PERSONAL: A Stepbrother Sports Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

after her with my phone’s flashlight on. She chased it with the tenacity of a CIA agent on a one-track mission.
    “Thena! Where’s your ball? Where’s your ball?” And then I stopped at the edge of a piece of agriculture land I failed to see on the other side of the property.
    What.On.Earth.
    My flashlight surveyed the green plants with the pointed leaves. There were rows and rows of them. The Texan wind picked up and carried the fragrance, a signature scent only certain plants could yield; certain illegal plants. Marijuana.
    I’d never tried it, but I knew enough of what it looked like to know what it was.
    … And I didn’t mean to see them, I swear.
    But I did, and now I couldn’t help but hear Bob Marley play in the back of my mind.
    I spun around to see his worried face in the moonlight.
    “Shit.” He ran his fingers through his hair.
    “Ummm…Ramon?”
    “Look, ummm…come on. I shouldn’t have brought you here. I fucked up man.”
    “Uh, yeah you shouldn’t have! You guys are pot growers?”
    “I’m not. I have nothing to do with it.” His voice was flat.
    “Like… isn’t growing pot illegal? I know it’s been legalized in a few states, but we all know like Texas will be the last state to allow it.”
    He ran his hands through his hair again looking obviously upset. “Look, Cat. Please . Don’t tell anyone. Anyone. No one knows about this. I could get in some serious trouble, okay?”
    “You?”
    “Well, even though it’s not mine, I still live here.”

RAMON
     
    Fuck! This was bad. Real bad. I cursed at myself over and over again. I knew better than to bring anyone here. What was I thinking? I had steered her as far away from the plot of land as possible. Before she came, I went ahead and lit up dozens of hanging Cutter mosquito repellants across the wires from one tree trunk to another, all in an effort to disguise the strong smell.
    Now, standing in the moonlight seeing the lit candles, and tiki torches, it looked like a party more than anything.
    But it was that look on her face which made the situation worse. It was a look of mischief. Her eyes sparkled with mischief, their naughtiness only further enhanced with the fiery glisten of the candles in their reflection.
    “I want to try it, Ramon. I’ve never done it before.” Her eyes continued to sparkle with naughty desire. Under any other circumstances, my cock would have twitched with excitement.
    I hadn’t smoked pot since eighth grade. It was fun, and I did it with a few of my buddies in off season, but that was it. I was too focused on the game to jeopardize drug tests.
    If I ever was going to light one up in the next decade or so, it would be this very month.
    I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was her daringness, boredom, or dad’s text telling me he’d be home late tonight, which left me home alone yet again. It could have been stress from sucking it up in algebra, knowing I was going to flunk the test in a few days, and the realization that I needed to rest my brain. Whatever it was, it had won, and minutes later, we were sitting on a leather couch that rested under a big pecan tree and lighting up a joint together.
    Moments later, my limbs felt like jelly, and I welcomed the easy relaxed feeling of no worries at all.
    There we lounged on the couch, staring at the twinkling sky, two kids whose lives would change once we graduated.
    “Dad’s dad had this land, but they didn’t take good care of it. They just owned it as an investment,” I explained. “Nestled back here like it is off road, you can see how it makes the perfect location for illegal activity.”
    “Then, how did he get into this?”
    “Dad was born in the seventies, in the middle of the marijuana boom. Maybe it was his destiny or something. I don’t know. But with his dad away in Vietnam, it left him to be a seeker at a young age. He hated what war did to families. Even though the war ended when he was young, he still had that imprint of his