Climb on My Stepfather (Ashley and Alex)

Chapter 69

OBSESSED.

Gage Weston has a stellar reputation that extends from the classroom to the football pitch. West Dale High's football god, a knight-in-shining armour to the girls, and everyone's personal favourite. But this all fades away in senior year.

Family issues and scrapes with the law waters down everything he's built and now he has no option but to be tutored or he'll get kicked out of the championship game.

One look at Stella McCartney, and his world comes tumbling down.

She's beautiful. She's kind. She's the quiet, campus genius, and she sets his adrenaline racing. His methods of keeping her to himself are nothing short of extreme. Will he ruin this one last good thing too?

1: Gage.

On the way to my new tutor's dorm room, I want to punch a hole in the hallway wall.

It's like this all the time now. The relentless anger slithers inside of me like oily snakes. I've worked myself to the bone on the football field in an attempt to exhaust the roiling emotions inside of me, but nothing ever gives. There's a bowling ball sitting on my chest, pressing down, down, so hard that I can't breathe sometimes and the only thing that relieves it for even a moment is destruction. Breaking shit. Acting out as my college counselor calls it.

She can call it whatever she wants it feels good.

Rebelling is the only thing that helps melt the resentment lately.

On my way past a room of students, they look up from their phones and gasp.

"Is that Gage Weston?"

Yeah, it's me, assholes. Take a good look.

During my first three years of school, I would have waved and flashed them a smile that's going to earn me millions of dollars in endorsement deals one day, when I've been drafted to the NFL. But now? I give them the finger and keep walking, the constant roaring in my ears growing louder. I already hate this fucking tutor. Stella McCartney. She's going to be smug as hell, I bet. She'

s the only thing standing between me and the championship game next week. If I don't pass my Western Civilization test, I don't play. I'm already skating on thin ice after getting picked up by the cops for being drunk and disorderly in public. Breaking into a few cars, just because I could. Because I needed to distract myself from the pain.

So I'm sure Stella McCartney-what a stupid name is getting off on a major power trip right now, telling all of her friends that she has Gage Weston by the short and curlies. As long as she helps me pass the history course, she can brag all she wants—I just need to be on the field.

Lately, being on the gridiron has been less about football and more about the temporary relief I get from the constant anger when I'm tackled hard. But that's another story.

I stop in front of her closed dorm room door and wrap my hands around the jamb. She's in there, chattering away on the phone, and I have to resist the urge to kick in the door, splinter it right there on the hinges. Just to set the tone. I'm going to let her teach me the shit I need to know to pass the test and play in the championship game, but that's where it ends. I'm not her shortcut to popularity or claim to fame. God, I hate her already. I hate everyone.

Especially him. For leaving. For checking out early.

is the point of this

that passes through me, I bang a fist on the door, ready to finally meet this chick. Stella. Apparently she's the campus genius. Too bad she sounds

She looks like every other fucking cheerleader or co-ed who follows me around campus with dreams of babies and a mansion in their heads. Fuck that. I want nothing to do with any of them, especially since

doesn't stop her from twisting hair around

Weston himself in my dorm

had a fifth of whiskey in my hand.

it was a wild assumption. "Stella is my roommate." She cups a hand around her mouth and

campus genius, has wasted a full minute of my life, I duck beneath the door frame

other occupant. She's sitting on a twin bed with her head bowed, curtains of messy blonde hair hiding her face. Her green cardigan is old and thin, buttoned up to her chin, knees

lot softer than when I addressed the other chick...and I have no idea why.

white around the textbook. Is she scared of something? I wouldn't blame her. She looks like she could be picked up and carried away by a gust

"Obviously you remember we have a tutoring appointment since you're holding the book. Are you...?" I really don't understand the weird discomfort in my chest. Different from the ever-present anger.

again. Says

girl who answered the door is back to sitting on her bed and she's taking sneaky pictures of me, as if I wouldn't

what draws my attention, instead, is the way

tiny bed, while this girl's stuff is everywhere. She's taking up ninety percent of the room with her Taylor Swift posters and furniture and clothes. It's obvious where her section of the

bark, jerking my chin at the

phone drops into her lap and she goes from flirty to belligerent in about two point five seconds. "She said I could have most of the

that?" I

of silence go

back to her shoulders. And my stomach takes a dramatic dive, the way it does when a roller coaster plumets

lurch for the wall to stabilize myself,

Jesus.

Her mouth is unpainted and soft and wide. And I don't know how I can tell she rarely uses it to speak, but I do. Ljust know. I just know everything she's thinking in

I growl at the other girl, without taking my attention from Stella. "She didn't say you could take up the whole room. Have it fixed by

I point at the

her feet.

Find another

up her things and stomp out of the dorm room, slamming the door behind her. During that minute, I can't look away from the quiet little genius sitting in front

have that. My whole life is about intimidating other people, that's how I've been an All-American two

okay," I say, gently

chest starts to rise

have made her leave? Are you scared to be