Down by Contact (The Barons 2)

Well, the Barons tried to separate us. The Predators dogpiled me until I was being stomped out by at least three giant dudes. Pain exploded in my side and, terrifyingly, in my arm.

“Shit!” I screamed.

Adrián, who was still crammed on top of me by the rest of his stupid team, seemed to come into focus at my pained cry. He went from flailing to covering my body with his own and whispered in my ear, “My fucking bad, man.”

“Screw you, Bravo!”

The officials ripped us apart as flags were thrown. I was finally dragged to my feet, but not without pain slamming into me from multiple points. Adrián put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged him off.

My dignity was somewhere down in my cleats, and that feeling worsened once I looked around. Both Marcus and Gavin had their helmets off as they snarled at Predators, and even worse . . . everyone from our teams was on the field. Even fans were fighting in the stands.

We’d turned the preseason game into a disaster.

Chapter Two

Adrián

“What were you thinking?”

“I guess I wasn’t,” I said dully. “But it’s not like he didn’t—”

“I’ll stop you there, Adrián. Regardless of how he responded, you were totally out of line by tackling him that hard. That wasn’t a real game!”

It was a fair point, so I did nothing but chew on the corner of my thumbnail and stare down at my sneakers. They were brand-new, limited-edition Jordans. Cracking them out for a meeting with my enraged agent had been my way of trying to cheer myself up, but it wasn’t working. Casey Rose still looked like he wanted to smack me.

“Did you speak to your folks?”

Sighing, I sank lower in my chair and picked at the stripes running down my sweatpants. “Yup.”

“What’d they say?”

“My mom threatened to fly up from Florida and smack the fuck out of me. Basically acted like I was some out-of-control child and whatnot, and she never should have let me out of her sight.”

I continued to examine my fraying sweatpants. I had a thirty-million-dollar contract, but I couldn’t let my old faithful sweats go. They were the ones I’d been wearing the day I’d committed to going to the University of Miami after my mother had steered me away from becoming a Sooner at the University of Oklahoma. Her argument had been that Miami players had a higher rate of feeding into the NFL, and she’d cited the lack of Boricuas up in Oklahoma.

I was halfway positive she’d also wanted me home so she could keep me in check, but who the hell was I to argue with her reasoning? She was my mother, and I listened to my mother. She knew way more about football than my dad, who’d recently retired from his position as a MLB bench coach. All he knew about was being toxic as hell and screaming at me to “be a man.”

“Then,” I drawled. “I tried to talk to my dad, but he refused to even spare me a sentence to call me an asshole.”

“Do you think you’re an asshole?”

I replayed my immature-ass stunt, the way I’d lost my shit at Simeon’s antics, and then his pained cry when my entire team had jumped him.

“Nah. I’m a prince.”

Casey crossed his arms over his chest and sat on the edge of his desk. “What happened, Adrián?”

“You saw what happened. Everyone in the country saw what happened. That shit has made the rounds way more than Simeon’s little sex tape.”

Casey stared at me, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and I cursed myself. Why had I brought that up? I didn’t even like to admit that I knew shit about the man’s sexuality, let alone the sleazy video some d-bag at a club had sold to a tabloid as soon as Simeon had come out of the closet. I didn’t like Simeon worth a damn, but even I’d thought he didn’t deserve to be exposed that way. It was damn lucky he hadn’t lost his endorsements despite the outcry from corny white folks who didn’t want their kids eating Wheaties when the dude on the box had had an oral gang bang in a club bathroom. Allegedly. I wasn’t about to watch the damn thing and confirm it.

Clearing my throat, I glanced up at Casey again. “Why you looking at me like that?”

“Because you seem very preoccupied with Simeon’s sexuality.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh my fucking God. I’m really not. I just can’t stand him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a bitch-ass motherfucker.”

“How?”

Gritting my teeth, I said, “He told our entire playbook to the Barons when they signed him off our practice team. They trounced us that season.”

“That was four years ago. Why are you still so emotional about it?”

“Who’s emotional, though?” Casey crossed his arms over his chest. I glared hard and then sucked my teeth. “Man, whose side are you on, anyway?”