Page 33 of The Golden Receiver

He didn’t seem to care about his grades nearly as much as I did. Maybe he wasn’t too concerned about losing a scholarship. Hell, maybe he wasn’t even on one. I just knew that I needed to keep my grades up so I didn’t risk losing everything. I didn’t know what I’d do if that happened. I couldn’t imagine explaining something like that to Pops.

I was relaxed when I went to meet Evander on Thursday morning. I figured it would be another day of the same.

Just like every morning, we met on the bench. He’d beat me downstairs, and he was using the bench to help him stretch. He scooted over to let me join him, and then we were off. I started getting a feeling of foreboding as we walked away from Karloff Hall. I was proven right the moment he stopped. The trailhead was familiar, even in the dark.

We’d run it before, but that wasn’t why it was so familiar. I’d just been there on Friday. My breath caught in my throat. Why the hell had he decided this was the best trail to run? Fuck.

I decided I wasn’t going to let this affect me. I wasn’t going to mention what happened with us, and if he had any sense, neither would he. We’d been managing to get along all week, and I didn’t want anything to throw a wrench in that.

I didn’t give him a chance to speak before I took off running down the trail. I wasn’t taking the risk of it coming up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep that up once we finished our run. We emerged from the woods, right where we’d gotten each other off almost a week ago. I risked a glance, and I couldn’t even see where we’d been.

Unfortunately, Evander caught where I was looking. “Do you think we should talk about it?”

My eyes tore away from that spot. They stopped for a moment on the tall, blond man, and then I ripped them away from him as well. I didn’t need to be looking at him while memories of what had happened between us flashed through my mind.

The way his cock felt in my hand.

The way his hot breath felt against my lips.

The sounds he made as he came.

I did not need to think about those things, and I sure as hell did not need to think about them while I was looking at Evander. I sped up.

“Kieran,” he called out. I heard his footsteps behind me, fast walking until he settled beside me. “Kieran, do you think we should talk about it?”

“Think I answered that by walking off,” I pointed out with a shake of my head. I didn’t think we needed to talk about it. I thought we needed to forget about it.

I heard Evander sigh dramatically beside me. It was long and drawn out, and I could almost imagine the look on his face when he made it. I wasn’t going to look over to find out if the reality matched what my mind conjured up. I knew I was being a dick; I didn’t need to see proof. “Maybe I need to talk about it,” he said after a moment.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just shook my head and walked faster. My eyes were focused on the training facility, because as soon as we got in there, he’d have to drop it.

Evander might have dropped the topic, but I could still feel it lingering there every time we were near each other. Mostly at practice. Every time he opened his mouth, I flinched, half-expecting him to say something about what had happened between us. I wanted to believe he had enough sense not to do that, but I wasn’t entirely convinced.

Nothing happened all through practice.

Nothing happened in the locker room.

Nothing happened until about halfway back to the dorm. Evander sloped up and fell into step beside me. I didn’t even have to look to know it was him, because who the hell else would it be? “I still need to talk about it,” he said without any kind of greeting.

I sighed. He wasn’t going to drop this. He was going to poke and prod until we either talked about it or I bit his head off. I figured the former would probably be better for team morale. “Not here,” I told him with a shake of my head.

If I was going to be forced to talk about us hooking up, I wasn’t going to do it in the middle of campus where anyone could overhear. I wasn’t ashamed of what happened between us. It just wasn’t anyone else’s business.

“We can talk in my room, if you want,” he suggested.

I thought about it. On one hand, I didn’t know the first things about his roommates. They might be the type to listen through walls and blab whatever they heard across campus. On the other hand, my room wasn’t exactly the neatest. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to see it in its current state. At least in his room, I wouldn’t be worrying about all that.

I nodded.

We made small talk on the way back to the dorm. I fought the urge to split the moment we got inside, run up the stairs to my room, and lock myself in. I had a feeling he’d just follow and spend all night trying to talk to me through the door, and that seemed like it’d be a pain in the ass. I got on the elevator and rode it with him to the sixth floor. I followed him down the hall to his room. When we went inside, there were two guys playing video games in the common room and a third sitting in an armchair, reading some thick book with a line of highlighters sitting on the arm. Evander greeted them before he led me to his room.

Evander’s room was nicer than mine. It wasn’t bigger or anything, but he had things organized a lot better than I did. He had a small table by his bed with a mini-fridge wedged underneath it. The top of his desk was organized, and his bed was actually made. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made my bed, not counting the days I changed my sheets. Unlike my room, there weren’t clothes strewn all around either.

He even had a damn collage of pictures on a cork board hanging on the wall over his desk. I looked at it. He was surrounded by a bunch of different people, including the friends he’d gone to the Alpha Claw Omega party with.

“My pack,” he said when he caught me looking. “Well, most of them are in the pack. Some of them are just friends from high school. And there’s a few from different teams I’ve played on over the years, but most of the pictures? My pack.”

“Are there any pictures of your parents on here?” I asked. No one in any of the pictures really looked like him.