TEASE ( A Stepbrother Romance ) By Caitlin Daire

7

Chapter Seven

Cade

"And it looks like the game is all but done, folks. The RMU Bighorns have possession and the Denver State Bears are out of timeouts. The Bighorns are up by 19 to the Bears' 14, and I've gotta say, it really looks like it's over, wouldn't you agree, Stan?"

I took a deep breath, trying to drown out the commentator's words. He was right; we were up by five points, and the Bears had no more timeouts, so it was looking like an easy win. The crowd was expecting me to simply kneel the ball and end the play to preserve our victory, but that wasn't going to happen. We could score more points and really destroy Denver State, and on top of that, our coach was quite old-fashioned and hated the concept of kneeling the ball; he saw it as being unsportsmanlike.

He'd told me to call our standard Blue-62 play if this occurred, and our fullback, Ben Naylor shook his head as we discussed the play in our huddle.

"Don't give it to me," he said. "Just kneel it, man."

"Coach Chandler was pissed as hell when I changed the play in the last quarter. Even threatened to take me off the field and send our second-string QB on."

"Chandler's a fucking control freak," Ben replied. "Screw that. Just kneel the ball, run out the clock and call it a day."

I could tell that he and at least half of my other teammates were on the same wavelength as the commentators-to them, the game was already over, and we'd won fair and square. Coach Chandler was a hard-ass, though, and I couldn't be fucked sitting through another one of his stern lectures for not doing everything his way. I'd already changed things around a lot in this game and shirked his advice, and while that had worked out decently, I knew I was skating on thin ice with him.

"We've got a chance to really wreck the Bears, guys...19-14 is great, but we can do better."

"Fine."

Ben grunted his acquiescence at me, but I could tell his heart wasn't entirely in it. As long as he continued to play well, though, his attitude didn't matter.

We broke the huddle and moved to take our positions, and I briefly glanced out at the crowd in our college stadium. Charlotte was sitting with Emilia, Evan and Dad, and I could tell she'd been forced to come along in support. Even from here, I could tell she was bored as hell; sport obviously wasn't her kinda thing.

The last week and a half had been interesting. I still hadn't decided on exactly how to broach the subject of our past, so I'd been biding my time while I thought on the best way to do it, and funnily enough, she'd been acting quite differently around me even though I had barely said a word to her. She wasn't being cagey or hostile anymore; she was simply being quiet and polite. A few times, I'd caught her staring at me, and on another couple of occasions, she'd approached me and opened her mouth to say something, then seemingly succumbed to stage-fright and mumbled something else instead-something generic like 'nice day, today, huh?' even though the weather had been shitty as hell over the last few weeks.

It almost seemed like she wanted to talk to me just as much as I wanted to talk to her, but she was equally confused as to how to start things off.

The play started, and I tried to hand the ball off to Ben. Unfortunately, looking over at Charlotte earlier had distracted me, and she was playing on my mind so much that I suddenly couldn't play the fucking game properly.

I fumbled the pass, and the ball grazed Ben's side instead of flying right into his grip.

"Shit!"

The Bears had chosen to blitz us as part of their defensive strategy, and with horror, I saw one of their cornerbacks snatch the ball up instead. Fuck. If I'd listened to Ben and simply kneeled it, the game would've been over in seconds, and we'd have secured our victory. Now the Bears had possession of the ball, and their CB was charging up the field with it.

Shit, shit, shit.

If he scored a touchdown and a try for them, then they would win with twenty-one points to our nineteen. I started running after him, but I'd spent too many seconds recovering from my shitty fumble, and it was unlikely that I'd catch up. Faster, I told my legs as I dashed up the field in pursuit. Faster!

Two of my teammates had reacted quicker than me, and that was our saving grace-they were already much closer to the CB who had possession of the ball than I was. Two of them knocked into him, and he fumbled the ball just as I finally caught up.Thank fucking god...

I caught the ball, then turned around and fucking legged it to the other end of the field, running it in for a touchdown. Our supporters in the crowd went wild, whooping and cheering, and the commentators crowed out our victory as we ran into the middle and patted each other on the backs.

"That was fucking lucky, man," Ben said to me, his eyes narrowed.

"I know, I know," I replied, holding my hands up. "You were right, I should've just kneeled it instead of calling that play. It was a shitty play. And I shouldn't have made such a shitty pass."

His face softened, and I could tell he was happy to hear my apology. A lot of quarterbacks were arrogant sons of bitches who didn't like admitting when they were wrong, but one thing I'd learned in life was to admit when I'd fucked up and take responsibility for it. I'd well and truly fucked up today, and it had been a total fluke that we'd won-if the Bears' CB hadn't fumbled the ball after our teammates knocked into him, then I wouldn't have been able to grab it and prevent their victory.

Looking into the crowd again, I saw Charlotte smiling down at me before turning to Evan and chatting to him. I grinned back at her and waved, and suddenly I had an idea.

We had a victory tradition for home games here, which entailed the player who'd scored the most points throwing the ball to the crowd. Whoever managed to catch it was allowed to come and meet all the players and hang out with us in the locker rooms for a while. Usually it was just diehard college football fans who wanted an opportunity to do so, or high school football players who wanted to hang with us and ask what it was like to play at a more serious level.

However, my plan involved throwing the ball to Charlotte.

If she caught it, then she'd have to come hang out with me and my teammates. It'd be a good chance for her to have fun and meet some new people here-she'd already started at her transferred course at RMU, but I wasn't sure if she'd made many friends yet-and it'd also be an opportunity for me to spend time with her. Seeing as I was on a euphoric high from our win, I suddenly felt like I knew all the right things to say to her to bring up all our shit from the past in a decent way, and I picked up the ball and nodded at my teammates.

"I'm gonna make the victory throw now, guys."

"Sweet. Aim it at that hot blonde," one of the guys said, pointing at a skinny blonde in the front row. "Wouldn't mind showing her a thing or two....about the game, of course."

I laughed, then shook my head. "Mind if I throw it to my new stepsister instead?" I asked.

"You have a new stepsister?"

"Almost. Our parents are getting married in six weeks."

"Cool. Go ahead."

I dashed a bit closer to where Charlotte was sitting. She was looking right at me, and I grinned.

"Hey, Charlotte! Catch!" I called out, before throwing the ball towards her.

To my horror, she looked away from me just before I yelled out the words, and she began to say something to Evan. Evan frantically waved a hand at her to try and get her attention, but he wasn't as quick as the ball, which flew over and smacked Charlotte right in the side of the head.

Oh, fuck...