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“I need you to do me a favor, though,” he said. I arched a brow curiously. Of course there was a favor involved. “I need you to get the Dean to let me retake the placement exams.”
“The entrance ones?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I sort of… didn’t take mine,” he admitted. “Not seriously, anyway. If I’m going to do this whole thing, I don’t want to be in classes where I could teach better than the professors.”
Good God. Every answer about Jude created three new questions.
“You can’t be serious.” I kept my expression as neutral as possible. Mostly because I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh, yell, or demand to know how badly he’d intentionally tanked a college placement exam purely because he couldn’t be bothered to take it.
“You have no idea how inept some of these professors are,” Jude retorted. With a wink, he pushed away from the doorway and disappeared into the hall. I remained sitting on the edge of my desk, staring after him. There was a hell of a lot more going on inside Jude Kennedy than he let anyone see. Apparently, I was only beginning to understand my little brother. From the hall, he yelled, “Hey! You owe me dinner!”
“I don’t owe you shit, asshole!” I shouted back. Still, I grabbed my keys and wallet because we both knew I’d be doing just that.
CHAPTER 15
Rhodes
No contact,” I said, trying to be firm about the rule. Because apparently, before letting a group of college football players play football for fun, I needed to explicitly explain that fun did not include maiming one another.
“All hands, got it,” Jude replied with a grin.
“No contact,” I repeated.
“Below the waist, partial contact,” Sam chimed in.
“Dude!” Brent punched him in the shoulder. “No nuts!”
I stared at the lot of them. This was going beautifully.
“No fucking contact,” I instructed, louder and more commanding. Not that it mattered. They weren’t taking me seriously at all, and that was probably my own fault. I’d promised them a day without training, and I’d meant it. They’d shown up in athletic clothes instead of uniforms, already loud and restless, and the shift in their mood had been immediate.
Everyone looked lighter. Even the guys who normally dragged themselves onto the field half-awake were smiling. That had been the point. I wanted to keep that energy going.
I had a refrigerator back at the house packed with burgers, brats, enough sides to feed a small army, and what I hoped was enough beer for the legal half of them. The plan was simple: let them screw around for the day, feed them afterward, and call it team bonding.
In theory.
“Shoulder punches only, got it,” Forrest replied as he nodded like that was the answer.
“No!” I exclaimed. “No fucking punching anyone! What the hell is wrong with you?”
All I got was a laugh in response. Suddenly, no-contact football didn’t seem like nearly as brilliant an idea as it had when I came up with it. At this rate, I was going to spend our first game explaining why half the roster was injured because I’d voluntarily given them unsupervised access to one another’s limbs.
“No nuts, no shoulders, no contact,” I reiterated once more. The things I found myself saying. And somehow, that only started a completely separate debate about where they could hit one another. Apparently, “nowhere” was an answer none of them were willing to accept. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Maybe team bonding should’ve been bowling or some shit like that. Though, realistically, they probably would’ve found a way to turn that violent too.
“No contact and you play opposing team quarterback,” Theo said over all of them. My head snapped toward him. Absolutely fucking not. I opened my mouth to shut that idea down immediately, but the response from everyone else beat me to it.
“Yes!”
“Do that!”
“We want to see Coach K. play!”
The excitement spread through the group so fast I barely had a chance to react.
