Page 6 of The Comeback Pact

But she despises us. She despises me. Hell, she just told me to “fuck off.”

“Let her know this isn’t to parade her around. She’ll absolutely be put in every position of respect. She’ll be like Charlie,” he finishes, eyes gleaming as if he’s found the perfect reasoning.

I shift uncomfortably. That’s what every girl wants…to be compared to a dog.

To be fair, Charlie the Bulldog is our faithful mascot, and he’s definitely put on a pedestal of honor and respect, but someone outside of football won’t see it that way.

But I get what Coach means. Morale is down around here. Our rivals, Hamilton, won our homecoming game last year, and then when we faced them again in the playoffs, they kicked our asses. To make matters worse, they escalated the stakes by pulling prank after prank to rub it in our faces—and one went too far.

McKenna was a casualty.

And now, we’re not just dumb jocks, we’re dumb, reckless jocks with no compassion for anyone else.

Leaning forward, Coach turns the paper on his desk around and faces it toward me. It’s theBulldog Gazette, and the headline reads “Football Season Approaching, Will We See Change?”

Coach sighs. “I’d love to say this was written by some pimply faced, athlete-hating nobody, but it honestly doesn’t matter. I’ve seen more bad press about the football team these past few months than I’ve ever witnessed in all my years here. Hamilton will be working with suspensions for the first few games, and my wife loves to remind me that it could just as easily be my guys riding the bench and screwing up our season. We need to do better, and she’s our reason. Our fucking pillar of strength. Our moral compass pointing due north. Whatever we do this season, we do for her.”

Whenever Coach talks like this, I get pumped. I find myself nodding along and saying “Yes, sir” at the appropriate times, but as soon as he dismisses me and I walk out of his office, an ice-cold dose of reality hits me.

The football team might need McKenna, but she sure as hell doesn’t want anything to do with us.

We tried rallying around her after everything happened, but her parents shooed us away—and they were the loudest calls for change, too. They did countless interviews with all the local and state papers. The news even hit big media outlets where the underlying theme was how college athletes were treated differently than regular college students. And the bigger the program, the more leeway their athletes were given.

They paraded out numbers of student athletes who were failing. Statistics that showed athletics had taken precedence over academics. Even exposés where college professors, hidden under anonymity, told the world that they were pressured to give student athletes better grades so they could play.

And the crux of it all was that football players were the worst offenders.

Coach is right about bad press, but McKenna Knowles doesn’t want to be our remedy. She’d rather stand triumphantly on the mountain of our downfall.

And who could blame her?

The pain and suffering she’s gone through because of our rivalry with Hamilton is astronomical.

But Coach gave me a challenge, so I’m going to do it.

How? No fucking clue.

My phonepings, and I pull it out. My heart does a bit of a gallop in my chest when I see who it is, even though I feel like a damn bastard.

McKennaK: You ever just want to eat Cheetos and binge Baywatch?

Smirking down at the screen, a thrill shoots through me until it quickly turns to an avalanche of guilt.

NoOne: I don’t see how those two go together. *laugh face*

Yep, NoOne is me. I’ve been messaging her in secret for months. If she only knew who she was talking to, she’d hate me even more…

CHAPTERTHREE

Kenna

I smirkdown at my phone when NoOne’s response to my question comes in.

McKennaK: What shows and snacks do go together, then?

NoOne: Zombieland and Twinkies. Obviously.

McKennaK: *laugh face*

---