My Ex’s Roommates: Chapter 15

Like the chicken I was, I avoided my roommates for days after Orgasm Gate. I was actually pretty good at it and the only reason I didn’t continue on with my mission to never see them again was because I heard a woman’s voice coming from the living room one night. I froze on the first step as she said something and Silas laughed. He sounded happy and it made me irrationally annoyed that he was laughing and being nice to some other woman. I was walking closer to the living room before I knew that I was moving.

I stopped in the hallway and listened in like a creep because I clearly had no self-control. I leaned in to hear the woman giggling and scowled. What was so funny? Silas didn’t say anything funny. He was a giant grump who didn’t laugh or make jokes. Except there he was, laughing again.

“Whatcha doing?”

I screamed as Carter spoke directly into my ear from behind me. Turning, I slapped his arm and prayed no one came out of the living room to see my beet red face. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

He wrapped his arm around my waist and tugged me into the living room, where Dylan, Silas, and the same woman I’d seen with them before were staring back at me. Carter’s hand rested on my stomach, his fingers outstretched so he touched what felt like all of me there. He smirked down at me, clearly pleased with himself. “I caught the princess trying to sneak by without saying hello.”

As grateful as I was that he hadn’t snitched on me, I still felt like I was hooked to a live battery with his hands on me. “I was just-”

“Carter! Get your big paws off of her so she can breathe!” The woman jumped up from the couch and came closer to grab my hand. She pulled me away from Carter and down on the couch next to her. “I’m Casey. I’ve been dying to meet you.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t remember how to move my lips into the polite smile I’d perfected with Jake and his family and friends. I made a face that clearly wasn’t a smile judging by the way Casey’s eyebrows rose. Groaning, I ran my hand over my hair and tightened my ponytail, desperate for something to do with my anxious hands. “I think I’ve been hanging out in the library by myself so much that I don’t remember how to smile normally. That’s a sad thing to realize out loud while meeting someone new. I’m sorry. This is embarrassing… I’m Harper, by the way.”

She grabbed my hands and held them still on top of my thigh. “I grew up in the same house with Carter; you’d have to do a lot more than that to embarrass yourself in front of me.”

I looked between the two of them and a faded memory came back to me. They were twins. Carter and Casey Hayes. “That must’ve been a lot.”

Carter sat down on my other side and spread out so that his thigh was pressed against mine. “She was lucky to grow up with me. I’m great and I’ve always been great. Casey’s the embarrassing one.”

Dylan met my eyes from across the room and I watched in awe as his cheeks darkened. He looked away immediately and cleared his throat. “We need to get back to work on these plays.”

Silas, sat next to him, groaned. “I’d rather not.”

Casey leaned into me as the guys argued about working on the plays. “They’ve been going in circles. I had to bust out some old embarrassing Carter tales to keep them from running into traffic.”

“I’m sorry I got here a little too late to hear them.” I shot a look at Carter, who’d leaned forward and was arguing with Dylan. “With all that cockiness, he needs to be brought down a peg or two.”

“Hence, my existence. I live so he can’t get so egotistical that he attempts world domination.” She grinned at her brother and it was obvious that she thought the world of him. “I shudder to think about what a world under Carter’s rule would look like.”

Having heard the last part of our conversation, Carter looked at me and winked. “No bras.”

Casey grabbed a pillow and hit him in the face with it, maneuvering around me expertly, like she’d had to hit her brother more than a few times before. “Gross.”

“I was only thinking of womens’ comfort!” He dodged her next hit. “I thought you wanted to burn the bras or free the nipples?”

“Don’t talk about nipples in front of me, assclown.” Casey shuddered and pulled me up. “Let’s get away from him before he starts drooling all over you.”

Dylan’s conversation with Silas drifted over to us. “We play USC in a month. The team still doesn’t trust me, we’re getting the shit kicked out of us every practice because of how shit we’ve been, and the idea of losing to Jake on our own turf is making me fucking itch. We have to go through these plays and figure out what’s not working.”

I tugged free from Casey and walked closer to them. I’d had an idea bouncing around in my head for a few days and I wanted to run it past them to see if they thought anything of it. “Did Jake ever talk to y’all about what happened at the football camp he went to after his junior year of high school?”

Silas frowned and shook his head. “No. Why?”

“He told me after getting shit-faced one weekend last year. He’d pissed off his offensive line, something he said was all on them, not him, of course. They let a lineman break through and sack the hell out of Jake. He said it bruised his sternum, despite the pads, and it messed with his head. It gave him a phobia of it happening again. I told him that he’s a quarterback, hoping to go pro; he’s going to get sacked.” I took a deep breath as a bolt of excitement hit me. It was cruel of me, probably, but I didn’t care. “Your offensive line is tight. The entirety of last season, Jake was sacked one time. That one time, though, he came to my apartment, drunk and screaming after nearly losing the game.

“I don’t think you can get in his head in a better way than by sacking his ass in the first few plays of the game. USC needed Jake for a reason. Their offense was fine but the line isn’t as strong as ours. Figure out a way for our guys to get through and you’ll mess with Jake’s head so much that he’ll hand you the win.”

Carter had joined us in our little circle. “He went hard on is during practices about keeping the line tight. Harder than Hogan.”

Dylan nodded. “I remember that game that he was sacked. He destroyed the locker room that night after throwing two interceptions and nearly cost us the game. It can’t be that easy to get into his head, though, surely. I mean, quarterbacks get sacked. It’s not fun, but it happens.”

“There’s one other thing…” I looked at the three of them and took a chance. Jake hadn’t wanted my help with opps research. They might not either, I figured, but it was worth a chance. “I have a lot of down time at the library at night so I’ve been watching USC games, before and after Jake. I was also doing a little research into the coaches. The decision was made to focus on the offense this year, by bringing in Jake and a new offensive line coach from Georgia. The defense has had the same guy for six years. He sticks to what he knows and there’s six years of footage showing exactly what his weaknesses are. He works heavily to stop a quarterback like Jake. He’s got his guys sprinting down the field, searching for the ball that way. His line fails time and time again when going up against a pure power run straight down the line.”

Casey whistled from behind me. “She’s hot and she speaks football. This one’s dangerous, Carter. She’ll steal your heart in no time.”

I blushed furiously and gratefully let her drag me out of the room. The looks on the guys’ faces would’ve sent me running anyway.