Free Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance by C. M. Stunich Page B

my life, but I'd never felt like this before, like I'd betrayed them with my dick.
    “Whatever you say man,” Mason said with a dirty bro laugh, that insider track that guys use on each other when they think they're being slick or cool. I couldn't pretend I'd never done that before, but I also couldn't put up with it tonight.
    “I gotta go,” I said, putting the bottle down on the wooden mantle next to me and heading for the door. I was in some sorority house, surrounded by girls from the Ducks' cheerleading squad and all I could do was sit and stew about Teagan.
    When I closed my eyes at night, I felt her body wrapping mine and I couldn't stop myself from grabbing my dick and pleasuring myself to that memory over and over and over again. But when I opened them back up afterwards, I saw the blood on my cock. I saw her face as she leaned against that tree and struggled to put her shoe on.
    The guys I'd tried to protect her from back in the day, the assholes I punched out for saying the wrong thing, looking at her the wrong way, that's the kind of guy I was now. I was the asshole. I'm the asshole.
    I moved through the crowd and people skittered out of my way like I was a superstar, a god of the field. King of the Quarterbacks. I was the best fucking QB this school had seen since fucking forever, and yet that excuse didn't seem to matter right now.
    This is exactly why you left, Tyce, I told myself as I pounded down the steps outside, past the clusters of people on the lawns, the cheers, the congrats that followed me like a wave down to the sidewalk. As soon as I hit the pavement, I started running again. Teagan makes you feel … she's got this magnetic pull.
    I pushed myself into a hard sprint, getting as far away from that party as I could as I tried to sort out my thoughts. I was pissed again, but that was no surprise. It wasn't a shock to me that I had anger problems.
    I won't end up like him, I thought as I ran fast, faster, fastest. I won't be like my dad. I won't have the broken spirit of my mom. Of Venus. I won't get stuck in the quicksand of life until I've sunk too far to breathe. I'm making something of myself. I'm doing something that matters, that people care about. Football comes first. It always comes first.
    In my heart, I knew that if I'd stayed with Teagan, I might've been tempted to put her first.
    No, I know I would've put her first. I would've stuck around in that shit hole on the Nevada/California border, the town that didn't even deserve a name. I would've let my feelings for Teagan tumble out of me; I would've fucked her. And then, I would've married her and had kids, and then we all would've suffered. I'd have been a trucker or a gas station attendant. I would've been trapped; Teagan would've been trapped.
    I did what any logical person would do. I cut the ties that bound, made my escape. I made myself out of nothing. I was the top draft prospect for the NFL, voted All-American last year, and a God at the University of Oregon. Why would I do anything to screw that up?
    Fucking Teagan was a mistake, but it happened. It was too late to change things. I needed to keep those bonds between us tucked tight in my chest, forget all about them. But first, we needed to talk. I wouldn't leave her hanging. She deserved better than that. After all, the main reason I left was because I knew she'd be better off without me.
    Teagan didn't need an angry loser from the wrong side of the tracks, a guy with no family, no money, and bad grades. In the back of my mind, I thought that maybe one day, I'd find her again, once I was successful. I'd find her and we'd have coffee and talk shit out.
    Instead, I fucked her against a tree. I made her bleed.
    “Shit,” I growled out, the sound tearing from my throat in a ragged gasp as I pushed myself harder, too hard, bouncing between pools of darkness and light as I skipped under streetlights. Moths fluttered above my head while the trees whispered with autumn leaves, littered