Agony (Entangled Hearts Duet 1)

The minute we walked into the house, all eyes were on us. We were instantly surrounded by my teammates, who wanted to talk about the game. Eventually, Tessa disappeared with Dustin, and Reese ended up a few feet away, laughing and talking to Levi. As for me, there’s a cute little redhead who has attached herself to me and deemed herself my sidekick for the night. She’s cute, tall, much taller than Reese, with red hair and brown eyes. She’s got curves for days.

Levi catches my eye and winks with a subtle nod to my new companion. I get his meaning. I understand how this works. Football players are like celebrities on the CU campus. As a player on the starting roster, with stats that helped us win the game today, I could have my pick of women. Too bad I can’t focus on Carrie—or was it Cara—to take advantage of that. I’m too busy watching out for Reese, and by association, Tessa.

When Levi slings his arm around Reese’s shoulders, and her head tilts back, her laughter ringing out over the loud music, I know I’m in for a long night. “Excuse me.” I pull the redhead’s arm off mine and walk away. “Sounds like I missed the punchline,” I say, stopping to stand next to Reese and Levi.

“Coop.” Reese smiles. “You’ve got to teach Dustin some moves.” She points out onto the makeshift dance floor, and it takes me no time to find Dustin. His arms are flailing around, and his hips are jerking, but not in a sexy, “let me seduce you” kind of dancing. It’s more… I don’t really know. I’ve never seen anything like it. Poor Tessa is standing about two feet away, just grooving to the beat like the rest of the partygoers, while Dustin is in a world all his own.

“There’s no helping that.”

“Right?” Levi agrees. “Come on, Reese. Let’s show him how it’s done.”

I stand back against the wall and watch as the two of them let loose just like they did at the bonfire. Reese is smiling and happy. Levi has his hands all over her as he moves to the beat, and it doesn’t seem to faze her. That’s a good thing. I’m glad she trusts him, but she can do better. I make a mental note to tell her that.

“Hey, Cooper.” The redhead appears by my side.

“Hi.” I nod, not looking at her, keeping my eyes on everyone dancing.

“Want to dance?” she asks.

Already I can tell that this girl is a stage-five clinger, and I have zero room in my life for that. “Thanks, but I’m beat from the game. I just want to stand here and take it all in.”

“We could go upstairs.” She licks her ruby-red lips, the same color as her obviously unnatural hair color.

“Cooper, my man.” My roommate Nixon holds his fist out for me. “You killed it out there today.”

“Thanks.” Nixon is a freshman like me, and he’s also on the team. However, he didn’t get any playing time today. He’s a kicker, and his leg has damn good accuracy. The starting kicker is a senior this year, so his time is coming.

“Who’s your friend?” he asks, nodding toward the redhead whose name I still can’t seem to remember.

“Cara,” she purrs, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes.

“Nixon, this is Cara.” I remove her hands from me yet again when I see Reese motion for me to join her out on the dance floor. “I’ll be right back.” I give no other explanation as I go to her. “What’s up?”

She grabs my hands and moves them around with hers in some silly dance move. “We’re supposed to be celebrating your big win.” She smiles up at me. Her green eyes are lit up with happiness.

“Well, we better dance then.” I match her move for silly move, making her laugh. This is us; it’s what we do. What started out as a night I was dreading, turns into the perfect night, celebrating with my best friend.Chapter 4Reese“I can’t believe that freshman year is almost over,” Tessa says from her seat on the couch at the house. She and I have pretty much made this our stomping grounds. Tessa and Nixon are dating, and yes, I set them up, and since he and Cooper are always here, so are we. It took a few months of curious looks at me and Coop for everyone to get it through their heads that we are truly just friends. It’s not really that hard of a concept to grasp.

“Right? It’s hard to believe we’re moving into our own place.” I can barely contain my excitement. There are two months left of classes, but we signed our lease yesterday for our new place. We get the keys in a month, so that gives us one month to move from the dorms and get settled.