Sworn Enemies - Rebel Hart Page 0,62

He pushed against me and laid me back against the bed. “Let’s forget about him.”

I smiled, my body already turning up the heat again. “Forget about who?”

22

Quinn

I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face, no matter how hard I tried. Dragging myself away from Zeke on Sunday was difficult enough, but then we spent the whole day texting each other like high schoolers. Stupid gifs, cheesy images—if it was a cliche thing for a new couple to do, we did it dozens of times, all day long. At one point, Zeke took a picture of himself shirtless and hanging out of his football pants, which sent me to the bathroom to take off everything but my jacket, and unzip it to a very low point and take a picture to send back. The naughty pictures turned into sexting before circling back to sending back and forth the pictures we’d each taken of one another asleep at different points after we finally wore ourselves out the night before. When we finally had to stop so we could both focus on football, it felt like I was a little kid and my mom was trying to drag me back home from the park.

“Looks”—Cal started to dance at my approach—“like someone”—he bobbed his head—“got…”

Kris and Hollie jumped over next to him, and they all did jazz hands. “Laid!”

“Glad to see you’re getting used to each other,” I replied. “Dorks.”

I continued past them, but Kris ran up to my side. “Are you really dating Zeke Matheson?”

I shrugged, my smile growing to a shit-eating magnitude. “A lot more than that.”

“Oh my god.” She punched my arm. “That’s crazy! Well, congratulations. If he makes you smile like this, I’m on board. Just as long as he doesn’t turn into a crazy jerk who wants to end your career again.”

“Oh.” I looked at her. “We need to talk about that. All of us.” I turned to face the team. “Hey guys, can you huddle up? I have some news.”

The team immediately responded, gathering around, and Cal came to stand next to me. I looked around and noticed someone was missing. “Where’s Lila?” She was never late. If anything, she was always early.

My gaze dropped to George, and she shook her head. “No idea. I haven’t heard from her.”

“I called her sister,” Max said. “She talked to her, but when I tried to call and text, no response.”

“Maybe she’s in a snit about the game last week,” Jansen said.

“Hmm.” I made a plan to try and get a hold of her later, but for the time being, we had to focus. “All right, listen. I talked to Zeke last night—” My words were interrupted by hoots and hollers and Cal dancing next to me. I swatted his arm. “Knock it off, this is serious.”

Cal put his hands up. “My bad.”

“We started talking about Wright, and it turns out that all of this was a huge set-up. He set up Zeke, and he set us up, too,” I explained.

“Wait,” Mala said, “so we’re not really going for semi-pro.”

“No, we are, but on Wright’s terms right now. He’s intentionally making this a huge publicity stunt. The outcome of our games doesn’t really matter to him. He just wants the views.”

“Gross,” Kris grumbled.

“Yeah. He went to Zeke and called us amateurs and came to me and called Zeke a pro wannabe. He purposely tried to turn this into this huge, heated rivalry on and off the field so he could make money off it.” I crossed my arms. “Fortunately, we figured it out, but no one on this team is to talk to him for any reason. If he contacts you, simply don’t respond.”

“Can we do that?” Hollie asked. “Isn’t this, like, all up to him?”

“Let Cal and me worry about that. He may be at the top, but there’s a whole board. If I need to fight for us because he tries to pull us out now or something, we can, but we need to handle him with fireproof gloves. I’m serious, and if he tries to approach any of you, let me know right away.”

Everyone nodded with understanding, so I looked over at Cal. “All right, the floor is yours, Coach. I’m gonna try and get in touch with Lila.”

Cal nodded. “Cool.” He clapped his hands. “All right, Widows. We’re gonna start by closing in our gaps from last week. Lila ran us rampant, but we all have stuff to work on. Let’s get started.”

I left Cal and the