Page 22 of The Golden Receiver

“I mean it. You always seem like you’re in a bad mood, and I don’t get it. What’s wrong with you?”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“What do you mean?” Evander questioned, one of his blond eyebrows raising so high it disappeared behind his wispy hair. “There’s nothing wrong with me. You, on the other hand…” I opened my mouth to say something, but he cut me off. “I’ve been nothing but nice to you. I try to talk to you in practice. I tried to sit with you in class. I invited you on my morning runs. I spent a whole damn day trying to figure out how to have a conversation with you. But every time, you shoot me down. You don’t talk to anyone on the team and then you wonder why you’re probably going to spend the whole season riding the bench.”

I saw red.

I reached out and shoved him backward. “Then why fucking bother going on runs with me?” I demanded, pushing him again. “Why try to be my friend if there’s no hope?” He took a step backward and I kept moving toward him. “Why not just leave me the fuck alone?”

He took another step backward, right up against the brick of one of Creelin’s science buildings. I watched as he put his hands out, like he was going to stop me from advancing on him. That move more than anything made the red clear from my vision. What the fuck was I doing?

I turned around and started to walk off again.

I didn’t make it a step before I felt his hand close around my wrist and yank me backward. Within a second, I was the one pressed against the brick wall. One of his hands circled my wrist while his other arm caged me in. “Listen to me,” he started. His voice was low, but there was no edge to it. No danger. No Big Bad Wolf. “I meant what I said. You have a chance to be a starter, but not like this. Not with this chip on your shoulder.”

“Why do you care?” I spat.

That was the question, wasn’t it? Why the fuck did he care at all? He had enough friends. He had people in his corner. He had a starting spot on the team. He was friendly and well-liked, and unlike me, he didn’t stick out like a sore thumb everywhere he went. He fit in. He blended on the team, on campus, in every fucking room. Why did he want to be my friend?

Why wouldn’t he leave me alone?

I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t catch the way he was looking at me until it was too late. There was a softness in his amber eyes. I caught a flash of it just before he closed the space between us. His lips crashed against mine. My body reacted before my brain, and my lips began to move against his. His tongue slipped between the seam of my lips and invaded my mouth. His hand tightened around my wrist, and my hands reached between our bodies, tugging at his shirt, tugging him closer to me until his body was crushing me.

He kissed the way he did everything: enthusiastically. Skillfully. Heat flooded through my body, replacing that blindingly hot rage with something just as heated.

I lost track of everything other than the way his tongue moved in my mouth, the way his lips pressed against mine, the spots where his body pressed against me.

And then the spell was broken by the sound of a voice nearby.

My mind switched back on. I was kissing Evander Hemmings.

My lips went slack against his as my mind raced. What the fuck was I doing? Why the fuck had I let Evander kiss me? I pushed him off me and took off running toward Karloff Hall.

For once, he didn’t follow.

Chapter Eight

Evander

Ikept thinking about that kiss all weekend. Saturday night: kiss. Sunday morning when I was out for my run: kiss. Sunday afternoon, when I met with the rest of my pack: kiss.

I had a one-track mind and the only thing on that track was the feel of Kieran Sawyer’s lips pressing against mine. Okay, no, that wasn’t entirely true. The track was shared with the feeling of his tongue mapping out my mouth and the way he fisted at my shirt to drag me closer to him. It was a whole train of lust, and it barreled right through me every time I thought about kissing him.

What I didn’t think about was the after part of the kiss. I didn’t think about the way his lips froze as reality washed over him. I didn’t think about the sharp edge of his scent that lingered in the air after he disappeared into the night. I didn’t think about how this could potentially fuck up everything when we went back to practice on Monday.

That was Future Evander’s problem.

Unfortunately for Future Evander, time was moving. Sunday night, I was stuck lying in my bed in my dorm, looking at the plain white ceiling, and doing the thing I hated most of all: thinking. I hated thinking because my brain liked to take my thoughts on a wild ride. Tonight’s wild ride wasn’t the feel of Kieran’s hands or lips or tongue. I wished it was. That would be a pleasant ride. I could think of lots of fun things with his mouth or his hands or his lips or his tongue.

Instead, I thought about the moment he walked away. I watched him disappear into the night, slipping away from where we’d kissed by the science building into the open greenery of campus and then disappearing into the shadows. Even with my amazing night vision, I hadn’t been able to see him for too long. He’d slipped around a corner, and he was gone.

I should have gone after him. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a reason to follow him. We both lived in Karloff Hall. We both had to walk the same path back to our dorm. We both had reason to go that way, but I’d stayed there. Frozen in place by the weight of his rejection. Because that was what it felt like: rejection.

I hated that feeling. I was familiar with it, and I hated it. I’d felt it my whole life. It had been a constant, unwanted companion in my youth. From the moment I first started showing monstrous traits when I was in preschool, it was there. It was there when I shifted for the first time when I was in kindergarten, turning into the equivalent of a werewolf puppy on the school playground. I remembered shifting back and all my classmates, people I’d thought were my friends, backing away from me like they were afraid.

Not even my best friend would look me in the eyes.

Within a few weeks, my parents had rejected me too. They’d sent me to live with Kali and the pack at the warehouse. They’d never called it rejecting me. They’d said that werewolves needed a pack, that this was what was best for me, but that’s not how it felt. It felt like rejection.