Free Playing Hard: A Bad Boy Sports Romance by Eve Maddox

friend from her polisci program, and her boyfriend, Tyler.
    “Wow, if I’d known we’d be eating with a celebrity I would’ve dressed up,” Tyler jokes as he sits down.
    I just make a face at him. “Can we not?” I ask.
    “No way,” Megan cuts in. “I have to know everything. How do you know Riley Knox? I never had you pegged as a sports fan.”
    “I’m not,” I say, feeling awkward. I guess that’s one thing I never really gave any consideration to about this whole facade: the amount of bald-faced lying I’d have to do if anyone asked about me and Riley.
    Even as I think it, I realize how incredibly naive I’ve been. Somehow, I thought the stories Murray would plant would get shot out into the ether, without having any effect on my real life, as if they were about someone else entirely. I didn’t think at all that people around me — my friends — would get caught up in it.
    Stupid , I think to myself. 
    “So, how did you meet Riley, then?” Megan asks, eyes bright with curiosity. “I mean, they say he’s a ladies’ man….” She trails off, raising an eyebrow suggestively. “Does he really measure up to his reputation?”
    “What?” I yelp, causing a few heads to turn in our direction. “No, I mean — ” I lower my voice. “I haven’t slept with him.”
    “What’s that? You haven’t?” Darcey is grinning mischievously. “Have you forgotten my room is right next to yours? All I heard last night was oh Riley, yeah, like that Riley, oh, oh oh ohhhhh — ”
    “That never happened!” I shriek, loud enough that even more heads turn this time. Oh great, I think. My first day of fame, and I’m already living up to my reputation as a shrill harridan. “Darcey, tell them that never happened.”
    “It was just a joke,” Darcey says, shrugging a little. “Sorry, didn’t know it was such a sore spot with you.”
    For a moment, I think she’s really angry with me for yelling at her, but then I see a twinkle in her eye. She’s loving this.
    At that moment, a waiter arrives to take our order. I haven’t even thought about what I want to eat, but it’ll all be deconstructed lumps of whatever anyway. I order the first thing I see, and then sit back in the booth, listening as Darcey, Megan and Tyler start bitching about one of their professors and his unreasonable homework expectations.
    I realize I’m being an antisocial bitch, but for some reason I just can’t bring myself to join in on the conversation.
    My mind’s elsewhere.
    Mainly in Riley Knox’s pants. 
     
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    RILEY
     
     
    “Oh, man, you got chicks catfighting over you again?” Reid, my teammate and my roommate, laughs, throwing his head back. “Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to be you for a day.”
    I try to give him a smile, though I’m not really into it. “Yeah. When they make the movie of my life, that shit’ll only be shown on HBO,” I tell him. “Anyway, what’re you complaining about? You get plenty of ass.” I’m trying to change the subject, I hope not too obviously.
    It doesn’t matter though — Reid’s like a dog with a bone, which is what makes him such a good linebacker. Once he’s got something, he never lets it go.
    Right now though, it just makes him a huge pain in my nads.
    “So who’s that girl who was yelling at you?” Reid asks, vaulting over the back of the couch to land beside me. “I haven’t seen her around the house. You should invite her over. That bitch is fine.”
    Don’t call her a bitch are the first words that jump into my mind. I shove them away. I don’t give a fuck what Reid says about Ava. Why should I? He’s right, anyway — she is a bitch. Both times we’ve met now she’s done nothing but cuss me out and be rude.
    “She's just some girl,” I say defensively, which is right.
    She's just some girl, who I can’t stop thinking about. She's just some girl, who, for some reason, has my cock twitching in my pants every time I think about her.
    If