All Chapters of The Quarterback's Roommate : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter 12 – Cracks Show (Dante POV) Jealousy isn’t supposed to be my thing. I’ve played quarterback long enough to know how to keep my cool. Teammates drop passes, refs make bad calls, fans scream like the world’s ending—none of it rattles me. I’m built to take hits and keep moving. But apparently one lit-class cardigan-wearing idiot leaning too close to Eli Summers could throw me completely off my game. The image stuck in my head. Eli laughing at something the guy said, eyes bright, shoulders loose in a way they never were around me. It burned hotter than any missed pass. I told myself I didn’t care. That it didn’t matter who Eli studied with, who made him laugh, who earned that spark in his eyes. Except it did. By the time we sat down for our next tutoring session, my patience was already shot. The library was nearly empty, just the rustle of pages and the faint hum of the heating vents. Eli spread his notes across the table, his usual chaos of highlighters and scribbles.

Chapter 14 – The Vulnerability Slip (Dante POV) Anger usually sharpened me. On the field it turned my throws into lasers, my focus into something brutal and precise. A linebacker coming too hard? I welcomed the hit used it to fuel the next route, the next spiral. But after Eli’s words sliced through me you don’t get to care anger didn’t sharpen anything. It hollowed me out. Left me feeling like someone had scooped out everything solid and left only echoes. I threw myself into late practice that night. The field lights were already off by the time I showed up, but the equipment manager left the gates unlocked for stragglers like me. I ran extra routes alone. Extra drops. Extra reps until my arm burned and my lungs felt like they were lined with sandpaper. Sweat stung my eyes, dripped off my chin, soaked through my shirt until it clung like a second skin. I kept telling myself one more throw would drown him out. One more sprint would erase the memory of his voice cracking on the word

Chapter 16 – Breaking Point (Eli POV)The dorm room felt smaller than ever tonight.It was past midnight, the fairy lights still strung across my side like a golden barrier, casting soft shadows that danced whenever one of us moved. Dante had come back from evening practice an hour ago—shirtless, of course, because apparently clothes were still optional in his world. He’d tossed his jersey over the chair, grabbed a towel, and disappeared into the bathroom for the longest shower known to man.I’d tried to study. Really. My Milton anthology lay open on the desk, but the words blurred together into meaningless black squiggles. All I could hear was the water running, then stopping, then the low thud of his footsteps as he came back in wearing nothing but low-slung gray sweatpants and that infuriatingly calm expression.He hadn’t said much since the almost-kiss two nights ago. The one that happened after the library bargain turned into a late-night argument about nothing—about space, ab

Chapter 18 – The Proposition (Eli POV)The rest of that day passed in a haze of almost-normal.We went to classes separately, ate lunch at opposite ends of the dining hall like nothing had changed, and somehow managed not to look at each other too long when we passed in the hallway. But every time the door to our room opened that evening, my heart did this stupid lurch, like it was expecting a repeat performance.By ten p.m., the pretense was cracking.I was pretending to read on my bed—some dense article about queer subtext in Victorian poetry that I’d already highlighted twice without absorbing a word—when Dante came back from the gym. He dropped his bag, peeled off his hoodie in one smooth motion, and there it was again: that ridiculous chest, the tattoos curling over his shoulder, the low waistband of his shorts riding just low enough to make my brain short-circuit.He didn’t say anything at first. Just grabbed a water bottle, took a long drink, and watched me with that unreadab

Chapter 20 – Rules Established (Eli POV)The next morning, I woke up alone in my own bed, sheets tangled around my legs, sunlight sneaking through the blinds in thin white stripes.Dante was already gone—probably at morning lift or film study, the way he always vanished before seven like some kind of disciplined ghost. My side of the room looked like a tornado had hit it: hoodie on the floor, jeans draped over the chair, laptop still open on the desk from where I’d abandoned it last night.His side? Immaculate. Bed made with military corners, cleats lined up perfectly under it, not a single thing out of place.I groaned and pulled the pillow over my face.My body felt… used. In the best way. Deliciously sore in places I wasn’t used to noticing, every shift reminding me exactly how thoroughly Dante Cruz had taken me apart the night before.I could still feel his hands—big, rough, careful in a way that didn’t match the intensity in his eyes. The way he’d watched me the whole time, li