Follow the River (River of Rain Book 1) Read online

  I’m also in awe of the way Rain looks while catching the fucking ball.

  Impressed as hell, I jog over to Garrett and slap him on the ass before gripping his neck and pulling his forehead to mine roughly. “That’s what I’m fucking talking about, man,” I exclaim in pride, before shoving him away playfully.

  The kid, while only two years my junior, has been struggling this season in adjusting to the tenacity and skill level required to play on a Division One team. Most of the time it’s small shit, like his grip slipping or fumbling in practice due to nerves. I can’t fault him, after all, he’s only a freshman and green as hell, but today seems like a damn breakthrough. By the giant grin on his face, he realizes it too.

  “You’re looking good, G. A lot more confident than you did even a week ago,” I tell him, which only stretches his smile even wider. “There’s just one thing you need to work on with your stance. It’s going to save your shoulder in the long run.”

  Tossing a football into his hands, I motion for him to get into a throwing stance. Once he’s where I need him, I grip his elbow in my palm and adjust it slightly, moving it into the position it should be in.

  “When you throw long, you need to make sure you’re using the correct form.” My hand slides down under his bicep to lift it up into the correct placement as I speak, channeling my inner physical therapist. “It isn’t natural for the body to throw overhand. It’s harsh enough on all the joints and ligaments, making it much more prone to injury. You don’t need to throw out your arm, tear a rotator cuff, or fuck up your elbow when it can be prevented by something as simple as proper form.”

  Slipping my hand up further to his shoulder, I begin to make the necessary adjustments there as well. Once I’m satisfied he’s in the stance that’ll save his arm, I step back and motion for Drew to head out for a deep one. Once he starts jogging out, I nod for G to let it fly. Sliding around as if in the pocket during the game, I watch his arm move flawlessly this time, letting the ball sail through the air and into Drew’s hands about fifty-yards away.

  “Shit, dude. Keep throwing like that and I’ll be out of a starting position,” I step up to Garrett with a laugh, clapping him on the shoulder before giving him another quick pat on the ass. “Continue to work on your form and—”

  My words are cut off by a sharp, shooting pain through my left wrist and all the way up my arm. It takes me a moment to realize the reason behind it is none other than Rain. His hand is wrapped firmly around my wrist, almost in a crushing grip. He tugs it back at an awkward angle, causing the ache in my shoulder as well.

  My eyes fly up and over my shoulder to meet his, finding them on fire and filled with unchecked fury. His lips are pulled back in a sneer as he twists my wrist even further, pulling it behind my back between our bodies. I feel the bones grind together under the pressure of his hand and wince. Panic floods my senses and my brain works for ways to get myself free from his grasp before he breaks my wrist in half or dislocates my shoulder entirely.

  Rain tightens his grip even more and a small whimper escapes me. “You might be the captain, but you need to watch where you put your goddamn hands while you’re on this field before I fucking break them.” His hot breath hits my neck and shoulders, telling me his mouth must be close to my skin.

  Confusion hits me like a Mack truck.

  Put my hands? What?

  I squirm in his hold, spinning around to face him so at least my shoulder isn’t being extended backwards.

  “Uh, Grady, is everything good here?” Garrett slowly asks, stepping into my peripheral view.

  Rain’s head snaps to the side, startled to realize someone has walked up on him practically assaulting me on the football field.

  Using his distraction to my advantage, I snatch my arm out of his grasp and bring it to my chest. “What the fuck, man?” I hiss. Grimacing when I rotate my wrist, I pray to God he didn’t injure me. Rolling my shoulder in its socket, at least I find it’s not nearly as painful.

  Small fucking miracles.

  I glance up at Rain, letting out a long, calming breath to put myself in check before I bite his damn head off, or worse, start throwing punches. But the second I go to open my mouth again, Coach is already on us, so I don’t have the chance to demand an explanation.

  “Grady! Get your ass out of here. You’re done for the day.” My eyes fall on Coach to see steam practically shooting out his ears as he storms over to where we’re standing.

  Fuck, he’s pissed.

  I suppose he has every right to be when his two golden geese are at each other’s throats during practice. “I’ll see you in my office. Tomorrow morning before you suit up.” His tone is sharp, leaving no room for debate.

  Rain just scoffs, shoving past me with a rough bump to my shoulder before jogging off the field and out the tunnel, my gaze trailing him the entire way before the blackness overtakes his form.

  “What in the hell is going on between you and Grady?” Coach Scott barks in my face, causing me to flinch as my attention is brought back to him. “I can’t have my star wide receiver breaking the arm of our starting quarterback when it’s the ticket to a goddamn bowl win.”

  He says it as if he hasn’t known me my entire fucking life, which rubs me the wrong way. My cheeks heat as I do my best not to get mouthy with him, knowing full well it won’t do me any good.

  “Fuck if I know, Coach. Maybe you should ask him.”

  Well… that plan didn’t work, since the look on his face, tells me I’m about to get my ass reamed.

  Nope, definitely not the right answer, River.

  Whipping his hat off his head, I prepare for his verbal lashing, but he only lets out a sigh. “River, can you take one for the team here? Literally? Go apologize for whatever smartass comment came out of your mouth to piss him off?”

  I open my mouth to object to his assumption that my mouth is the problem between Rain and I, but the way he raises his brow at me in challenge lets me know he isn’t putting up with my shit today. Guess that’s what happens when I practically lived in his house during my time in school with Taylor.

  By now he’s clearly picked up on my infamous toxic trait of biting off more than I can chew.

  “Yes, Coach,” I grumble, rubbing my hand over my face. “But for the fucking record, in this particular instance, I haven’t done jack shit to merit him attempting to snap my arm in half.”

  Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Coach shakes his head in exasperation. “Damnit, just go. You’re done for the day.”

  With a nod, I grab my water before heading off the field.

  “Ice your arm tonight!” Coach shouts right before I reach the tunnel to the locker room, to which I wave him off.

  While I appreciate the hell out of Coach Scott for the mentorship and all he’s done for me as a second father figure, I can’t help but feel irritation for his comment. For thinking I’m always the root of the problem because I sometimes like to be a smartass a little too often.

  Or at inappropriate moments.

  Shit okay, I guess he has a point. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  The door slams open against the wall behind it as I enter the locker room, still salty about the entire fucking incident. Steam is rising in the air and I faintly hear the sound of water spraying onto tile, signaling Rain is in one of the showers. At least, I think it’s Rain, seeing as everyone else still has easily another two hours of practice before they’ll be done for the day.

  My mind latches onto him in the other room, naked and dripping wet, and my cock springs to life behind my athletic shorts.

  Fuck me.

  I can’t stand this attraction I feel towards him.

  Whipping my shirt and pinny overhead, I toss them in my locker before slipping out of my shorts and underwear. I grab a clean towel from the bin and head over to one of the shower stalls, careful to pick one as far as humanly possible from Rain.

  Last thing I need is for him to attempt
to drown me in the inch of water puddled on the floor of the shower room.

  I make quick work of rinsing off my body, seeing as I haven't sweat much in the short amount of time I was actually practicing today, and hop out of the shower. Sounds of water splashing still come from the stall Rain occupies as I wrap my towel around my waist and head back out to my cubby. Redressing in a clean shirt and jeans is slightly difficult with the ache in my wrist and shoulder, and fingers tingle slightly when I tie my shoes, but I don’t think he managed to do any major damage with his vice grip.

  I’m running my towel through my hair when Rain comes into view in only a towel sitting low on his hips, leaving his abs, Adonis belt, and the perfect line of hair trailing below his belly button on display for my wandering eyes.

  And fuck, do my eyes wander.

  I’ve always been very considerate with my teammates and their privacy, seeing as I’m openly bisexual and it might make them feel awkward to be changing in front of me. Never have I ever openly ogled them half or fully naked while in the locker room. Or fuck, even at all.

  I need their respect as their captain, and the last thing I want to do is fuck with the chemistry we have going by getting an eye full of man candy.

  Not that it’s been difficult, seeing as I’ve never been attracted to any of my teammates while playing for CU.

  Until Rain, that is.

  My perusal works its way down to his crotch, where a slight bulge is present behind the rough, white fabric. He’s not hard, at least, I don’t think he is, but from the size of said bulge, it’s apparent he is very well-endowed.

  More so than I realized in that classroom those few weeks ago.

  Subconsciously, I find myself rolling my teeth over my bottom lip, my thoughts straying to the night in Portland when I offered to suck him off.

  Before I realized he was hard because of me.

  After that, I wanted a fuckton more than just his dick in and around my mouth.

  Annnnnnnnd great, now I’m hard thinking about him while he’s hard. While he’s standing in front of me with nothing but a towel on.

  Fucking perfect.

  Like he can read my goddamn mind, Rain turns his attention my way and catches me blatantly checking him out for probably the…what, thirtieth time since we’ve met? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how many times it’s happened.

  But…at least every other time he wasn’t practically naked.

  A scowl instantly mars his rugged face, his dark brows creasing in the center, furrowing over a pair of whiskey eyes. Combined with the slight scruff dusting his jaw and he looks like a darker, pissed off, fuckhot version of that singer Jack Gilinsky.

  “Are you fucking serious right now? Do you want me to actually rip your fucking arm from your body?”

  “Uh, no?” It comes out more like a question than I mean it to, as if I’m really contemplating on letting him dismember me.

  That sounds like a hard fucking pass.

  “Then stop looking at me like you’ve seen me fucking naked.” The snarl evident in his tone should be warning enough. I’m treading down a dangerous path and if I want to leave this locker room on my feet rather than in a body bag, I’d better shut up real quick.

  Then again, I’ve always liked to live life on the edge.

  “I mean…you kind of are…right now.”

  And just like that, I find myself being lifted by the neck only to be slammed down, my back against the wood bench that is positioned in front of the row of cubbies.

  “You’re asking for a good ass kicking, Lenny,” he murmurs, low and wicked. “In any other circumstance, I’d be more than happy to give it to you. But hell, I think you’d enjoy it a little too much.”

  “You’re not wrong,” I taunt, refusing to back down despite the dizziness hitting me from his brutal manhandling of my body.

  So what if he knows I’m attracted to him? Knows this little fucking dance we do with each other only serves as the best kind of foreplay?

  I’m many things, but a liar isn’t one of them. There’s no way I’m going to start now just to appease him.

  His smirk is filled with venom, and I instantly know I’m not going to like what he has to say next. “Too bad the only way I’ll even consider touching your ass is if it were to bury you six feet under after snapping your fucking neck like a twig.”

  With that final barb, he releases his hold on me, heading back over to his own locker to get dressed. Leaving me disoriented with the beginnings of a killer headache.

  Pulling myself into a sitting position, I stare at his back as he starts pulling clothes from a duffle inside his cubby, wondering how in the ever-loving fuck he has this much hatred brewing inside him for me alone.

  “Stop fucking staring at me.”

  I don’t stop staring.

  His eyes flick up to mine and he throws his duffle back into his locker, stalking back to me once again. “You need to get this through your goddamn skull. Hate isn’t a strong enough word to describe what I feel for you. The only reason I bother interacting with your queer ass is because football means the world to me. Stop fucking with it.” His face is so close, I can feel the dampness of his skin, sending a chill through me. “Stop staring at me like you want to fuck me. Stop with the witty bullshit that never fails to fall from your arrogant mouth. Jesus Christ, if you stopped fucking breathing around me, that’d be preferrable.”

  My blood boils at his words, the infuriating way they make me want to do the exact opposite of what I know I should. I’m not normally a hothead, but something about this fucking guy has me bursting with animosity.

  “What the hell is your problem?” I roar, getting in his face and pushing him in the chest. My fingers slide against the smooth muscles of his pecs, small droplets of water clinging to them, and I have the urge to lick every single one of them.

  Fuck. Why do I have to want the one guy on the team, hell, in the school, that hates me?

  His lips curl back in a sneer, just about knocking me off my feet, it’s filled with that much disdain. “How many times do I have to answer that? You’re my problem! Jesus Christ, can I make it more obvious to you?”

  Blinking rapidly, I shake my head in an attempt to make sense of what the fuck is happening, but to no avail. “No, please. Tell me. What exactly is it that I do that gets you this fucking pissed off to the point you would be willing to risk injuring your fucking quarterback in the middle of the fucking season?”

  He tosses his hands in the air. “It’s everything you do! Don’t you get it? You walk around on this field more arrogant than God and smacking the asses of your teammates when you’re bisexual.” He spits the last word as if it’s something disgusting, a word that has no business coming from his mouth. “It’s uncomfortable to watch, so I can only imagine how the guys you do it to feel.”

  My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline. “No one on this team has ever mentioned ass smacking has made them uncomfortable. In all the years I’ve played ball, in the amount of time I’ve been openly out, not a damn person has mentioned it to me.”

  At least, I don’t think.

  Running through my time as an “outed” man, I can’t find a time where any of my friends or teammates have had jack shit to say about my sexuality. In all honesty, they shouldn’t have an issue anyway. Who I fuck is of no concern to them.

  Or in this particular circumstance, to Rain.

  A scoff leaves his lips as he crosses his arms over his sculpted chest. “Because they’d be so willing to tell you, right?”

  Okay, true.

  “Come the fuck on, Grady. It’s not a big deal unless you make it out to be one. Plenty of guys slap ass in football. Stop being a damn homophobe about something that literally does not concern you.”

  “Doesn’t concern me?” he bursts in outrage. “It’s practically sexual harassment, River! You could be kicked off the damn team for shit like that if someone decided to report it.” His words come out with a sharp bite, snapping at me with feroc
ity. “So it does concern me. I didn’t move across the goddamn country to play for a team with a subpar backup QB. I’m looking to get a damn bowl ring this year, so do us a favor and keep your fucking hands to yourself.”

  “You didn’t seem to give two fucks about bowl rings when you were crushing my throwing wrist not more than half an hour ago on the damn field.” Being the sarcastic asshole I am, I smirk and release another taunt. “In fact, I don’t think it has anything to do with bowl rings and everything to do with the fact that it’s not your ass my hands are on. Am I right? Are you jealous?”

  It’s comical the way his eyes practically bug out of his skull at my comment, giving me a stupid amount of pleasure in his discomfort. “What? No. No,” he sputters, his eyes flying around the locker room. They land on the floor, the lockers behind me, the bench to his left. Basically anywhere but my face.

  What the hell? There’s no fucking way...

  But the flush coating his face, the set of his jaw…it all speaks truth to my statement. Which is…shocking to say the least.

  I can’t keep the incredulity from my voice. “Wait, are you jealous?”

  His amber eyes are on mine in a flash. He’s composed himself quickly enough, but I know what I fucking saw. I know I’m right.

  “No, I’m not fucking jealous. I just told you it makes me feel awkward as shit.”

  Awkward… okay.

  I smirk, having caught him between his lies spewing from his mouth like a waterfall. “It’s just the two of us here, Rain. You can take off the mask.” Stepping into his personal space, I press my palms into the cubby on either side of his head, caging him in. “That’s why you haven’t put your money where your mouth is? Why you haven’t hit me or done anything more than wrap your hand around my throat? You want me all for yourself, yeah baby?”

  His eyes search mine and the amount of panic in them makes me smile. I take a deep breath, loving that I can practically smell his fear and anxiety in this moment.