JAX (The Beckett Boys #2) - Olivia Chase Page 0,91

dorm the morning after my date with Jacob. They’d been asleep, and never realized that I’d been out the whole night. When we saw each other, I played it off as though Jacob had in fact snubbed me at the bar, without really having to truly lie. Just talking about the way it had gone in the first few minutes was enough to comfort them with the idea that Jacob had rejected me as easily as they’d anticipated he would.

Since then, tensions in the suite had eased.

It hurt that in a way Jacob had snubbed me in the end, but yes, there were worse things. I shook it off each morning and focused on my classes, papers, essays, on a new obsessive-compulsive type of journaling system that was so fussy it was the perfect thing to launch myself into whenever thoughts of Jacob sprang up.

Besides, how was I going to graduate in three years if I got distracted by a guy?

There was, however, one part of Jacob Everett that I couldn’t shake— the football part. Football was such a way of life at Harton that there was no use avoiding it. Enormous posters of Jacob and the other star players in the student center. Football schedules plastered across the study cubicles. Professional photos of the marching band’s majorette line, standing in the stadium, plastered in every local bar (the majorettes were, apparently, considered the real hotties of the football field, sorry cheerleaders).

So I decided to lean into the whole thing.

Piper and Kiersten even invited me out with them to a local bar a few weeks later to watch the game. It was packed when they got there, but the three of us managed to wedge into seats beside some girls Kiersten was friendly with.

“Who are they playing?” I asked, trying not to feel too claustrophobic in the tight space.

“Who are we playing, Sasha. And it’s North Carolina,” Piper said. She still hadn’t entirely forgiven me for everything with Jacob, but it wasn’t quite as bad, these days. A perk, I reminded myself, to things with him fizzling out so quickly.

“Got it. North Carolina,” I said, nodding. The cameras peered down on the field via sweeping overhead shots and the bar began to buzz with excitement, conversations about stats and yards earned and other terms I didn’t understand swirling around me. The lineup was announced; when Jacob’s name came up, the bar cheered— me included, since staying silent would probably have gotten me thrown out.

“Wonder who it was today?” Kiersten wondered aloud to Piper.

“I think it’s that Asian girl, Zoë? She’s sucked him a few times, lucky bitch,” Piper said under her breath. I wondered if Piper would believe me if I explained that the whole “blowjob before every game” thing was all a myth.

And I hated the fact that I wanted to defend him when he’d so easily forgotten about me.

The game began, a blur of yards gained and lost and shouts of “GO GO GO!” from the bar around me. Even without much football knowledge to fall back on, I could still tell Jacob was commanding his team with military-precision. Whenever the camera got close to him, I felt my stomach clench— he was sweaty, and firm-jawed, and seeing him in a uniform that accentuated his muscles reminded me of how easily he’d carried me to the cabana in the pool house.

Ugh. How could I be so turned on by someone who had clearly used me and then thrown me away like a disposable camera?

It was just before halftime when someone from North Caro tackled Jacob to the ground, sacking him moments after he’d completed a long, powerful pass that got Harton nearly a third of the field. It seemed fine at first— a few people around me even used the break between plays to order fourth or fifth beers. Then, however, something became clear— Jacob Everett wasn’t getting back up.

“Looks like number forty-two, star quarterback Jacob Everett, is still down. Medics and coaches joining him on the field now. Let’s take another look at that play, here,” one of the sportscasters said. They pulled up the clip, and the whole bar watched anxiously as, in slow motion, the North Carolina player drove Jacob to the ground.

“It doesn’t seem like a particularly bad hit, but you never can tell— it looks like they’re tending to his shoulder now…”

The announcers trailed off as a camera zoomed in on Jacob’s face. He was thin-lipped and a little pale. I tensed, as