*FREE WITH PAID BONUS CHAPTER*After being dumped by her boyfriend, Elodie Shepherd resigns herself to loving her older brother's best friend from afar, just like she always has, even though he only sees her as his best friend's immature kid sister.
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Eli had a weird ass look on his face.
"What's up, man? Everything all good?"
My heart was pounding in my ears. Had V somehow found out about what I'd done with Elodie and told Eli? It wouldn't be the best conversation, but I stood by the things I'd done, even if they were with his little sister, she definitely wasn't little anymore...
"Yeah, all good. I have to talk to you about something though. Wanna grab a beer with me downtown?"
How could I refuse?
Thirty minutes later and a considerable amount of nervous sweat rolling down the side of my face, Eli set us up in a seedy looking bar with stray peanut scatterings flung all about the bartop and crunching underfoot as we went.
We kept our ball caps on most of the time when we went out, but I got the feeling that I could've stood up and tap danced on top of the bar like it was a Coyote Ugly and no one would've batted an eyelash.
Cigarette smoke curled up in the air and I almost choked on a cloud of sweet smelling vape smoke before Eli finally got down to business after ordering the both of us a Yuengling.
"So I had a meeting today with the coach and it turned out to be a whole hell of a lot more people than just coach..."
His tone was concerned, so I pitched forward a little towards him to make sure I could hear him properly.
"Okay, are you in some kind of trouble?"
"No, Matthew, you are."
"I don't understand..."
Eli dropped his head into his hands and shook himself a little, like he couldn't believe that he had to explain this to me, like it was physically painful for him to have to do this.
"They unsealed your records, from high school. They want to do a deep dive into you, and they're looking over every single drug test you've ever done since you've been accepted onto the team. If anything, it should be a quick investigation, but since you have a 'history' with steroids, they-"
"But I don't have a history with steroids, remember? You tell them that in this meeting? That you were the one who planted that shit in my locker to make sure you got recruited to play for UCM instead of me? That you had to go to that college, not because it was the best basketball college in the country, but because you had to stay close to your asshole stepdad to make sure he didn't fuck with Elodie like he did with you? Please, tell me you explained all of this to them, man."
"Matthew..."
"You did tell them that because of what you did, I got suspended from the team indefinitely, was benched for the entire final season of my high school career and had to tryout as a walk-on for a secondary college that wouldn't get me nearly enough visibility for the draft and perspective teams as UCM would've done for me, right? That you cheated me out of an earlier career, but that it was for a good reason? Because I forgave that shit, man. But not owning up to it now? When Elodie is safe and sound? I don't know about that."
