Faking the Play (Hot Mess Harems #2)

3. Logan

Chapter three

Logan

I wanted to drive her back to her dorm, but Amelia said she’d calmed down enough to walk back to Newsom Hall on her own. She claimed she wanted time to think.

Personally, I thought she spent too much time thinking, but it wasn’t my call to make. We’d fixed some of the damage we did to her when we were kids, and I hoped we’d be able to build that friendship again, but right now, it wasn’t our place to do anything more than make suggestions and offers.

“We fucked up,” Ethan announced as soon as we were back in the apartment. “We never should’ve listened to those assholes who said we couldn’t be friends with a skinny, brainy kid.”

“She’s definitely not skinny anymore,” Ryan said, his voice rough. “You guys really need to check out these pictures.”

“We are going to figure out how to get them off the internet, right?” Ethan asked. “I mean, Darak could do it, right?”

“That’s actually a really good idea,” I said.

“I do have them occasionally.” He sounded mildly insulted.

Then both of us shut up completely because we were staring at Ryan’s phone. Or rather, more specifically, the very naked picture of Amelia on Ryan’s screen.

I let out a low whistle, unable to stop myself. I was furious that her ex had done this to her, taken something so private and intimate and posted it for everyone to see.

But I was a straight man, and I didn’t think any straight man could look at those pictures without getting turned on. She was just that fucking hot.

“Damn.” Ethan sounded like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “How the hell is that the same girl who we used to joke looked like a boy in her bathing suit?”

Amelia was still slender, but Ethan was right. She definitely didn’t look like a boy anymore. A surge of arousal and protectiveness hit me hard.

“We need to get Darak to get these pictures down,” I said.

“Once something’s on the internet, it’s impossible to get it off completely,” Ryan said.

“Doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “We’re going to do whatever we can to help her. Protect her.”

I looked at Ethan and then at Ryan. Both of them nodded in agreement, and that was it. We agreed, so that was what we were going to do.

How that was going to work was something we’d need to wait to figure out, however, because we needed to head to practice. With the potential of a great season ahead of us, Coach Hobkins would be beyond pissed if we were late.

Less than twenty minutes later, we started on the first of what would be a shitload of laps. As always, Ryan set the pace, pushing himself and everyone else to do our best. The man didn’t say much, but everyone knew he wouldn’t accept anything less than two hundred percent.

I’d once seen him play an entire half with a broken pinky and a cracked rib. He said he wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been our last game of the season, but I knew better. He wouldn’t let anything keep him from his goal.

Yeah, a lot of us wanted to play in the NFL, and a few of us had even been talking to agents and scouts since last year, but with Ryan, it was different. From the moment he’d realized that he could have a career as a football player, that was it. Nothing swayed him from that.

“Hey, Logan.” Ethan came up beside me and matched pace. “I talked to Darak, and he said he’d see what he could do.”

“Did he already know about it?” I asked.

Ethan’s mouth pressed into a flat line, telling me his answer. It took a lot for him to lose his usual smile, but it didn’t surprise me that Amelia’s problem did that to him. What we’d done to her hadn’t sat right with any of us. Not that we’d had the balls to change anything until now.

My stomach twisted at the memory of her sobbing in front of the bookstore. She hadn’t given us her ex-boyfriend’s last name, but I didn’t think it would be too hard to find if we really wanted to look. And I definitely wanted to.

But I wouldn’t.

Beating the shit out of that guy wouldn’t do anything but get me into trouble, and that wasn’t what Amelia needed.

“We should get her ice cream,” Ethan said suddenly.

“What?”

“Ice cream,” he repeated. “Isn’t that what chicks want after a guy dumps them?”

“Usually that’s because they got their heart broken,” I said. “Not humiliated by nudes being spread around the internet.”

“Blake! Carter! If you two ladies can talk, you’re not running hard enough!” Coach shouted from the sidelines.

Grimacing at the reprimand, Ethan and I both ran faster, and I told myself I’d focus on football until practice was done. After that, the three of us could sit down and figure out what we wanted to do about Amelia.

Except all my good intentions went to shit when a bunch of us were changing in the locker room and Otto Schaffner had to open his big mouth.

“Hey, does anyone know this Amelia chick?” He grabbed a towel and started drying off his junk. “I think I might want an introduction.”

I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that he was a teammate and he hadn’t said anything inappropriate.

Yet.

“She that girl everyone’s saying slept with Dr. Isenberg?” Terrick Hough, another senior, spoke up from the other side of the row of lockers.

Ethan took a step forward and I put out an arm to stop him. If we were going to get involved, it needed to be for something more than just a question.

“Yeah. Got those nudes too,” Otto said as he wiped off his bald head. “Not much in the tits department, but I like the way skinny girls squeeze my cock.”

Red started to creep into my vision.

“Probably the only kind of pussy that can even feel that pencil dick you got.” Terrick grinned, teeth flashing white against his dark skin. “But seriously, man, how do you even know those are real? Some asshole probably just photoshopped them or something. She’s probably not even a real person.”

“Oh, she’s real,” someone else said. “My girlfriend said she was in the store earlier today, walking around like it was all no big deal.”

“Damn.” Otto shook his head. “I’ll bet she’s a real freak in the sheets then.”

“Shut up,” Ryan growled as he came out of nowhere.

“What?” Otto looked startled. Usually, he’d try to intimidate someone who told him to shut up, but Ryan was just as big, and in better shape.

“He’s right,” I said, my hands curling into fists as I fought to keep my voice even. “We don’t need to be talking about a fellow student like that. Especially when the whole story isn’t out there.”

Otto rolled his eyes. “Come on, Logan. The girl took nudes and sent them to the wrong person. Sucks to be her, but she shouldn’t have taken ’em if she didn’t want them out there.”

“Fuck off, Otto,” Ethan snapped, pushing past me to stand next to Ryan. “What if that was your girl? Or your sister?”

“My sister wouldn’t fuck a teacher.”

Ryan took another step forward, getting into Otto’s space, not caring that the other man was naked. “She didn’t do that.”

Understanding dawned on Otto’s face. He may have been an ass, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. “You know her.”

“You need to take a step back,” I warned him. “And leave it alone.”

“Or what?” Otto taunted, sneering at me. “You think you can take me? If you didn’t have your thugs here—”

“What’s going on here?” Coach’s voice cut through the tension.

“Nothing,” I said, still glaring at Otto.

“Sounds to me like you boys are all standing around with your dicks in hand instead of following your schedule and getting something to eat.” Coach looked from me, to Otto, to Ryan and Ethan, and then back to me. “Get it together. We can’t be fighting with each other if we’re gonna have our winning season. Some of you boys have a lot riding on this year. Don’t let whatever this is fuck it up.”

As he walked away, Ethan and Ryan came back over to me.

“Sorry,” Ryan muttered.

I shook my head. “We should’ve realized that protecting Amelia from this is going to be a hell of a lot harder than just getting someone to take down those pictures.”

“But we’re not abandoning her again,” Ethan said.

“No,” I said firmly. “We’re not. We just have to be smart about this.”