CHAPTER SIXTEEN

COLTON

Coach drilled us good tonight. No candlelit dinner; just straight to the fucking.

I say goodbye to the guys as they file out of the showers one by one. I stay longer, let the hot water beat down on my body before I have to face the refrigerator outside.

Dressed, I step out onto a light packing of snow.

Coach locks the door behind us, slapping me on the back. “Boy, am I glad I found you. I mean, I was ready to kick your ass day one, but woowee… America hasn’t given us much, but I’ll happily take another Beckett if you’ve got any more brothers spare.”

I think of Mason and Cayden, already with tiny Becketts of their own, can’t possibly imagine in my likeness. Burping, diapers, toys strewn across the tabletop—I doubt I could handle it. “We’re multiplying, so you just might get your wish.”

Coach rubs his hands together, blowing into them. “Good to know. See you tomorrow, Bruce.”

After Bruce Springsteen, that is, my current nickname amongst the boys thanks to the now infamous karaoke video. I’d rather it was dick pics.

I watch Coach head towards the parking lot, smiling to myself, still not entirely sure how I ended up in this parallel, albeit frosty, universe to begin with.

It’s not all frosty, though. That hot pocket between Harper’s thighs, always so wet for my cock, my fingers, my tongue… I’d happily live out here in the sticks if it meant I’d have that on tap.

I’m enjoying her company out of the sheets, too. I’ve learned she’s reads horror movie synopses for fun… but refuses to watch any. She’s a Libra, had her first drink when she was twenty-one-and-a-half, has never been to the US or on a plane. Apparently she’s kickass at Settlers of Catan, and has a huge crush on Jaime Lannister, though I told her he has nothing on me, including a full set of hands.

I come around the corner when I’m shoved from the snow, almost tripping into the ice but managing to stay standing.

It’s Harper’s fucking ex, that James guy from the bar. “What the fuck do you want?” I bellow.

He gets straight to the point. “You think you can get away with sleeping with her?”

I play coy, spanning my arms out. “Fucking who, hotshot?”

“Harper,” he seethes. “She’s too good for some Ivy League family fuck-up like you.”

So he’s done his research and he’s found his balls.

“That’s right,” he nods slowly, “I know all about your time at Abbotsleigh, about incident at The L—”

“Ancient history,” I cut in, trying to decide whether I should lay this guy out and get on with my night.

“So you deny you’re sleeping with her?”

“Like I said, I don’t know who or what you’re on about. I’ve got pussy coming out the fucking ears, man.”

He simmers down, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Okay. I mean, that’s good. Take it from me, Harper’s a dud fuck anyway.”

I drop my bag and raise my fist, but he looks around me.

I turn. A group of students is heading across the hill, a couple looking quizzically in our direction. “Ah, ah, now, Colton. If you’d read your Branton welcome pack you’d know assaulting anyone on campus is a one-strike offence, a bit like Abbotsleigh now I think about it. If that someone turned out to be a tenured professor… well, I doubt you’d ever see the inside of an educational institution ever again. No, a different kind of institution is more befitting of your family, don’t you think?”

As much as I want to take his head off, he’s right. There are witnesses around. The last thing I want is a re-run of Abbotsleigh, not when I’m finally finding my feet here. I’m on my last leg. I can’t have it swept out from under me by a lowlife like this. No, this is a fight I can’t win by brute force.

James smiles, clapping his hands together. “Good talk.”

I let him go, throw mental daggers into his back, because this is getting fucking real. Sooner or later someone’s going to get hurt, and the last person I want it to be is Harper.

*

“Where have you been, superstar?” Ricky’s already signaling for another round when I enter the college bar.

I salute the poster of the Bieber. It’s weird, but every time I step into this place I seem to hate it less and like it more. “One-on-one time with Coach. You know how it is.”

Andy hangs over the table. “I hear that. Looks like Coach has a new pet.”

I’m trying to forget the run-in with James, but it’s gnawing away at me. “Hey, you guys know much about one of the professors here, James-something?” I ask.

“Professor Marks, Women’s Studies. Kind of looks like a street hawker fell into a hipster clothing pile,” fills Ricky.

“Yeah,” I nod knowingly, “that’s the one.”

“Dude’s a real keener,” adds Andy.

“A what?” I query.

“You know, someone who tries too hard, brown-nosing the Powers That Be, a show-off. Think a Canadian Hermione Granger.”

I raise my finger. “Don’t go disrespecting Hermione now.”

Andy’s hands fly up. “Hey, she can happily take my wand for a spin, but your ‘professor,’” he airquotes, “dude’s antics are well known.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means,” Ricky butts in, clearly drunk on the house swill, “there was a rumor he was fucking the cultural studies chick.”

“Really?” I try to hide my disappointment this is information I already knew.

“Apparently, he talked her into an abortion, and she went through with it, to save face and shit.”

This I did not know, but it would go some ways to explaining the hold he thinks he has on her—‘thinks’ being the operative word, because there’s no way in hell it’s going to continue under my watch.

“There are variations on it all, of course,” continues Ricky in a slurry, sing-song voice, “that she secretly has a kid somewhere, she’s a polygamist…”

The rest of his words fade away, because I’m thinking, lost in my own thoughts.

What else, I consider, don’t I know about Harper Dunham?