Touch Back: An Enemies to Lovers Sports Romance (Playing for Keeps Book One) Read online

  “We have to head to class now, Cole, byeee,” coos one of the two girls. They both mobbed me the second they saw me on campus this morning and have been sticking to me like glue during my walk to class. Her voice is sweet as molasses but artificial as Splenda.

  They both turn right on the path, waving goodbye. While they walk away, I get a nice view of their tight jean shorts riding up their legs.

  Not bad. But, like I said, a dime a dozen. Next time I walk into a bar a girl just like them – hell, maybe one of them – will be under my arm and pawing at me before I can order a drink. Frankly, being flanked by two over-eager underclassmen chatting my ears off while I’m just trying to get to class is more annoying than flattering.

  As I walk to class I fish into my pocket and pull out my phone to check the time. I press the button on the side of the phone to display the clock, and instead my whole screen unlocks. That’s weird. I make sure my screen always locks. There are some pictures and videos on my phone that a tabloid would pay big money for, so I can’t afford to be careless.

  Not only that, but there’s no background. Just the generic iPhone background. When I look at my phone I like to see my gorgeous face and pecs staring back at me. What the hell? Some kind of update that screwed up all my settings?

  Wait a minute. Shit. I think I know whose phone this is.

  When we bumped into each other, we both dropped our phones. When I picked mine up, I didn’t check to make sure it was actually mine. I just slipped it back in my pocket. Fuck, I didn’t even notice what kind of phone she had.

  Obviously, we have the same phone. I have hers, and she must have mine.

  I stop in my tracks and can only let off steam with a chuckle at the absurdity. “Shit,” the exclamation escapes my mouth.

  I guess I will see her around, then. At least to get my damn phone back.

  I put my – whoops, her – phone back in my pocket and backtrack my steps. Shit, if she hasn’t noticed by now, God knows where she could be. She could be in the middle of a two-hour lecture. She could be back at her dorm or apartment, God knows how far off campus. She could be banging one of her professors right now to make sure she gets an A.

  Alright, that last one isn’t too likely. If she were like one of those two girls who were attaching themselves to me when he bumped into each other, yeah, maybe that would be a possibility. But her?

  Just from the way she stood her ground against me, I can tell she’s not the kind of girl who wants to succeed by tricking out her body. She probably spends as much time as I do in the bar at the library, probably gets straight A’s through hard work. I wonder what she studies? Something hard, probably. Some kind of science? Engineering?

  I shake my head to snap myself out of it. Shit, Cole, why are you dreaming up a whole imaginary personality and backstory for this girl?

  I need to focus on finding her and getting my phone back.

  Fuck, if she realizes she has my phone, she’s probably bright enough to realize that the contents of it – particularly some of the, ahem, more personal contents – could be worth a lot of money to the right people. The kind of people who run clickbait tabloid articles on big-name sports stars, and would kill for a salacious picture or two, and the promises of even more, to draw attention.

  I walk back to where we bumped into each other. It’s on the pathway that crosses through the middle of the campus green, and standing here I have a wide view of main clearing on campus. I scan my head from side to side but don’t see her anywhere.

  Shit, I’m starting to wish she were more like the kind of girls I normally hang around. She’d have her face buried in her phone and realize it wasn’t hers before we got out of earshot of each other.

  Should I just text someone in this phone, tell I have … whatever-her-name-is’s phone? I lift the phone back up to my face and scroll through the contacts and message history, trying to see who would be the best person to inform.

  I see the name ‘Nick’ toward the top of her recent messages.

  I’m surprised to feel a sudden surge of jealousy pulse through me.

  Jealous? Because some girl I’ve only spoken a dozen words to has a text history with a guy named Nick?

  What the heck is wrong with me?

  I shake my head and try to suppress the feeling. Either way, judging by their last couple messages with each other, this Nick dweeb doesn’t sound like the most attentive guy in the world.

  Actually, it looks like an ex-boyfriend she recently broke up with.

  For some reason, a thought blazes into my mind: If I had a girl like her, I sure wouldn’t give her up.

  What the hell is making me think something like that? Yeah, she was cute enough. And her ability to call me out, stand up for herself, and actually match wits with me was something really refreshing, which I haven’t really experienced from any other girls during my three years here at Empire State University as their biggest college football star.

  But I hardly know her. Hell, I don’t know her. What’s stirring up these inexplicable feelings?

  I turn my head to the side and see her cutting across the grass, walking fast toward me with a hot and bothered face. Damn, she really is cute when she gets flustered. A totally different look from the girls who hang around me and the team at the bars and parties. Her dark brown hair is tied back behind her in a ponytail, just a little bit messy.

  I think about taking a couple steps backward, just so I have more time to check out those full, curvy hips of hers as she almost charges toward me. Shit, this girl has a figure. She’s in great shape, but she’s not the stick figure like the girls I’m usually with. Those delicious, smooth, round hips sashaying back and forth as she approaches make me lick my lips in appreciation.

  “Are you reading through my phone?” she asks, indignant, as she comes to a stop in front of me. She only comes up to my chest in height. So cute. Bite-sized. And I sure wouldn’t mind a nibble.

  I cock my eyebrow as I size her up, amused at her moxy. “Maybe if you learned to look where you’re going, like I told you, we wouldn’t be in this mess and I wouldn’t have to go scrolling through your phone to find a way to let someone know I have yours and need mine back.”

  I can’t help but tease her. Her reaction a couple minutes ago was so amusing that I just want to keep pushing her buttons.

  And, yeah, I pushed a button alright. Her eyes widen at my answer and her cheeks redden.

  “Y-You need to watch where you’re going!” she responds, flustered. “You made me late for my first class!”

  “Not my fault you picked an 8:00 class. I made sure my class didn’t start until 8:30, just in case some clumsy girl held me up by bumping into me and stealing my phone. Put ‘thinking ahead’ on your list of things you need to learn, too.”

  She audibly gasps and it takes all my willpower not to laugh. I’m trying to keep my face deadpan.

  She purses her lips tightly and narrows her eyes. I purse my own lips to keep them from perking up into a smile. Damn, she’s cute.

  “Just give me my phone back, okay?” she says, furrowing her brows. “And what kind of egomaniac keeps a shirtless selfie of themselves as their screen background?”

  “You liked what you saw?” I ask, at this point no longer able to keep a playful smirk from playing on my lips.

  I’d be willing to bet she spent a second or two longer than she’d like to admit ogling my shirtless self when she saw the picture.

  “Unfortunately, I didn’t find any shirtless selfies of you when I went looking through your phone,” I shoot back.

  She blows air out of her mouth and rolls her eyes. “Too bad for you, not everyone’s as much of an egomaniac as you are.”

  “A real shame,” I lament. “It would’ve been nice to see.”

  The color momentary leaves her face as she blanches at my remark. Her eyes widen and she looks up at me. I continue to smirk and notice a warm, peachy redness crawling up her neck and turning into a deep, beet red blush in her
full, rosy cheeks.

  She opens her mouth but is clearly lost for words, since nothing comes out. At this point I can’t help but break out in laughter.

  “You’re a real hoot, you know that? Here,” I say, holding out my hand with her phone. It takes her a second to respond and grab it, depositing my own phone back in my hand.

  “See ya around,” I conclude, still smirking in amusement as I slip my phone – my actual phone – into my pocket and turn around to head to class.

  “Or not,” I hear her mockingly add from behind as I walk away.

  CHAPTER THREE: EMMA

  The waitress at Thirsty Sparrow, the most popular downtown bar in Carsonville, home to Empire State University in central New York, comes to our table with a tray of six shots glasses.

  “To Lilly and Glenn!” Daphne exclaims, picking up her glass and raising in the air to toast.

  We clank glasses with each other and throw back our shots. I wince as the liquor travels down my throat and warms my chest. I’m not much of a drinker to begin with, much less am I accustomed to a straight shot of tequila. Yeah, I’m one of those girls who prefers fruits drinks with lots of mixers to dilute the alcohol. Sue me.

  As I rest my shot glass back on the table in front of me, I notice Glenn still sipping his glass. Even I’m able to get in the mood and throw back my shot in one gulp, but Glenn is the kind of guy whose face you expect to see in the dictionary if you ever need to look up the word ‘responsible.’ I’d be surprised if he’s ever thrown back a shot of liquor in one gulp in his life.

  He finishes his small, sensible sips of the liquid and places his glass softly down in front of him. Lilly, on the other hand, is already waving down the waitress for another round, ready to keep knocking them back until she can’t see straight.

  Like I said, Lilly and Glenn are a match I’d never have expected. When Lilly first introduced me to Glenn I expected the relationship to last no more than a month – which for Lilly would be one of her longer relationships, not one of her shorter ones – but I guess every now and then the universe wants to bring two people together to show that the old cliché that ‘opposites attract’ became a cliché for a reason.

  We’re out for Lilly and Glenn’s official engagement party. It’s overdue, since Glenn popped the question back in February. Lilly, Glenn, myself, and Daphne crowd around a circular table in the corner of the bar. The place is just starting to fill up with students looking to blow off the steam building up as finals season quickly approaches.

  “How long do we have to wait for children?” I ask, giggling.

  “With what I hear they get up to around the apartment, it sounds like they’re working on it,” Daphne joins in.

  We all laugh, Lilly included, except for Glenn. The poor guy is red with embarrassment. While Lilly is an open book about everything and anything personal, including every detail of her sex life, strait-laced Glenn is the kind of discreet guy who would blush if he had to answer what color underwear he’s wearing today.

  Unfortunately for me, though, the passion Lilly and Glenn have for each other burns so hot that it even overcomes Glenn’s famous modesty, and drives them to fuck like rabbits in every nook and cranny of our apartment.

  Hey, I’m happy for them, don’t get me wrong. It’s great that their relationship is so intense and passionate. The polar opposite of what I had with Nick.

  I just wish I didn’t have to run the risk of seeing the throes of their passions every time I opened our front door to walk inside our apartment.

  “We want to make sure the business is firmly established before we start thinking about that,” Glenn gives a characteristically sensible answer.

  They’re planning on opening up a store selling one-hundred-percent organic food and sustainable, “planet-friendly” household supplies. The concept is Lilly’s idea, of course. Glenn is the financial brains behind the operations. He’s been hard at work for months lining up funding, getting the right paperwork completed, shopping around for a good location and suppliers.

  Of course, he wouldn’t know a ‘planet-friendly’ product from industrial plastic, and he wouldn’t know organic food from crystallized high-fructose corn syrup. Lilly’s running the show in terms of what the store will sell and how it will market itself, but Glenn is running the business end of things. It’s a good partnership, really. A store like that will probably do great in a college town, and they make a great, balanced team to see it to success.

  “Well, that’s why we can’t make love just anywhere,” Lilly joins in. I smirk as I notice Glenn pursing his lips uncomfortably as Lilly brings it up. “As everyone knows, different areas in a house have different chakra levels, different feng shui. Certainly, locations at different times of the day will make fertilization less likely to occur. It’s our best method of birth control, since the planet-friendly condoms give Glenn a rash.”

  Glenn’s eyes widen and his lips purse tighter, drowning in embarrassment. Daphne and I cackle in laughter at Lilly’s characteristically hippie explanation and Glenn’s embarrassment.

  “You guys really expect us to believe you haven’t snuck a quickie in Emma’s room just once while she was away at class?” Daphne teases.

  “Oh, my, no,” Lilly answers. “Sex in someone else’s room when they wouldn’t want you to? That’s very bad feng shui.”

  “Do you guys have any idea when the shop opening should be?” Daphne asks, changing the topic out of some mercy for Glenn.

  “By mid-August, we hope,” Glenn responds. “I’m still trying to think of how to appropriately market the store in the build up to the grand opening. You want these kinds of things to start out with a bang so everybody immediately knows your business is there.”

  “Where is this waitress?” Lilly wonders, craning her head back and forth to find someone to wave down. “I’m too sober for this time of night.”

  Glenn looks down at his wristwatch (yes, Glenn is the kind of guy to have a wristwatch). “It’s eight o’clock,” he says to Lilly’s complaint.

  “Oh, I’m wrong then, I thought it was seven. I’m way too sober for this time of night.”

  We all laugh at their cute back-and-forth that highlights their differences. Glenn isn’t someone I’d probably have gotten along especially well with on a one-on-one basis. I’m sure we wouldn’t dislike each other, but it’s unlikely we would be friends. But as Lilly’s fiancé, he’s one of my best friends. It’s really incredible how life finds a way to bring you into contact with people so different from yourself.

  “I’ll go up to the bar and grab us some drinks,” I volunteer.

  The bar area is totally packed. It’s a struggle even to be noticed by the two overworked bartenders, as a legion of students crowds the counter, jostling for recognition. I stand there with them, slowly filing closer to the bar as people in front of me finally get served.

  “How’d you know I’d be here?” I hear another voice to my right.

  Is it?

  It is.

  Cole Hampton.

  He towers over everyone else crowding the bar. Even the taller guys around him only stand just barely above the height of his shoulders. He has on a tight, white undershirt that his bulging chest muscles struggle against, and he’s wearing an unbuttoned shirt over it. The sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, showing off his massive, tight forearms, rippling with muscle.

  His hair is tussled, lying in messy tufts looking like a hairstyle that a team of professional stylists would spend hours trying to create for the bad-boy heart throb of a hit Netflix drama. But I’m sure it’s something he just rolled out of bed with. His sharp blue eyes appear almost luminous, their vivid color penetrating the dim lighting of the room.

  “Yeah, right,” I reply, my voice shaky. Just being in this man’s presence is intimidating, even as he only stands there coolly and silently. “If I knew you were here, I’d be on the other side of town.”

  “Here looking for a future husband, then?”

&nbsp
; “In a place like this? As if. What, you think I’m looking for guys like you?” I lob the sarcastic comment at him.

  The edges of his plump, inviting mouth pique up into a devilish smile. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

  I’m taken aback. I wasn’t expecting some erudite allusion from Mr. Jock-meat over here.

  “Wow, if I didn’t know any better, that response would make me believe you’ve read a book or two in your life.”

  Cole Hampton is gorgeous beyond gorgeous. So hot it’s not fair, so hot it shouldn’t be possible. I know a thing or two about biology, and it just doesn’t make sense that any organism should be able to maintain such a perfect symmetry and vitality. He probably belongs in a lab, being dissected – or at least researched – to advance science.

  But to be with a guy like him? A totally arrogant, over-the-top cocky, loudmouth, conceited, self-obsessed jerk? Who has a freaking shirtless selfie of himself set as his own phone background? I don’t think so. Nick had his own faults, but at least he wasn’t a classic in-your-face alphahole.

  “I’m a regular Einstein,” he shoots back. “I’ll prove it to you. How long have you been waiting in this line for a drink?”

  “About ten minutes,” I guess.

  “I can time travel and get served in a fraction of that time. Here, watch this,” he lifts up his hand and turns to one of the women bartenders behind the counter. “Hey, hey! Yeah, you, sweetie. How about some service over here?”

  He accentuates the word ‘service’ in a suggestive voice that sends a chill throughout my body. I feel my nipples stiffen. I love the sensation, but I hate the fact that this jerk was able to cause it by doing nothing but throwing a suggestive twang of voice on a simple word.

  The girl behind the counter turns to him, star struck.

  “Let me have three beers, sweetie,” he says in a deep baritone directed at her. Her eyes look like a deer in headlights, while she smiles dumbly and nods her head. She then hurries to pour his three beers and place them on the counter for him.