All Chapters of The Football players Feisty Girl: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

EMERSON Steam follows me out of the bathroom, curling through the room in a warm, humid haze.My hair is twisted into a towel on top of my head, damp strands clinging stubbornly to my neck. Another towel is wrapped tightly around my body, knotted at my chest and falling to mid-thigh.I take one step into the bedroom.Then stop.River is lying on my fucking bed.He is sprawled out across my fucking duvet with his shoulders braced against the headboard, looking as comfortable as if he bought the damn mattress himself.A strangled gasp rips out of me before I can stop it.My hands instantly clamp over the knot of the towel, fingers digging so hard into the terrycloth my knuckles turn white. A slow, insolent grin pulls at the corner of his mouth.“Surprise.”For a second, my brain simply refuses to process what I’m seeing.Then it catches up.“What the fuck?” My voice trembles, but fury quickly burns through the fear, hardening every word. “What the actual fuck are you doing in my hou

**EMERSON**River’s grip on my wrist slackens just enough for me to yank my arm free.His dark eyes flick toward the open bedroom door, tracking the faint, distant echo of heavy boots wiping against the welcome mat in the foyer below. When he looks back at me, that infuriating, crooked smirk is already sliding back into place.“Daddy's home,” he whispers.“Get the fuck out of my house,” I hiss, voice low and shaking with residual rage. “If my dad finds you in here—”“Relax, Wildcat.” He gets up smoothly, already moving toward the window like he has all the time in the world. “I’m leaving. For now.”“For now?” I step after him, still clutching the towel. “If you ever climb through my window again, I swear to God I’ll make you regret it.”River’s smirk only deepen, unbothered that my dad is downstairs.“Careful, Wildcat,” he murmurs. “Threats like that just make me want to come back.”“Fuck off,” I hiss under my breath, as I clutch the damp towel tighter against my collarbone.He rest

EMERSONThe alarm goes off at four in the morning.Four fucking a.m.I slap blindly at my phone, miss it twice, and nearly send the device flying into the wall before finally silencing the shrill noise.For three blissful seconds, I lie there in the darkness.Then my sleep-fogged brain catches up.River.The Porsche.The photograph.The threat.And, most importantly, the deeply unfortunate decision I made to vandalize the car of a rich, vindictive psychopath who apparently considered breaking into my house a reasonable response to property damage.I groan and drag the blanket over my head.“Brilliant, Emerson,” I mutter into the pillow. “Absolutely fucking brilliant.”I had wanted to prove a point.I had wanted to wipe that smug expression off River Knight’s face.I had wanted him to understand that his money, his family name, and his army of terrified admirers didn’t make him untouchable.Instead, I had given him an excuse to blackmail me, a photograph that could destroy my reputatio

**RIVER**I should be looking at the fucking car.That’s the whole point of this. The paint. The signature. The fact that she walked into a parking lot with a couple of cheap cans and decided the Trinity’s name was something she could rewrite in hardware-store acrylic like we were a joke she could tag and walk away from.I brought her here to watch her remove it. To make the lesson physical. Personal. To stand over her while she scrubbed away every trace of that stunt and understood, piece by piece, that she doesn’t get to challenge me without paying for it.So why the hell am I not looking at the fucking car?Why am I watching her?She drags the sponge across the hood, stubborn and methodical, mouth pressed into that same irritated line she wears whenever she’s trying not to say something that’ll get her into more trouble.Every time she reaches toward the top of the windshield, the hem of her sweatshirt rides up, exposing a narrow strip of skin above her waistband. She tugs it down

**RIVER**When she tries to break away again, I catch her arm and pull her in close.“Ow—it hurts!”I’m already pushing her sleeve up before she can stop me—And then I see them.Marks.Weeks old, maybe more—no clean purple left, just the dirty yellow-brown mottling bruises leave when they’re almost gone, mixed with the thin, silvery lines of skin that’s been broken and is still finishing the job of closing. A rough patch along the outer forearm where something scraped hard enough to leave a lasting shadow. A deeper stain near the wrist that looks like it took the worst of an impact. The kind of damage that should’ve healed quieter than this, and still flinches when gripped wrong.The sight of them on her arm turns my stomach.Suddenly I’m hot inside. Boiling. Ready to tear somebody’s fucking head off.“What the hell is this?”“Let go. It hurts.”I loosen my grip but don’t release her fully. “Who did it?”“Nobody. I fell.”“These don’t look like a clean fall.”She yanks free the seco