The Rising Star [Varsity Boys #1]

Chapter Sixteen

Jaylen

i just finished practice. i'll pick you up in twenty. pack a bag.

Jaylen had texted me five minutes ago and I haven't moved an inch from my spot. Pack a bag? Was he planning on letting me stay at his place again?

Mona was out with her classmates for a group study session so I was out of luck on who to ask what his text meant. At least she was here when I arrived because I needed someone to vent to after the night I had.

She freaked out. She screamed so loud I was sure people in California heard it. Someone knocked on our door and yelled at us to keep it down. But that didn't stop Mona. She was jumping up and down, disrupting the peace for the people below us.

I told her everything. From the car ride, the club and up to this morning. She listened and kept quiet until I finished my story. Her facial expression morphed into different ones that I couldn't even track of it myself.

"He's smitten by you," Mona told me.

"Smitten? Who even uses that word nowadays?"

"Well, it perfectly describes him."

Jaylen Moretti was not smitten by me. He was just curious. At some time point, this was going downhill. It was in my bones and in my gut. As much as I wanted to stay away, he kept pulling me closer to him. His rope around me was inescapable. And he was tugging me minute by minute.

He was a mystery to me. There were so many questions that were left unanswered last night. And I wasn't sure if he was ever going to answer them. I found it unfair that he wanted to know all about me but I couldn't get a lick of information on who he was.

The internet was of no help. When he dropped me off, I turned my laptop on and went on to research the three. First, I searched for Zane Whitfield. The number of articles that popped up in my search engine was uncountable.

He was the son of Matthew Whitfield who was the CEO of W&M Industries. Some big-time company in New York City. Apparently, everyone on the planet knew who he was except for me. Everyone feared him as well. He had a lot of pull in the city.

However, his partner was even more famous than him. The M in W&M Industries stood for Moretti. Adam Moretti to be exact. You guessed it, Jaylen's father.

Adam Moretti was a basketball player and was as good as Jaylen. I guess the basketball genes ran through their blood. When he graduated from Ridgeview with a business degree, he left the game and handled the family business.

W&M Industries founders were Zane's and Jaylen's grandfather. They started from nothing and got scholarships because they were intelligent students. They used that and created a business that they passed on to their sons.

I wondered if Zane and Jaylen had to take over at some point. They were amazing basketball players and that would suck if they had to leave the game to handle the company.