Game On (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

office building and headed straight to the elevator, taking a sip of my coffee. I looked down at my phone to see a missed call from my mom sometime last night. It hit me then how crazy it was that I hadn’t even checked my phone for that long. For me, that was pretty much the norm unless I was expecting some important email or call from a work-related contact. I kept to myself, guarding my life from others, and unfortunately that included my mom and dad.
     
                  I knew they worried about me. They always had. And in their defense, I was always giving them reasons to worry-- not on purpose, of course. But the amount of times I was picked on and tortured at school, the administrators calling my mom to tell her I needed to go home early because I was sobbing in the nurse’s office… I understood why my parents regarded me as a fragile thing now. After a lifetime of being pushed around and put down they were constantly waiting for my next victimization.
     
                  I was their first child, and I never lived up to what they wanted from me. In fact, I was a failure from day one in their eyes, even if they didn’t want to admit it out loud. My very first transgression was being born a girl instead of a boy. They had planned for a boy, hoped for a boy, someone to play sports and carry on the family name.
     
                  Instead, they got me.
     
                  From the moment I emerged into the world, I was a source of perpetual concern for my parents. Born underweight and a tad sickly, they fretted over me for months as I struggled to thrive. Their dreams of a ten-pound future quarterback baby boy were dashed to pieces.
     
                  I had terrible vision, so they got me glasses. I had crooked teeth, so they got me braces. I had wild, unkempt hair, so they got me cute little hats. I was sick a lot, so they paraded me in and out of doctor’s offices and pharmacies, always with some new expensive medicine meant to make me a normal kid again. My childhood and adolescence were a never-ending string of “what’s wrong with Dani now?”
     
                  And though they tried most of the time to make light of how big a disappointment I was, sometimes the truth slipped out. Once, when I had to be picked up from school after a particularly nasty attack by the older girls who preyed on me, my dad demanded to know why I “let” people hurt me so easily.
     
                  As though I wanted people to call me names and make fun of me. As if it was my main goal in life to be the central source of pain and frustration for my parents. Like I did it on purpose. I remembered sitting in the backseat of my dad’s overburdened blue van, blinking sadly at him in the rearview mirror. I had no answer for him.
     
                  I didn’t go to homecoming. I didn’t go to prom. I never had a steady boyfriend-- only the occasional fellow nerd who followed me around and said we should just be together since we were so alike and all. But I never liked any of them, not really. Especially not the boy I dated at sixteen after he spent months wearing me down. It was the first time someone older and slightly cooler than me had taken an interest in me, and years later I realized why. He only wanted me because he knew I was vulnerable enough to take whatever he unleashed on me. He hounded me to sleep with him, to give myself up. The guy was dead-set on taking my virginity and he would not rest until I agreed to let him. That night was the worst of my entire life. He was fast and cruel, calling me horrible names and totally unconcerned with whether I enjoyed it or not. I consented to it, but only barely, and begrudgingly.
     
                  It was the only time I’d ever had sex.
     
                  And he dumped me the next day, claiming he just “didn’t see a future for