Covering the Quarterback Read online

  Covering the Quarterback

  Amber Thielman

  Published by Amber Thielman, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 by Amber Thielman.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2018

  www.AmberThielman.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 | Jackson

  Chapter 2 | Grace

  Chapter 3 | Grace

  Chapter 4 | Jackson

  Chapter 5 | Grace

  Chapter 6 | Jackson

  Chapter 7 | Grace

  Chapter 8 | Jackson

  Chapter 9 | Grace

  Chapter 10 | Jackson

  Chapter 11 | Grace

  Chapter 12 | Jackson

  Chapter 13 | Grace

  Chapter 14 | Jackson

  Chapter 15 | Grace

  Chapter 16 | Jackson

  Chapter 17 | Grace

  Chapter 18 | Jackson

  Chapter 19 | Grace

  Chapter 20 | Jackson

  Chapter 21 | Grace

  Chapter 22 | Jackson

  Chapter 23 | Grace

  Chapter 24 | Jackson

  Chapter 25 | Grace

  Chapter 26 | Jackson

  Chapter 27 | Grace

  Chapter 28 | Jackson

  Chapter 29 | Grace

  Chapter 30 | Jackson

  Chapter 31 | Grace

  Chapter 32 | Jackson

  Chapter 33 | Grace

  Chapter 34 | Jackson

  Chapter 35 | Grace

  Chapter 36 | Jackson

  Chapter 37 | Grace

  Chapter 38 | Jackson

  Chapter 39 | Grace

  Chapter 40 | Jackson

  Chapter 41 | Grace

  Chapter 42 | Jackson

  Chapter 43 | Grace

  Chapter 44 | Jackson

  Chapter 45 | Grace

  Chapter 46 | Jackson

  Chapter 47 | Grace

  Chapter 48 | Jackson

  Chapter 49 | Grace

  Chapter 50 | Jackson

  Chapter 51 | Grace

  Chapter 52 | Jackson

  Chapter 53 | Grace

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  Chapter 1

  Jackson

  It was almost noon.

  I laid in bed staring at the ceiling, still as possible, wondering if the blonde chick on my arm would wake up soon and leave. My shoulder was falling asleep under her head and the pressure from her body made my hand tingle. I cleared my throat and shifted slightly, hoping to wake her, but she didn’t even stir.

  Outside my apartment window, the soccer team practiced on the field. Their coach kept blowing the whistle in frustration, the sharp shriek echoing through the air, but I wasn’t surprised. The school’s soccer team sucked.

  It was the kind of day in September that boasted crackling leaves beneath your feet as the scent of oncoming frost lingered in the air. The leaves outside the window had already turned to an ugly burnt orange color. I hated autumn because autumn was opening the door to winter, and I hated the cold more than I hated anything. Well, almost anything. I wasn’t a huge fan of onions and mushrooms either, but that was neither here nor there.

  The blonde asleep on my arm finally stirred, and I looked down just in time to see her open her eyes. She smiled at me and yawned, stretching, and I forced myself to smile back. All I wanted to do, though, was shower and meet my team for practice out on the field. I knew what would happen if I let her stay; she’d assume this meant something. I needed to clarify that this was where the fun stopped. College girls were always on the prowl for something more than just a one-night stand. Apparently, being twenty-something nowadays meant securing a mediocre marriage with three shrieking gremlins and another one on the way.

  “How’d you sleep?” the girl asked.

  I shrugged. Neither of us did much sleeping last night. Wrapped in the sheet, butt-naked, her breasts rose and fell as she caressed my chest with teasing fingertips. She was trying to seduce me again, but I wasn’t in the mood. That was certainly saying something because I was always in the mood. Unless, of course, football was the competition for my attention. I was always in the mood for football.

  “Listen,” I said.

  My tone must have caught her off guard because she stopped touching me and pulled her hand away. Her eyes narrowed. She knew what was coming, and for a moment I almost reconsidered kicking her out. I was still human; letting a girl down was never easy. But that thought flew by as quickly as it came because football practice was still waiting, and she was holding me up.

  “Last night was a good time,” I said, smiling an uncomfortable grimace. “But I have some things to get done today.” I might as well have just pushed her completely nude out my door while I pointed and laughed given the look she shot my way.

  “Yeah, okay.” She sat up and ripped the sheet out from under me with a vengeance. Partially out of respect but mostly out of impatience, I turned my head away so she could get dressed. As soon as she had her jeans zipped and her tank top pulled on, I stood to walk her to the door. Since she’d already claimed the sheet back in the bedroom, I didn’t bother putting on clothes for the task.

  “I had fun last night,” I said, leaning casually against the door frame so I wouldn’t seem too eager to get rid of her. The girl nodded. I couldn’t remember her name. Brandi, maybe. Or Bernice. Yeah, Bernice.

  “Amanda,” the girl said. “My name’s Amanda.”

  “I know.” I leaned in to give Amanda a quick hug. Linger too long, and they always assumed it was something more. Hold them too briefly, and the next thing you know your name is plastered in Sharpie across the girl’s bathroom stalls with a crude drawing and a mean poem about someone being a man whore. Not me, of course, but someone. There was a safe middle ground in every fling; the trick was finding it before your balls were caught painfully inside a metal vice, also known as a woman’s hand.

  I held Amanda for what seemed like the right amount of time then released her. She opened her mouth as if to say something else, but then closed it again and sighed.

  “Bye, Jackson.”

  “See ya.” I didn’t watch her go, but shut the door with a casual flick of my wrist, slipping the bolt lock into place. Last year a girl got so angry at me for kicking her out of bed that she broke in while I was in the shower and destroyed my bedroom. She’d been careful not to leave any piece of furniture unturned, but had also left a pair of her panties on my bed so I would never forget her face.

  I still had the panties, but only because I was too lazy to toss them out. But, every time I saw them, it sure as hell wasn’t her face I remembered. The underwear had been a nice touch; destroying my house, not so much. Since then, locking the door became a habit.

  I moseyed into the bathroom and cranked the shower on hot. The perk of being star quarterback was my own apartment, so wearing clothes around my place was optional. Not that a roommate would hinder that, I suppose. I had nothing to hide.

  The hot water felt good on my skin, a warm embrace. I’d missed this place, my little campus apartment I lived in during the school months the last three years. When I wasn’t at school during summer breaks, I stayed with my folks in my c
hildhood home on the outskirts of Seattle, in Lakewood. My mom, an ex-kindergarten teacher, had retired early to ease my dad’s paranoia, and claimed she enjoyed my company. She wasn’t very vocal about it one way or the other. She rarely was about anything.

  My dad was another story. A former gunslinger quarterback from his high school glory days, he’d been forced out of the game his senior year due to an injury. He never got over it. Now he coached football at the local school. And as bitter as hell. Three summer months being trapped inside my parent’s house under my father’s controlling, berating rules and comments was enough to send any person over the edge. My mom, I feared, was already there. The school was my breath of fresh air, a haven, and after graduation, I planned to get as far away from Seattle as possible.

  I lifted my face to the spray of water and closed my eyes, thinking about the start of the football season. This was it; this was my last year as a college football player. Whatever happened this season would influence the rest of my life. As I blinked into the steam, I knew I was ready for whatever came my way.

  Or so I thought.

  Chapter 2

  Grace

  “A wise man by the name of Nelson Mandela once said, “To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”

  My pencil hovered over the notebook and I stared at the page, tapping my foot to an internal rhythm, deep in thought. As I put the pencil back to the paper, our editor spoke again, pulling me back to reality.

  “It’s football season,” Gavin said. He lifted his head and looked around the room at his University Journalism team. He shoved the glasses he wore back onto his nose with the push of one finger. When he looked down again, the spectacles went with him.

  I tuned him out to avert my attention back to the sentence scribbled on the notebook in front of me. Gavin said something about the teams this year, and there were some murmurs of agreement and nods throughout the room. I stared at my paper, chewing absentmindedly on the end of my pencil. As soon as I lowered the sharp end to the paper, a tap on my desk drew me out of it. I dropped the pencil, the rough draft temporarily abandoned as my train of thought derailed and went off the tracks. Gavin hovered over me, staring with his nose crinkled. He didn’t look pleased, but he rarely did.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I was working on a draft.”

  “It can’t possibly be a story for this paper because no one has their assignments yet. Were you off in your little world again?” Gavin asked, and the rest of the room chuckled. This wasn’t the first time I’d been called out for daydreaming during a lecture, and it most certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you need some coffee?” He pointed at the Ghetto machine in the corner brewing a large pot of something I wasn’t even confident was drinkable. It made a strange gurgling noise, spitting partially brewed coffee grounds into the pot.

  “I'm good for now, but I think it’s time we invested in a new coffee maker.”

  “Talk to the Dean about cutting the Chess Team’s ridiculously enormous budget, and then come speak with me,” Gavin said.

  Despite my boss’s delight in giving me crap daily, I liked Gavin quite a bit. Like me, our editor took his job at The Bengal seriously. I mean, as seriously as one could take writing an article about the cheerleading team’s new outfits, or how the University’s coffee shop was now offering iced beverages and not just hot ones. While most of the work we did for the school’s paper at times seemed minuscule and irrelevant, it was a foot in the door to future opportunities. I would do well not to complain. I loved to feel absorbed in my work, relished in the rare moments of bliss that came from creating something from nothing.

  “How much do you want to bet he’s going to give me more assignments on the stupid Chess Club?” Shawn Pinkman leaned over and whispered to me.

  A good friend and colleague, Shawn was the kind of person who had very few friends, even if it wasn’t necessarily his fault. He was a bit like me in the lack-of-social-skills department, and every time he met someone new he’d end up insulting them without meaning to. That was usually all it took for every potential new friend to bail. Not that I blamed them.

  “You like the Chess Team,” I reminded him. “You’re just bitter because when you tried out last year, they told you that you were too competitive to join.”

  “That girl in the competition was cheating, and no one else would call her out for it,” Shawn said. A frustrated flush rose on his neck, the ugly vein on his forehead expanding.

  “She was fifteen. Throwing the queen at her probably wasn’t the way to go.” I smirked.

  “Like the new dent in her face even made a difference from before,” Shawn muttered. Before he could go into excruciating detail as to why people were, indeed, stupid, Gavin spoke again. He glanced down at the yellow legal pad cradled in his arms and looked back up.

  “Sports,” he said to the room. “As I said before, it’s football season.”

  At the mention of the word ‘sports’ I tuned him out again. Gavin said something about the teams this year, and there were murmurs of agreement and nods throughout the room. I didn’t catch much of it, a few words here and there that didn’t grab my attention. I was in the middle of trying to pick up where I’d left off with my article when I realized Gavin had stopped talking and was staring at me.

  “You’re okay with that, right, Grace?”

  I sat there for a moment like a deer in headlights, mentally trying to determine what I was supposed to be okay with.

  “Sports?” I repeated. I hoped that’s what we were still talking about, anyway. “I don’t do sports.”

  “Grace.” Gavin folded his arms, staring me down.

  “Gavin, I do anything but sports. Put me on something else. Please?”

  Everyone was looking at me now, probably wondering how long and hard I’d try to fight him on this before I forfeited. Arguments with Gavin were ineffective and usually ended with said student forced to write about the school’s refusal to hand out condoms in the counselor’s office. I wasn’t positive there was even a rule about that, but Gavin riled things up just to stroke his own ego, even if it wasn’t true.

  “You’re just mad because you know nothing about football,” Shawn said. He grinned in the seat next to me, but he certainly didn’t raise his hand and volunteer.

  “Neither do you,” I said, and that shut him up quick. For some reason, I was the only staff writer who hated sports. In fact, I despised sports. And even more than I despised sports, I despised the people who played them. Okay, not all of them, but it seemed like a prerequisite for some athletes that you had to possess a certain amount of douchiness to try out for the team, and I simply wasn’t fond of the douchiness.

  “It’s our golden boy’s last year,” Gavin said as if I cared. “I need you to go to the games, interview him, and write about it. Easy.”

  “Him?” I repeated. “Him as in Jackson Tate? But why?”

  “Because you’re our best writer,” Gavin said, ignoring the eye-rolls from the rest of the room. “It’s time to break away from your normal assignments, Miss Harrison, and try something new. That’s part of journalism.”

  I slinked down in my chair, arms crossed. Everyone knew Jackson Tate the star football quarterback of the University. He truly was the golden boy in all the most disturbing of ways—and he was also a total jerk. A womanizer. A bully. If I never heard the name Jackson Tate again, it would be too soon.

  I turned in my seat and appealed to Shawn.

  “Trade me?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I want homecoming.”

  “Moving on then,” Gavin said, with a clap of his hands.

  I dropped my head onto the desk and pursed my lips to keep from saying something stupid. So much for a fabulous start to Senior Year. If there was anybody on the planet that could single-handedly demolish my entire life with his ego alone, it was Jackson Fucking Tate.

  Chapter 3

  Gracer />
  “I think it’s an excellent idea; it’s time for you to get out of your shell.”

  Alex watched me from over the mug of coffee in her hand. She was waiting for me to respond, to agree probably, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I dreaded my assignment and had yet to accept the fact that soon I’d be spending more time than I ever wanted watching football games and orchestrating direct conversation with that monkey’s ass Jackson Tate.

  “But Jackson?” I whined. “Out of every guy in school to interview, it had to be Jackson?” I stirred the whipped cream into my vanilla latte and sighed, resting my chin in the palm of my hand, elbow supported on the table of the little campus coffee shop.

  “Face it,” Alex shrugged. “He’s the star, Grace. You’ll just have to get over it.”

  “He’s arrogant, rude, and self-entitled.”

  “Aren’t most guys? Why do you think I play for the other team?”

  I glared at her and sipped at my coffee.

  “Look at the bright side,” she continued. “He’s decent looking.”

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “So what?”

  “Alex, you don’t get it. It was guys like Jackson Tate that made high school a nightmare for people like me.”

  “People like you?” Alex repeated.

  “Yes. Girls who didn’t have your beauty or wit. You know, the outcasts.” I looked down at the table and scratched at the grooves embedded in the wood. “Guys like Jackson were the ones who would yell rude things in the hallway when you walked past, or shoot their friend disgusted looks when they thought you wouldn’t notice. Hell, they didn’t care if we did notice. They mocked us for enjoying school and berated us for not being cool enough.”

  “Honey, I was the weird foster kid in school,” Alex said. “I wasn’t white or rich and I sure as hell wasn’t popular.”

  “You weren’t antisocial, fat, and dorky either,” I pointed out. “People like Jackson weren’t afraid of me; they hated me.”

  “You're being ridiculous.”

  “No, I’m not. Getting out of high school and into college was a breath of fresh air because most people in college weren’t still picking on each other on the playground. Most people, anyway. But people like Jackson Tate, they never mature. They never grow up.”