court, and I was stuck refereeing some bullshit fight that Colby fucking Hart had shit talked himself into.
He was staring her down like she was his next meal, and there was nothing I could do from halfway across the court with my arms holding back one player from pummeling the other.
My father took a menacing step toward Gracie and that was when red flashed across my vision.
The cacophony of the crowd faded into an angry blur in my ears, the almost blinding court lights blending and blurring behind my eyes until they only focused on one specific point on the court—on her.
Gracie, with her dark, unruly hair and small frame bedecked in my team's colors. Gracie with her too-wide eyes and soft features that crumpled after something my father said to her.
Hart tried to swing wide and the other player got too close, catching the fist in the side of his mouth.
Blood sprayed, and then Gracie cringed back from my father.
Fuck this.
Dropping my arms from holding Hart back, Calvin screamed at me to come back to help diffuse the situation, but it wasn't my problem that Hart didn't know how to control his own fucking temper, especially not when my father was speaking to Gracie in that ominous way he usually reserved for his only son.
Nothing around me mattered, not as my entire focus shifted until she was all I could see.
He was here, out in the open with that threatening sneer usually held back, kept hidden for behind closed doors where no one would hear the yelling.
Back then, it was so no one could hear the punches, either, but that had stopped the moment I hit a growth spurt and tackled the weight room like the more weight I could lift, the more force I could put behind my punches when I finally fought back.
And fought back I did.
But it wasn't like I could do that here, in front of faculty and the rest of the team, and god only knows who else could've been in attendance.
Suddenly my feet stopped and I was standing before them, sweat clinging to the back of my neck and a restless beat in my heart that resembled the uncomfortable pinch to Gracie's raised eyebrows.
"Kalen, thought you'd be reeling in your teammate's on the court right now, not abandoning them just to come talk to your girlfriend on the sidelines."
The deep rumble of my father's voice pierced through the hazy mist of desperation to reach Gracie and the rumble of the crowd and the buzzer in the background came rushing to the forefront of my senses.
Ignoring my father, I edged him out of the way with my body to turn toward Gracie and grab her hand in mine, her brown eyes catching a brilliant sparkle in the bright stadium lighting on the court.
