Hooked: A Stepbrother Romance Read Online Free PDF

staring at me. Clearly, she was thinking the same thing I was. Shauna was a natural.  
    The second practice game went much faster than the first, and by the third game everyone forgot that they were supposed to be hating this, the taciturn reluctance replaced by laughter and enthusiasm. Soon after that, I assigned a couple of the older players to paint more squares, and within half an hour the entire crowd was running to the sound of “red” and “blue.”
    I glanced at Emilia, only to discover that she was once again staring at me. Her eyes caught mine and she blushed, crossing her arms over her chest before spinning around with an annoyed grunt.
    She’d won the first round, but I had just won the second.

    What the fuck does he want me there for? He says that he’s found me a damn football team to train with, that he wants to reconnect, to know me better, that we can be like father and son in spite of the time lost.
    “Time lost,” what the fuck does that even mean? He didn’t lose it, he threw it away.
    He doesn’t know what I can be like. I’ll make sure he gets a good idea fast.
    Very fast .

Waves of heat poured from my oven as I opened its door and threw a frozen pizza inside as quickly as I could. Warming up my small apartment in the hot, muggy stillness of an early June evening was not ideal at all.
    Even so, I was too hungry to care. I hadn’t eaten anything today. Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten anything yesterday, either. Not since the news of the rugby deal had knocked me off-balance, and Simon had waltzed over and toppled me the rest of the way down. It had been a rough couple of days, that was for sure.
    I grabbed an icy bottle of beer from the fridge and downed half of it in a single, long draught, the condensation forming right away and dripping onto my sticky skin. Drinking myself into oblivion seemed like a good plan, but one I couldn’t afford to follow. Sitting down at the kitchen table, I went over my sports binder and the lesson plans I’d so painstakingly made last night.
    Beginners’ rugby.
    Not that it had mattered.
    Against all odds, he’d somehow been good at teaching. A natural. Thoughtful, patient, with just the right tone and just the right amount of authority. Infuriatingly, he’d even been exactly the right level of friendly, something that had taken me years to perfect. Too little and they resented you, too much and they’d try to walk all over you.
    Somehow, he’d fucking nailed it.
    Asshole.
    I’d expected to see his rebellious streak back. I thought he’d get pissed off at the first little mistake, cussing them out into little balls of self-hate who could only see their own shortcomings.
    Thirteen years ago, he’d been a natural at that .
    I chugged down the rest of my beer and snatched another from the fridge, my head swimming a little from the sudden rush of alcohol on a completely empty stomach.
    Did he handle them so much better because they were better? Had I really been, as he’d described so eloquently, a good-for-nothing piece of shit?
    No, I didn’t believe that. I’d proven myself time and again over the years, and I wasn’t about to let Simon send me into another tailspin of angsty self-doubt and handwringing.
    Still, what did that leave?
    That he’d changed?
    That somehow, he’d crawled out of the primordial ooze and turned into a human being?
    Give me a fucking break.
    Whatever the cause of his good Samaritan act, I wasn’t going to be fooled. This was still a war, and I still had one weapon left. One he’d given me himself earlier this morning.

    I know what everybody is thinking, but they’re wrong.
    It wasn’t just another bar fight. There’s no way those guys were going to back down. I threw the first punch, but it was self defense. If I hadn’t, they would’ve killed somebody.
    Coach isn’t really going to kick me off the team for this, is he?
    He can’t.
    I’ll do whatever he wants, even teaching rugby at that summer