Stuck With You Read online

  Stuck With You

  Abigail Graham

  Copyright © 2019 by Abigail Graham

  Cover by Cosmic Letterz

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Thank you for reading!

  Also by Abigail Graham

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Tyler

  Coach Ryerson slams the paper down on the desk and glares at me with a look that could etch steel. A great slam of a man, everything about him is meat. The biggest shoulders and chest I've seen, even a hard belly that's all muscle should anyone ever mistake it for fat. I once saw him threaten to hang a running back up by his heels and wasn't completely sure he was joking.

  He even has a big, blocky Frankenstein head, square so it'll hurt more when he rams it into your kidney, and a thrice-broken nose that makes him look like a rhino in human shape.

  His cramped office, the smallest of any staff member in the athletic program despite his rank and reputation, is crammed from one end to the other with sports memorabilia and black and white photos from his own days on the field.

  So when his palm hits the steel surface of his ancient tanker desk so hard it makes the room shake, I take notice. This guy could fold me in half, a club pretty much exclusive to him and my dad. He continues to glare, probably expecting me to say something.

  "You told me you were bringing your grades up," he says in a low, soft voice that seems at odds with his massive physique.

  It's a statement, not a question.

  "Yeah," I say, "uh, about that, well, you know, I'm a senior now and things are really piling up on me, you know?"

  "The only thing piling up is liquor bottles and used condoms."

  "I'd appreciate it if you didn't refer to my lady companions like that."

  Normally, my jokes land with him. Not now.

  "I've already overextended myself, Tyler. I can't cover for you anymore. It's been three and a half years of covering for you, arranging for tutors, calling in favors, going personally to the dean and registrar to make sure you're in the right sections of the right classes."

  I'm better off saying nothing.

  "You expected to be drafted."

  I stare blankly.

  "You really are transparent. You haven't even considered the possibility that you'd end up here with no future prospects, that football would not be your career. You've treated your education as if it's nothing but an excuse for you to play. Now, here you are."

  I glance at the floor.

  "Let me ask you: Do you understand that a professional sports career is like winning the lottery, no matter how good you are? You are good, but not good enough to justify your self-important, superior attitude. Even if you'd been drafted you might play a year as a second-string quarterback before you destroy your leg in an injury and you're twenty-two with no skills, no future, and no connections to get a real job. What then? Go work for your dad's car dealership?"

  I narrow my eyes, trying not to look petulant.

  "Stop looking petulant."

  "Shit," I mutter.

  "Here it is. You are on academic probation, again. My influence with this institution is not infinite. There are a lot of people on this campus who personally have it in for you and would see you gone."

  "So what do I do?"

  "First, you're moving out of that cathouse you call an apartment into a suite in Miller Hall. I have pulled strings to force you to slum it for your last semester in the newest dormitory on campus. As the new semester starts, you will maintain a perfect attendance record in all your classes. I have arranged for your professors to keep me abreast of your performance in class. You will not sit there and fuck around on your phone. You will not find a gaggle of freshman girls to be your little harem in the back row. You will not arrive early, leave late, or stand up in the middle of class and inform your professor that you have to take a shit and walk out. Are we clear?"

  "I've only done a couple of those things. The handjob story was totally exaggerated."

  He glares at me.

  "You know what pisses me off about you? What makes me really, really angry? It's also the only thing that forces me not to leave you to your own devices, which would have had you kicked out of the institution and sent packing to community college years ago. I'll tell you: You're not stupid. You're arrogant, you're self-important, you have a relentless need to establish your superiority to everyone around you, but you're intelligent, quick witted, and perceptive. You might be the smartest student-athlete ever to grace my team, which is why this fucker is such a goddamn abomination."

  He jabs my grade report so hard that I'm stunned his finger doesn't ram right through the steel desktop.

  "You could be a doctor or a lawyer. Unfortunately, the world decided to suck your dick because you're really good at running around with a ball and you've forgotten your potential for the easy path of venal pleasures."

  I open my mouth, close it.

  "Don't turn all red at me, boy. You're speechless because you know I'm right. Your big-man-on-campus routine isn't because you're hot shit. It's an expression of weakness, not power."

  My jaw clenches hard and I grind my teeth, tolerant of this lecture only because of the stature, both literal and metaphorical, of the man delivering it. If anybody else talked to me like this, I'd just walk out and flip the bird. Or maybe his desk.

  He grows calm, even weary. I've never seen him look so tired and defeated, not even after the most devastating loss, which always seemed to invigorate him more than the soundest victory.

  "My philosophy has always been that my role here is an opportunity to offer guidance to young men who need it and make them better people. Yes, I've produced pro players, but I always believed it was the life lessons I taught them that gave them the internal strength to tap into the power they already had. Honestly, dealing with you has me thinking about finally hanging it up. I've either lost my touch or I was deluding myself this entire time."

  My arrogant smirk fades, and my expressions sags slightly. The genuine pain in his voice cuts me harder than the angriest tirade.

  "I'll try."

  "I know you will," he says. "You have paperwork to sign. Here."

  First, he slides the add/drop slip across the table. He's rewritten my schedule for me. Then forms for the dormitory, and another form agreeing to drop my current academic advisor, a mousy man named Clarence Stillwater that I've been with since he was assigned to me freshman year. Stillwater already signed the form, so it'll be official when I drop it off at the registrar.

  I need a new one, though. There's another form for that.

  My new advisor's name: Dr. Cassandra Mills, Ph.D.

  I balk for the first time, my pen hovering above the signature line. She already signed.

  I've never been in a single one of her classes, but I know people who have. She's completely rigid and a total slave driver. Supposedly she's made men flee her classes crying and she never picks up the gaggle of hangers on and professor groupies that seem to accumulate around every popular instructor on campus. She even has a nickname: Steel Mill.<
br />
  She's going to be my academic advisor, and my internship manager, and teach my senior seminar class. Steel Mill is going to be the one judging my internship performance and evaluating my senior theme.

  Oh, fuck me sideways with a surfboard.

  A note of triumph flickers in my coach's eyes.

  "Not so fearless after all. Sign it or walk out. You'll be done."

  I swallow, hard. I have to finish my degree. I haven't been drafted yet, as much as I've been scouted.

  Scrawling my name, I'm only half surprised the ink remains ink and doesn't turn to blood.

  "Run that all to the registrar, head down to the dean's office to get your room key, and move. Mills wants to see you before you leave campus. She's in her office. She said she'll be there until five. She's down the hall from your old advisor. You'll find her."

  Standing, I gather the paperwork and nod.

  "Show me what you can do," he says. "One more thing."

  "What's that?"

  "Cassandra Mills and I go way back. She interned with me years ago and we maintained a friendship after. I know asking you to treat her with respect because she's a woman is futile, so treat her with respect because if you do not, you will answer to me."

  Paperwork in hand, I walk into the crisp January air and across two blocks from the athletic field house to the main campus. There's almost no one here yet. Freshmen don't even come back until tomorrow. Coach had to pull some strings to get me my room key so fast.

  At the registrar, Carol, the portly woman that has manned the front desk over the course of my entire academic career, finds a way to make it seem like she remembers who I am even if she probably doesn't. She goes over the signatures and accepts the forms and sends me on my way with a printed copy of my new schedule.

  Going over it, I frown. I always knew that taking the minimum of courses and, uh, having to retake some of them would mean my last, post-season semester would be pretty packed, but Jesus, 21 credits. I basically have a full schedule plus the internship, and I don't know what my internship will actually be yet. Something history related.

  Yawning, I take the stairs down to the dean's office. The dean does not deign to meet with me, so I pick up the key from a student work study employee. Brittany, whom I dated twice and ghosted. I think she'd rather stab me in the eye with that key than give it to me, but she jams it roughly into my palm and keeps herself from scratching me.

  "Welcome to campus," she says, then mutters, "Asshole."

  "Yeah, nice to see you, too."

  "Fuck off," she mutters, more softly.

  The empty campus is a little eerie. I find my room first, in the new hall...and freeze in the lobby before I even start up the stairs.

  This...is a dry dorm. No booze. What the hell?

  Damn it, why did I agree to this?

  I stomp up and into my room. Like all the rooms in this building, it's a quad; four bedrooms with a kitchen and small living area, basically a cramped apartment with more rooms. No one else will be here for a while, so I have my choice of beds and decide I'll take one with a window.

  I'm supposed to see Mills before I move in.

  I text one of my roommates, Robert "Brick" Taggart, and apprise him of the situation.

  He texts back:

  You got the Steel Mill? Lololol you're so fucked bro

  I'm staring at my phone as the elevator lets me off on the fourth floor of the Perelman Arts and Sciences Building. The history department shares the top floor with the media studies department, both of them pretty much here to fulfill requirements for education majors and football players. The halls are empty, eerie.

  Mills' office is in the corner, opposite the department head. She has a corkboard next to her door with a copy of her class and office hours schedule. Someone has written MILLS IS A COLD BITCH in the bottom of the frame in tiny, black sharpie letters. It's faded, because it's been there for a while.

  Other profs usually have some little bits and bobs to personalize the area around their office and make people more comfortable. Mills' office is the only one with no chairs outside and the only touch of personalization is a laminated photograph of a hand grenade with a tag hanging from the pin. It says, "COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT: TAKE A NUMBER."

  Frowning, I knock on the door.

  "It's open."

  I swing it open and leave it, and step inside. I don't know what I was expecting. A woman, and a history professor. So, floral print dresses, kombucha, a bunch of faded newspapers, what?

  Her office is relentlessly neat. The one wall is all books, the other all windows, but they're curtained. No haphazard piles of musty tomes, no welcoming thrifted couch for students to cry on, just a spare school-issued metal desk and one cheap side chair, the same used in the seminar classrooms. Mills herself sits behind the desk, facing me, typing away at something. She stops and looks up.

  I notice two things right away.

  One, she's a little intimidating. She gives me a quick, evaluating look like razor sharp fingers peeling my essence back layer by layer to see what's underneath. Everything about her is refined, controlled, tightly arranged. Her hair is up in a tight bun she could bludgeon someone with, and she's dressed in a jet black turtleneck and slacks. No jewelry except for a thin silver chain. I can't see her shoes, but I'd bet they're either sensible flats, or the rare kind of shoes that aren't so much fuck me pumps as "these would be 'fuck me pumps' but you're not getting any" pumps.

  The other thing that strikes me immediately is that she is...hot is not adequate. Pretty is not adequate. She's gorgeous, and I realize I'm staring at her like I can't believe she's real. Her hair is dark as ink with a slight widow's peak, her skin is pale and porcelain perfect, and, over angular glasses that give her a slightly predatory look, she stares me down with the most stunning eyes I have ever seen, a pale blue-gray, large and liquid. My legs tremble in my jeans just from looking at her. The only flourish in her appearance is severe red lipstick that highlights her soft rosebud mouth and dainty chin.

  "You're a senior. I would assume you know how to talk,” she says.

  "I, ah, yeah, I do. Dr. Mills?"

  "That's right," she says, neither offering her hand to shake nor moving to suggest I go first. "Have a seat."

  I move to the chair in front of her desk and stare at her, while trying not to stare at her. She's slender but not slim, and the turtleneck that covers her to her chin in black wool only highlights her breasts. I can't see them, but she must have dynamite legs.

  "So," she says. "I am now your academic advisor."

  She closes her computer and pushes it aside, then folds her hands neatly, primly on her desk. She keeps her nails short, but each one is cut to a point and lacquered red, as if to make it clear to her advisees that her claws are still sharp.

  "Yeah. I have two of your classes, too."

  "Ryerson suggested I meet with you before the semester starts, so we can get our working relationship off on the right foot. His words."

  Reaching into a desk drawer, she pulls out a folder and I realize I can't place her age. To have a Ph.D. and a full-time post, she must be at least thirty, but she barely looks it. If she let her hair down, put on more casual clothes, and wiped that tedious expression off her pretty face, she could put on a pair of warm ups with JUICY on the ass and blend in with her students.

  The image of labeling her ass JUICY amuses me and I smirk to myself.

  "What's funny?" she says, opening the folder.

  "Um," I say.

  "Certainly not this. Academic probation twice. Summer courses twice. Grades raised after the semester end, twice."

  "What is that, like my permanent record?"

  "Yes,” she deadpans, "you get sent to the vice principal too much and he's gotten sick of dealing with you, hence, me."

  "Um, we don't have a vice principal, this is—"

  "It was a joke," she snaps. "Frankly, so is this. Your patron insisted that you are secretly thoughtful and intelligent and, what
were his words? 'Deeply conflicted and in need of a mentor to guide him into finding his proper path in life before it's too late.' Something of a warrior poet, your coach."

  "He's a good guy. He cares about us."

  She grunts. "I know better than you ever will."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I say, folding my arms over my chest.

  "That's beside the point, we're getting into the weeds." She waves her crimson talons, dismissing the weeds. "You're here so we can reach an understanding with each other without weeks of petty gamesmanship in my classes, which I have no time for. I have a zero tolerance policy for your antics. I have your academic future hanging by a thread, and all I have to do is let go, and it's all over. Your coach probably told you that I'm your last chance. I am your only chance. Did you know that we're friends?"

  I shake my head.

  "I'm an alumnus, and I earned my bachelor's here. He was head coach then, too. I'm not that old. Anyway, we met and hit it off and he sort of became my unofficial academic advisor."

  I blink a few times.

  "How did that happen?"

  "It's a long story, and not your business. I want to make it clear to you that I'm doing this as a favor to him. He has a lot of good things to say about you, which, going by this," she taps the folder with her knuckles, "frankly sound a little delusional. He really believes in you, though, so I'm going to give you a chance to win me over the same way."

  When she talks about winning over, the first thought that pops into my head is winning her over by tasting her lush lips. My Tyler Sense is tingling and when I look past the pantsuit exterior at this woman, the way she sits, the way she looks at me, the way she talks, all of it coalesces into one instinctive conclusion: I'm looking at a wildcat. She'd leave scars, the kind you show off.