Brice (Raven Family)

Chapter One

"You should have gone long, asshole." I growled and pushed Gage, none-too-gently. We'd barely squeaked by with a win and I wasn't happy with how we'd played, particularly my wide-receiver and best friend, Gage DePaul. I was the best quarterback in the league, but a quarterback was only as good as his teammates.

"Fuck you, Dick. Gibbons picked up my slack and we still won, so what do you care?" Gage snapped, pushing me back.

I grabbed him by the front of his jersey, "You know that there could have been scouts here. That play looked like a fumbled pass by me, because you weren't where you were supposed to be. We got lucky that Kael was there to pick it up."

Kael Gibbons, also a good friend, stepped up to us, "Hey, hey, hey, calm down. We won. People make mistakes. Let's all move on and love each other again. There is a party at the Kappa house tonight and you'll both want to be in good shape for the ladies."

I dropped Gage's jersey and rolled my shoulders, trying to calm down. I knew that Gage didn't understand. Football didn't mean as much to him as it did to me. Football was my life. Football was going to be how I provided for myself and my family. If I didn't get drafted into the pros, it was all over. Gage DePaul came from money and didn't know what it was like to struggle. His dad has more money than God and gave Gage, along with Gage's two sisters, a weekly allowance.

"You can have first dibs on any girl you want tonight." Gage told me and just like that, we were good again.

That's the thing about dudes. We may fight now and again, but it was quick and usually painless. Then we were back to normal. Chicks were horrible! They could hold grudges forever! I knew, because my sister was one of the worst. So maybe I deserved a little bit of the blow back. I might have pulled a prank or two on her, when we were kids. One time I even dumped green paint in her hair. Vienna's blond locks were dyed green for weeks before it finally washed out, but she held a grudge for a lot longer than that. Hell, she still brought it up sometimes.

Thinking of my little sister brought a scowl to my face. Vienna was just a senior in high school and I had to scare a bunch of boys away the last time I came home to visit. Aunt Lenore informed me that Vienna had received several prom requests already and didn't understand why that irritated me and Sayer, my brother who was two years younger than me. Vienna was the baby and a female to boot.

Our parents had never been the best parents. Our dad left us when we were young and mom never should have had babies. She was too selfish to be a good mother and ended up dying of a drug overdose when I was ten, Sayer was eight, and Vienna was six. I'd already been half raising my siblings even before that, but then Aunt Lenore stepped in as our guardian. Lenore was an interesting woman. She was eccentric, that was for sure, but she had a good heart and was instantly a better mother to us than our own mother had ever been. Lenore said that she didn't realize we had still been under the care of her sister or she would have stepped in sooner. Our mother had apparently told Lenore that the State had taken custody of us and mom had claimed that we'd already been adopted. Lenore, being the trusting woman that she was, hadn't bothered to verify and decided to leave us with our nonexistent adoptive families. She still kicked herself for that.

I smiled, remembering the first time I tried to parent Vienna in front of Lenore. She'd put her hands on her hips and lectured, "Brice Raven you will stop adulting this second and be the child you haven't gotten to be until now." God bless Aunt Lenore. She'd finished raising us and I have to say, I felt like she'd done a damned good job. I was now a Senior and star football player at San Diego State University. Sayer was a sophomore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It still floored me how smart my little brother was. Hell, Vienna was smart too. I wasn't stupid, I just had better things to do than study. Like play football and...

"Hey Brice, good game tonight."

I turned at the feel of a delicate hand running down my back, before that hand smacked me on my ass. I was then staring at the other thing that occupied my time. A pretty girl. I gave her my signature grin and said, "Thanks, babe." I'd learned long ago to call them babe, or baby, or doll-face, or some other pet name. I'd slipped up once and called a girl by the wrong name. Let's just say that hadn't ended well. For the life of me, I couldn't tell you what this girl's name was, but I knew that I'd probably bedded her a time or maybe two. I didn't often come back for seconds, but it wasn't completely unheard of.

She puckered her bright red lips, "I'll see you at the Kappa house later, won't I?"

"Of course, baby, I'll be there." I tell her and then watch her walk away, with obviously more sway to her hips than necessary.

Kael snorted, "You two are disgusting."

"What?" I asked and shared a knowing smirk with Gage. Kael was my closet friend, besides Gage, but Kael didn't agree with the way Gage and I used, then discarded women. Whatever. These girls knew the score and every single one of them was fine with it being a no-strings thing. Gage and I made sure of that, before ever taking a girl to bed. If they had stars in their eyes expecting more, then that was their fault, because I never lied to them. Kael was more of a boyfriend/girlfriend kind of guy. I didn't do the exclusive thing and neither did Gage.

"I'm just saying, one day you two will meet girls who are going to knock you on your asses and I can't wait to see the day." Kael said, shaking his head and walking away.

Gage shuddered, "God forbid."

"That ain't no shit. So we're getting drunk tonight, right?" I asked.

"Yup."

"We're getting laid tonight, right?"

"Yup, maybe more than once. I'm feeling lucky." Gage said, rubbing his hands together.

I grinned, "Sounds good, but we better go get cleaned up or nobody will want to be near us."

Gage snorted, "Oh please, you're Brice Raven. You could roll around in dog shit and the girls would still come running."

"Says Gage DePaul, who could poor deer piss over his head and the girls would still flock."

"Maybe we should get cleaned up just so we don't have to test that theory." Gage joked as we headed into the locker room.

As I showered, I thought about what Kael had said about some girl knocking me on my ass and snorted at the thought. I had plans for myself. I was going pro. I didn't have time for a permanent girlfriend and I had no desire for one either. Why would I want only one girl, when I could have loads of them? I knew that I probably had an asshole outlook about it and I knew that my family would probably be ashamed if they knew about my behavior, but what they didn't know couldn't hurt them. Sayer was in Massachusetts. Vienna and Aunt Lenore were in Seattle, Washington. None of them got to come see me very often, so I was free to do what I want and who I want, whenever I wanted, without ridicule. So Kael was wrong. No girl would ever get to me, because I wouldn't allow it to happen.