Page 62 of Go Deep (A Bad Boy Sports Romance)
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Cassidy
It wasFriday morning and I still hadn’t heard back from Slade. I thought of texting him a couple of times yesterday to ask if he planned on doing anything about the write-up for the project, but left him alone and got the work done myself.
He hadn’t shown up for the one-hour morning time slot Dr. Taylor had set aside for students to hand in their papers. We had until that afternoon to turn in our projects, and the prof was adamant that he would not accept projects after his office hours ended at four that afternoon. I had everything ready to go, and had added Slade’s name to it, only because…well, I had no good reason to do it, but did it anyway.
On the way out of my dorm at lunch, I bumped into Evan with his usual entourage of frat boys.
“How’s it going, Cassidy? I guess I can’t call you the Ice Princess anymore.”
“Real funny. What the hell do you want?”
“Just to see if you’ve changed your mind about giving me a test run.”
“In your dreams, cowboy.” I grumbled under my breath that once this project was over I’d never have to deal with Slade or Evan again. I think he heard me.
“No one told you, huh? You can’t rely on Slade when it comes to schoolwork.”
“What a surprise.”
“Maybe. But since he won the bet, he might focus on making sure he doesn’t fail out of any course this semester. Maybe you’ll hear from him.”
“What bet?”
“The bet. You didn’t know about it, did you?” He stepped closer to me and leaned in like he was about to whisper some big secret. “We all had a little wager about tapping that sweet ass of yours before Christmas…but don’t quote me on that.”
Coming from Evan, and with all this attitude, it had to be true. I shook my head and kept walking.
“So, how about you let me get next in line?”
“Get a life, Evan.” Now was not the time for being nice.
He kept walking beside me. “Come on. He got you all primed for me. I want a taste of that sweet little cheerleading ass.”
“Fuck off.”
“Anything I can do to help. Good luck finding your boy.”
He finally wandered off with his boys and I got over to the business cafeteria for a coffee before handing in the project write-up. I don’t know why Evan’s news didn’t bother me.
Oh wait.
I knew why.
It was Slade we were talking about.
He couldn’t do anything more to me now that he had stripped Shawn away and left me stranded with this project. Sure, he fucked me to win a bet. That was something I wouldn’t have put past him before this semester started. That was the sad part. For one semester, I let him in and he did what he could to act like someone he was not. It was pretty entertaining. I got some wicked good sex out of it, and now I was getting the wakeup call, long before he really fucked me up the ass and screwed up my life.
Maybe I needed to thank him for that.
And part of me had quietly been hoping for it. The sadness and loneliness I saw in my sister’s eyes on Thanksgiving and all the holidays after she married her NFL-playing white knight made me sure that sticking with Slade would put me on the same road, or worse, like my parents, stuck in the same town for decades with no hope of leaving. I could see him getting drafted for a team like the New Orleans Saints, and as much as I loved to visit New Orleans, I wanted to get out of Louisiana. I didn’t want to get stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be.
I took a sip of my coffee and opened the folder that contained the project paper. Cassidy Greyson and Slade Clark were the names on the title page. He’d contributed enough to it that I wouldn’t take his name off. To be fair, he had prepared the initial draft of the business plan and had shown up to knock the pitch out of the park and potentially get me my first shot at a real job after I graduated. It reminded me that I still had our investor’s business card with his phone number on it. It would have been an easy way to get out of Louisiana and into a big city for work.
New York!
Talk about a change of pace. The culture shock alone would do me good. As I thought about it, a smile spread across my face. Slade did me a big favor and I should have been thanking him for not letting me get too carried away. I was free. As soon as I graduated, I could do anything and go anywhere, just as I had planned on doing.
I closed the folder and finished my coffee. It was time to go turn in the project, marking the end of one chapter and the start of the next.
