Free Hook Up (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) by Bella Love-Wins Page A

Tre may have been a local, but he was not the right guy to pick if you had a simple set of tasks needing to be done.
    Tre was the walking reincarnation of Chuck Sherman from American Pie , except all anyone needed to do was replace the Sherminator’s fascination with robots to an unhealthy preoccupation with strip clubs. Tre even looked like Chris Owen—well, an African-American, wealthy Chris Owen, with an athletic build and dark curly hair. Tre was probably just as uber-rich as our buddy Chad. His parents were both very successful entrepreneurs. Tre had this thing about lists. A five-item list of things to do would get deconstructed, morphed and expanded to the two hundred and seventy-six component parts, usually involving one or more stops to nearby strip clubs. If his parents had ever found out Tre spent a solid third of his time in college at those places, they were sure to get him into long-term weekly counseling.
    What was worse about Tre was his best friend, Pappa Thumbs. Pappa Thumbs—also known as Franko Salvatore, which was his real name—was a sophomore here at college, and a born and bred third generation Italian. He told us that was what friends called him in his hometown because his father really did have two thumbs on one hand. Dude even had a picture of it in his phone. One thumb was normal sized, and the other was a small, almost boneless looking version of a thumb, just dangling from a spot close to his wrist. I thought the picture was photoshopped for sure. Someone at the frat house got so tired of calling the kid Pappa Thumbs, our new nickname for him was Pat, which was nowhere near as menacing. Pat said he was next in line to take over the Syndicate, which he said was code for the mafia unit that ran all organized crime on the Southeastern seaboard. Most of us thought he was just another shit-talking rich kid.
    Pat was not on the college football team. Thank fuck for that, because whenever Tre brought Pat out to hang with us, everything all went to shit. That was a match made in hell. Tre, his list and strip club fetish, and Pat. We met up with Pat at the first stop. He was standing there with eight drop dead gorgeous women around him, all waiting to kick off the night in style with us. Christ, the man was out here in the Louisiana heat wearing an all-white three-piece suit to go with his mafia image, a white wide-brim fedora hat, and a Cuban cigar hanging out of his mouth.
    “Gentlemen,” he greeted us. “I’ve set up the finest set of drinks for us inside with my guy. He’s the best bartender in all of Baton Rouge…a mixologist.”
    Slade stopped him right there. “Dude. We didn’t come down her for girly neon colored drinks. Fuck the mixologist. We want what’s on tap, or the hard stuff to get you and Tre shit-faced quick enough to do stupid shit and make tonight interesting.” He eyed two of the ladies. “On another note, who are these fine young things you brought along, Pat? Are these for us?”
    Pat took a long drag on his cigar and nodded. “Uh-huh. Take your pick.”
    The ladies gathered around us and with Pat leading the way, we made one hell of an entrance. We must have had enough booze in that first stop to make the entire college campus drunk as skunks. That was our second mistake after letting Tre set up the itinerary. Things took a nose dive when the pub crawl turned into a pub drive—in the limo Pat had hired for the evening. At least none of us were getting slammed with a DWI tonight. That may have been the only upside.
    We rolled up to the second stop, and the minute we got there everyone in the limo but Tre and Pat did a collective eye-roll. It was the Blue Bayou Gentleman’s Club. A strip club.
    “We’re not going in there,” Slade announced. “Pat, get your driver to find us a pub, not a fucking peep show.
    “This is a fine drinking establishment, gentlemen. Anything you order inside is on me. I’ve got a tab. Tre does too.”
    For whatever reason, that got