All Chapters of BREAK ME KNOT: An Omegaverse Quarterback Romance: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

56 Chapters

WHAT WINNING COSTS

Declan's POVI was breaking records and I didn't care. That was the thing nobody told you about obsession. It didn't slow you down. If anything, it made you faster, sharper, and meaner on the field. The anger had to go somewhere, and I was directing every single drop of it into football. My completion rate was the best it had ever been. My yards per game were up. Coach Jerry had started looking at me the way he looked at game tapes he really liked, quiet and satisfied, like he was watching money being made. I felt nothing. Practice was six in the morning till whenever I decided I was done, which was usually when my body gave out. My teammates had stopped asking questions about it. Smart guys. They showed up, did the work, and left me alone in the way you left a live wire alone: you knew better than to touch it. "You're going to burn out," Marcus said one morning, watching me run the same route for the fourth time. "You know that right?" "I'm fine," I said. He didn't push. He ne

SAFE BET 1

Maeve's POVThe first thing I noticed about Tyler was that he was easy, and in my current situation, easy was the most attractive quality a person could have. He didn't make the bond do anything. He didn't make my omega sit up and take notice. He was just a boy in my study group who was funny and smart and didn't look at me like I was something to be figured out. After six weeks of being on this campus feeling like a live wire, easy was exactly what I needed. He was in my constitutional law seminar and two of my other core units, and he had introduced himself on the first day with a handshake and a joke about the reading that had made me laugh. Real laughter, not the polite kind I used when I needed someone to think I was approachable. He was a beta, which my omega registered and immediately filed under not relevant. No pheromones, no biological attraction, and nothing to cloud my head or make me feel like I was fighting against something. He was just a normal guy. It had been a l

SAFE BET 2

Maeve's POVMy mother called on Sunday at noon as usual. I was ready for her this time. I had spent the week building the version of myself that sounded settled, productive and completely fine, so when her contact photo lit up my screen, and I answered on the first ring. "Maeve." Her voice was pleasant, and I knew it had something to do with the fact that I had answered at the first ring. "You sound better, my dear." "I feel better," I said, and it was true enough. People liked to talk about how friends would save you, but it was understated. We needed more people out there preaching on the power of friendship. Superman to save the day? Nah. The power of friendship, yay! "Good. I'm glad. How are your classes going?" "Well enough Mom.” "And socially?" She asked. "Are you finding your people, making friends and building relationships? You know how that is equally as important as having good grades, right?" "I have a study group," I said. "And I’ve made very good friends with all

KNUCKLES

Declan's POVI smelled him on her before I saw them together. It was a Monday, and I was cutting across the east side of campus on my way back from the athletic facility. I had no reason to be on the east side except for the fact that I found any excuse to find a way to run into Maeve even when I denied to myself that it was what I was doing. My dorm was on the west, the facility was on the west, and everything I needed for the day was on the west side of campus, but the bond had been pulling in this direction all morning and I had stopped fighting that battle. So I told myself I wasn't going to approach her. I just wanted to know she was alright. That was it. Right. Then the scent hit me. Her scent that was made of honeysuckle and the warm vanilla underneath it was what hit me first, and then something citrusy and male and entirely wrong that made my alpha throw itself against the inside of my chest followed. Beta. I stopped walking. The scent was fresh, like it had had tim

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Maeve's POVThe bond had exploded on Sunday, and I had spent all of Monday thinking about what that meant. He had felt Tyler. That was the only explanation. Something had come through from my side, Tyler's name maybe, or the mood I was in during that conversation with my mother, and Declan had felt it and lost control of his reaction so completely that it knocked my phone out of my hand. He was paying attention. Six weeks of avoiding me so thoroughly that he had rerouted his entire life on campus, and he was still paying attention. The avoidance wasn't indifference; it never had been because you didn't work that hard at staying away from something you didn't care about. I knew this because I was working just as hard from my side. I sat through Monday's lecture thinking about it. Tuesday's seminar too. By the time Tyler asked if I wanted coffee after the study session, I had been turning it over for two full days, and I still didn't have anywhere useful to put it. So, I said yes to

THE LIE IN THE ROOM

Declan's POVCoach Jerry's office smelled like coffee and old trophies. The air was thick with the tension a man held when he had something to say but didn’t yet know how to put the words down.I have been in this office enough times to know the coach’s moods. Post-win, he felt loose and warm. Post-loss, he had a weight on him that sat on your shoulders the moment you walked in.Right now, he felt like neither of those things. The way the coach felt, it was like something was at stake and everyone in the room knew it and nobody was going to say so directly.There were three of us. Coach Jerry behind his desk. Me in the chair across from it. And in the chair to my left, a man I had not met before who had introduced himself as Garrett Cole, and whose jacket had an expensive quality to it that told you everything you needed to know about who he was before he opened his mouth.NFL. Not an agency spawned from it. The organization itself.I had known this meeting was coming for a while now.

THE CHOICE SHE SHOULDN'T HAVE MADE

Maeve's POVTyler asked me to Thanksgiving on a Wednesday. We were at the end of a study session that had run too long because we'd gotten into an argument about judicial review that neither of us wanted to yield. He was packing his books when he said it. Later I'd think about how casual it was, but at that moment I was caught off guard. "My family does this whole big thing in Vermont, where my mom cooks enough to feed a small countryside." He looked at me with that easy smile of his. "You should come." I looked at him with large eyes and he chuckled nervously. "Just as company, of course," he added, reading something in my face. "It'd be fun. My sister is hilarious, and my dad does terrible impressions of politicians that you would love." I knew what this was. Not because Tyler had bad intentions, he didn't have a bad bone in him, but because Vermont with his family wasn't a study session or coffee after class. It wasn't the careful uncomplicated thing we had built over

NINETY MINUTES

Declan's POVI told myself it was just the once. That was the deal I made with myself on the walk over. Once, just to see that she was alright, just to put eyes on her and satisfy the part of my alpha that had been running on bond impressions and second-hand information for two months. Once and then I was done, and I would go back to the west side of campus and my playbook and my very functional life that had absolutely nothing missing from it. I was so full of shit. The lecture hall was bigger than I expected. Constitutional law, third floor of the law building, was held in one of those rooms that went up in tiers, so the professor looked small from the back row. I slipped in after it had started, which was deliberate as I didn’t want to be noticed, and found a seat at the very top where the light was bad, and nobody was going to turn around and recognize me. For about five minutes it was just a lecture. Professor at the front, students with laptops open, with the atmosphere of

THE AUDITOR

Maeve's POVMorgan called on a Thursday to say she was coming Saturday, which was not a question, but an announcement. That was how my sister operated. She didn't ask if it was a good time, she didn't check whether you had plans, she simply announced her arrival the way the weather announced itself. You could be inconvenienced by it, or you could prepare for it, but either way, it was coming. I spent Friday night doing three things. Studying, which I would have been doing anyway. Cleaning my side of the room, which I did not ordinarily care about, but Morgan had a way of reading spaces like other people read faces. And applying my foundation twice, building it up in careful layers over my neck, blending it so thoroughly that I stood under the bathroom light at eleven at night, turning my head at different angles looking for any shadow, any line, any give. It held. I went to bed and told myself I was fine. ***** Morgan was two years older than me and had our mother's face with o

WHAT MARCUS KNEW

Declan's POVMarcus had been waiting for the right moment for two months, and he picked a Tuesday after practice when everyone else had cleared out. I knew it was coming. I had known it was coming for a while actually, because Marcus was patient in the way that people were patient when they had already decided something and were just waiting for the conditions to be right. He had been watching me since last week with those quiet eyes of his that didn't miss much, and I had been watching him watch me, and we had both been pretending neither of those things were happening. The locker room was empty. I was pulling my jersey off when he sat down on the bench across from mine and didn't move toward his locker. I looked at him. "Talk," he said. "About what?" "Declan." I dropped the jersey on the bench and sat down. There wasn't much point in the runaround with Marcus. He was too smart for it, and I was too tired for it, and we had known each other long enough that performing was mo

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