I laughed internally, not missing the joke of me now living with three football players.
“I’m glad you took Leo up on his offer,” Giana said after a moment. “I would have forced you to sleep on mine and Clay’s couch otherwise.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Yeah, no, thanks. I don’t want to know the smutty book scenes that couch has been used to reenact.”
Clay was the safety on the team, and he and Giana had been dating two seasons now. Of course, that first season, they were technically only pretending to date, but it still counted.
“You think the couches here are any better?” Riley popped a brow.
I buried my face in my hands. “I’m already regretting this.”
“Regretting what?” a deep voice called behind me, and then Kyle Robbins was sliding into the room. He flopped onto the bed next to Giana, making her bounce into the air like she weighed nothing. “This is going to be the best time of your life.”
“Ew, Kyle, you’re sweaty! Get off,” Giana said, pushing him away.
Kyle Robbins was the definition of a douchebag — at least, in my experience with him. He made the most of the Name, Image, and Likeness opportunities he had as a college athlete, signing every deal offered to him no matter what the brand was. I had to unfollow him on social media because I swore if I saw one more sponsored post that he tried and failed to make seem natural, I was going to roll my eyes so hard they fell out of my head.
Sometimes I wondered how he was even on the team after all these years and all the shit he’d pulled — including ostracizing Riley her first year and nearly fighting Holden over Julep last season.
But when he got on the field, it was easy to see why he never had to worry about losing his position on the team. He was a beast — tall, strong, and freakishly fast with hands that never missed a ball thrown within ten feet of him.
“Oh shit, is that… a PlayStation?” Kyle asked, his gaze on my console before he arched a brow at me. “You game?”
“Hell yeah, she does,” Giana answered for me. I smirked a little at how proudly she said it, her chest puffed and chin high. “And she’s a bad ass, too. I’ve watched her play.”
“Huh,” Kyle mused. “We need to get you on Xbox, then we can really see how good you are.”
“Xbox is for twelve-year-old boys or grown men who live in their parents’ garage who don’t know how to play anything but First Person Shooter games,” I shot back.
He chuffed. “Let me guess, you’re more into RPG?”
“Games that require a little brain power instead of just a happy trigger finger? Yeah, I am.”
Kyle smiled, leaning back on his palms. “If you were a dude, I’d rag on you. But I’m honestly impressed you game at all, so I’ll let it slide.”
“Gee, thanks. My whole life has been made with your approval,” I deadpanned.
“I think we got the last of it,” Braden Lock said, and he somehow managed to fit himself into the room with the rest of the zoo.
He had his arms full of clothes, too, and instead of tossing them on the bed, he moved to the closet and hung them all up as if the two-dozen hangers full of dresses and jackets and jeans didn’t weigh more than a pound. He leaned his hip against the wall then, folding his arms and looking around.
Where Kyle was a clown, Braden was a teddy bear. He was short for a football player, five-eleven if I had to guess, and he spent his free time volunteering at our local homeless shelter as opposed to making deals with sneaker companies.
“I’m glad you got this room,” he said, his eyes washing over the space. “Holden was the cleanest of us all when he lived here.”
“Speak for yourself, Lock. My room is immaculate,” Kyle argued.
Braden snorted. “Immaculately clouded with cologne. Hate to tell you, bro, but you can’t cover up your farts no matter how much of that shit you spray.”
Giana and Riley laughed as Kyle grabbed my pillow and threw it at his roommate.
Our roommate?
“Hey, uh, Mary?” a new voice said, and I closed my eyes on an internal groan because I’d know that voice anywhere — even if it had aged and deepened from when it used to fill my headset years ago. “Where does this go?”
I turned toward the hallway, the rest of the crew craning their necks to do the same. At the end of it near the top of the stairs stood Leo.
He was leaning against the wall, one leg crossed over the other and a casual indifference in his stance. His lips were curled up on one side like he knew every secret you never told. One hand was in the pocket of his joggers, his arm relaxed, and yet his bicep bulged like he’d just finished working out. And in his other hand…
Was my fucking dildo.
My eyes nearly popped out of my head as panic and embarrassment ripped through me, but I didn’t let either one of those emotions latch on before I was storming the few steps toward him and yanking it out of his hand.
“What is wrong with you,” I whisper-yelled through my teeth.
“Hey, you told us to get everything out of the nightstand. I figured that was the most important item.” He nodded at the device clutched in my fist, and my neck heated even more as I tucked the thing behind my back and out of his view.
“What is it!?” Kyle asked, and then I turned just in time to find him and everyone else in the doorway, one head popping over the next like a bunch of fucking nesting dolls. All their eyes caught on the neon pink sex toy before I could turn and put it out of their view.
Kyle whistled at the same time Giana and Riley laughed. Giana’s laugh was a little shy, her cheeks turning pink. Riley seemed impressed. Braden was the only one kind enough to pretend like he didn’t see it as he dipped back into my room.
“Damn. Wouldn’t want to be the man to compete with that,” Kyle said with a smirk.
“Does that have multiple rotating levels?” Giana asked with an arched brow. “I think I read about one of those in a motorcycle club series last year.”
I let out a frustrated growl before slapping Leo’s shoulder with the only weapon in my hand before I realized what I was doing. “See what you did now?”
“What I did?” His mouth was hanging open. “You just hit me with your dildo.”
That made everyone down the hall burst into a fit of laughter, but my cheeks only burned more. Normally, I’d have something to shoot back at him and deflate his ego, but I was currently going against every fiber in my being and moving into the same damn house with the one boy I hated. Add in the fact that, although I knew this teasing was harmless, it also poked the very sensitive bruise left behind after years of being bullied in high school.
My nerves were frayed. My brain was scrambled.
I was quite possibly making the worst decision of my life.
It was an easy one to make when the alternatives were so depressing — live in a hotel until I ran out of money, sleep on someone’s couch, or, the worst of all, move home.
I swallowed, not even wanting to consider that a viable option.
But this…
This didn’t feel like the right one, either.
“This was a mistake,” I said, my voice a bit too quiet, and already I was marching down the hall. “I can find a hotel. I—”