Clutch Player Read online

  Table of Contents

  Books by Nikki Ash

  Book Playlist

  Note To Readers

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Join the Cocky Hero Club

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Clutch Player

  Copyright © 2019 Nikki Ash

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Edited by Lawrence Editing

  Cover design and formatting by Jersey Girl Designs

  Cover photograph by David Wagner Photography

  Cover model: Bobby Creighton

  Other Books by Nikki Ash

  The Fighting Series

  Fighting for a Second Chance (Secret Baby)

  Fighting with Faith (Secret Baby)

  Fighting for Your Touch

  Fighting for Your Love (Single Mom)

  Fighting ‘round the Christmas Tree: A Fighting Series Novel

  Fighting Love Series

  Tapping Out (Secret Baby)

  Clinched (Single Dad)

  Takedown (Single Mom)

  Imperfect Love Series

  The Pickup (Secret Baby)

  Going Deep (Enemies to Lovers)

  On the Surface (Second Chance, Single Dad)

  Stand-alone Novels

  Bordello (Mob Romance)

  Knocked Down (Single Dad)

  Unbroken Promises (Friends To Lovers)

  Through His Eyes (Single Mom, Age Gap)

  Clutch Player (Second Chance, Single Mom)

  Fool Me Once (Secret Baby)

  Co-written Novels

  Heath (Modern Telling)

  Hidden Truths (Romantic Suspense)

  Stolen Lies (Romantic Suspense)

  Find out more about Nikki’s other

  books on her website: www.authornikkiash.com

  Clutch Player Playlist

  Listen here

  Don’t Let Her- Walker Hayes

  Notice- Thomas Rhett

  Lessons Learned- Carrie Underwood

  She Will Be Loved- Maroon 5

  Love You Like That- Canaan Smith

  U Got It Bad-Usher

  Stitches- Shawn Mendes

  We Belong Together- Mariah Carey

  Cross Me (feat. Chance the Rapper &PnB Rock)- Ed Sheeran

  Never Really Over-Katy Perry

  Someone You Loved- Lewis Capaldi

  Call You Mine-The Chainsmokers & Bebe Rexha

  The Mess I made- Parachute

  History-Olivia Holt

  2002-Anne Marie

  Leave Her Wild-Tyler Rich

  If I Can’t Have You-Shawn Mendes

  Whatcha Say-Jason Derulo

  Marry Me-Jason Derulo

  Never Let Her Go-Florida Georgia Line

  Find U Again (feat. Camila Cabello)-Mark Ronson

  Love will Remember- Selena Gomez

  Note To Readers

  Clutch Player is a standalone story inspired by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward’s British Bedmate. It's published as part of the Cocky Hero Club world, a series of original works, written by various authors, and inspired by Keeland and Ward's New York Times bestselling series.

  To Bret, my second chance.

  Clutch player: an athlete who is good under pressure and performs highly impossible plays in a quick and almost impossible amount of time.

  One

  Harper

  Sixteen Years Old

  Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

  I turn around and find Landon Maxwell bouncing a basketball behind me. When I give him a brow up, silently indicating to quit it, he raises his own and continues to bounce the ball.

  Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

  “Can you please stop that?” I ask, my voice dripping with false sweetness. “It’s annoying.” I move forward a couple steps in line and Landon laughs, making it a point to bounce the ball extra hard.

  Bounce. Bounce. Bou—whack!

  I smack the ball out of his hand. It hits the ground and rolls several feet away. Landon glances at the ball, then his hazel eyes meet mine, and a smirk splays across his cocky lips.

  “Harper,” my best friend, Melissa, calls out, her scrutinizing gaze darting between Landon and me for a brief moment. “What do you want to eat?”

  As I step up to order, an arm slings around my shoulders, and Richie Bennett, my boyfriend of seven months, kisses my cheek. “We’ll take a number two with a large Coke,” he tells the cashier, not even bothering to ask me what I want. He does this shit all the time and it aggravates the hell out of me. Pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, he hands her a ten-dollar bill.

  “I wanted an Oreo McFlurry,” I grumble. Richie ignores me as he steps to the side and messes around on his phone. This isn’t the eighteen hundreds. I have wants and the right to express them. Especially when it comes to the deliciousness of an Oreo McFlurry: vanilla ice cream mixed with crushed Oreos. Mmm… so simple, yet so good. I consider getting back in line to get one myself, but when I look back, the line looks to be about fifteen people deep.

  Once our number is called, he grabs the tray and we have a seat at one of the big tables where a bunch of our other friends are already sitting.

  “Are you guys playing a game after?” Melissa asks Richie as she drops her tray onto the table next to him. I refrain from rolling my eyes at her question. She already knows they’re playing a game. They play one every Sunday. During basketball season, they play basketball. During baseball season, they play baseball. Since basketball just ended, and baseball is about to start, they’ll be playing baseball. It’s like she needs an excuse to talk to him. Sometimes I seriously wonder how faithful of a friend she is. I watch her cross boundaries with everyone around us and wonder if she would ever cross them with me. I would like to think she wouldn’t go there, but a small part of me questions if Melissa even knows what the word loyalty means.

  “Yeah, we have to get ready for the upcoming season,” Richie says, shoving a bunch of fries into his mouth. “Practice starts this week.”

  I reach for the drink Richie and I are sharing and accidently knock it over. The dark liquid runs across the table and everyone lifts the
ir phones as they jump out of the way so they don’t get hit.

  I quickly grab the cup, tipping it upright. “Sorry… Sorry!” I tell everyone, searching for some napkins.

  “Jesus, Harper! It’s like you’re a child,” Richie chides, throwing me some napkins. “For your birthday, I should buy you one of those spill-proof sippy cups.”

  Everyone at the table laughs at his joke while I clean up the mess. This isn’t the first time he’s made a comment like that. He’s known I’m accident prone since he met me and it drives him nuts. It’s not like I drop and spill things on purpose. It just happens… a lot.

  “I think I’m going to go home,” I tell him once I’ve finished cleaning the mess and have thrown the saturated napkins into the garbage. “I have a project due tomorrow, and my mom will kill me if I don’t get it done.” And if I’m honest, I don’t even want to hang out with him anymore. For a guy who supposedly cares about me, he sure has a hard time acting like it sometimes—hell, lately, it feels like most of the time.

  “Just do it tomorrow during lunch like you always do,” Richie says. “I need my favorite cheerleader there to cheer us on.” He smiles at me like he didn’t just call me a child thirty seconds ago, and I grind my molars so I don’t snap at him. Hot and cold. Hot and cold. It’s always like that with him. One minute, he’s sweet and the next, he’s an ass. The sweet used to overpower the ass. Now, I’m not so sure.

  “If you don’t want to go, I can cheer them on for the both of us,” Melissa says with a wink.

  I glare her way, taking a bite of my burger before dropping it back onto the wrapper. I’m not even that hungry. All I really wanted was a damn—

  “Got you something,” Landon says, setting an Oreo McFlurry on the table and pushing it toward me.

  “You bought that for me?” I ask, picking the ice cream up and assessing it. He must’ve heard me, even though Richie didn’t. Landon and Richie have been friends ever since Landon moved here last year, but he’s never really paid any attention to me since Richie and I started dating. So I’m kind of shocked he got me this.

  “They made the wrong one.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “I ordered Butterfinger.” He shoots me a wink, and I push away the butterflies that have made a sudden appearance in my belly.

  What the hell? Where did that come from? Landon Maxwell does not give me butterflies. Sure, he’s your typical handsome all-American jock with his shaggy brown hair and sparkling brown-green eyes, and yes, he has better defined abs than most grown adult men. But in the last year since he moved here, I’ve never given him a second glance. His flirtatious charm might affect every other girl at this school—even though he never dates or hooks up with any of them—but it doesn’t affect me. At least, it didn’t…

  “Thanks,” I say, taking a bite as I watch him take one of his own.

  I glance over at Richie, who’s talking to Melissa and a couple other people about the party that’s going on Friday night. In the small town we live in, just outside of Boston, there’s almost always a party going on.

  “Hey, Harper, you still grounded?” Melissa asks with a saccharine smile. She already knows I’m grounded, thanks to her. She begged me to sneak out last weekend to meet some friends at the beach when she was spending the night, and my mom caught us coming back in. I got my car taken away and have to be home by six o’clock every night. The worst part is, I didn’t even want to go. And since I was driving, Melissa got trashed, while I played DD. I told her several times to slow it down, but Melissa only has one speed: fast. And on the way home, she threw up all over the floor of my car. The smell is never going to go away.

  “You know I am,” I say dryly. “I know you were trashed that night, but even you must remember throwing up all over my front seat before we pulled up to my house and got caught.” When she looks away, still laughing, I roll my eyes.

  Landon chuckles. “With friends like her, who needs enemies,” he murmurs, bringing his spoon up to his mouth. I never noticed how full his lips are. His tongue darts out to lick the ice cream on the spoon, and for a moment I imagine that same tongue running up the side of my neck.

  Holy shit, Harper! What is going on? It must be the heat in here. It’s chilly outside, so it’s warm inside. It must be making me delirious.

  Needing to take my eyes off Landon, I glance over at Melissa, who’s laughing at something Richie’s just said. Her head is thrown back like whatever he told her is the funniest thing she’s ever heard, which is such bullshit, because I know for a fact Richie isn’t that funny.

  “You realize she has a thing for your boyfriend, right?” Landon says.

  His words make me stop and think. If he’s come to that conclusion, I wonder how many of our other friends have as well. I glance back over at Melissa and Richie, expecting to feel a pang of jealousy or anger over them openly flirting with each other, but for some reason, I don’t really feel anything. And that realization has me questioning myself more than them.

  A minute later, Melissa stands and walks over to the other side of the table. She plops down on another guy’s lap and wraps her arms around his neck. He says something in her ear and she laughs loudly.

  “She’s just a flirt,” I tell Landon. “She’s always been one.”

  Melissa and I met the summer before our sixth grade year. I had just moved here from out of town, and Melissa was walking around the neighborhood with Richie and her twin brother, Dennis. When she saw me sitting in my front yard, she invited me to hang out with them. They were walking to the neighborhood next door so the boys could play ball. From that day forward, we’ve been inseparable.

  Melissa is what you call an acquired taste. She’s a shameless flirt, says it like it is, and has no problem being the bad guy. If you’re not her friend, you’re her enemy. My mom hates her and thinks she’s going nowhere fast. Most days I don’t mind her craziness, but some days, when she treats me like I’m the enemy—when I’m probably her only real friend—I wonder why I even bother to put up with her.

  Because if you’re not her friend, you’re her enemy.

  And the last thing I need is to have Melissa as an enemy. I’ve seen the sorts of things she’s done to the people she doesn’t like. Once when Penny Culver mentioned trying out for the cheer captain position, the next day, she was caught with a stolen answer key in her locker. She was suspended for a week and kicked off the cheer squad. Melissa’s never admitted to it, but I saw the look on her face—the triumphant grin—and would bet my last dollar, it was her.

  We only have a little over a year and a half left of school and then I’ll be on my way out of here. My plan is to apply to NYU, so I can go to school in the city, and if I get in, I’ll most likely never see any of these people again. While Melissa is messing around and not taking school seriously, I’m making sure I pave the road for my future.

  Richie and I haven’t really talked about what will happen after he graduates in June. I know he’s planning to go to medical school eventually—he wants to be a doctor of some sort. But if I’m honest, I’m not even sure if I see a future with him.

  After we finish eating, everyone cleans up their mess so we can head to Sunrise Estates. Unlike our upscale neighborhood, which has tennis courts, a pool and clubhouse, and a golf course, Sunrise Estates is a mobile home park that has a shitty basketball court and baseball field. It’s where everyone goes to play ball and get high and drunk.

  “I need to use the restroom,” I tell Richie as he throws our garbage in the trash. When he doesn’t say anything, I repeat myself. This time, he lifts his chin slightly, indicating he heard me.

  After I’m done going pee and washing my hands, I head outside just in time to see a bunch of our friends—including Melissa who’s riding shotgun—climb into Richie’s tricked-out BMW. Several others are climbing into Landon’s older Mustang, and the rest are finding someone else to catch a ride with. You’d think since I’m Richie’s girlfriend, he’d make sure I was with him. Unfortunately, that’s not how he r
olls.

  “Hey, Harper, get in!” Landon yells as Richie takes off. “Get in the back, bro,” he says to his friend and teammate, Cohen. Cohen groans, but does as he says, and I get in.

  “Thanks,” I say, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

  “No problem.” He smiles over at me, and those same butterflies I thought I’d successfully kicked out and slammed the door on, are back.

  We pull up to the baseball field and everyone scatters from the cars like roaches being exposed to sunlight. A couple of guys are carrying cases of beer and bottles of liquor. Melissa’s brother, Dennis, is already lighting up a joint, taking a hit, and then passing it to Melissa. Several of the girls are laying out blankets to get comfortable.

  Landon backs his car up to the edge of the field and puts it in park so we can all get out. He turns the music up loud, then pops his trunk open. After fishing around for a good minute, he pulls his glove out then slams the trunk closed.

  “Make sure no one touches my car,” he says to me with a playful smirk. Before I can say anything back, he’s running toward the field.

  Richie and Landon both play varsity basketball and baseball. I prefer basketball over baseball. For one, baseball is boring as hell to watch. Also, when they play basketball, half the guys take their shirts off, and they’re always left hot and sweaty from running up and down the court.

  As I’m leaning against the back of Landon’s car, Melissa and our other friend Angela come walking over. “Hit?” Melissa offers, extending a joint out to me.

  “I better not. I have to leave soon.” Not that I would anyway. I stopped smoking years ago, but Melissa never noticed. She tends to not pay attention to anyone but herself and whatever guy she’s messing around with.

  Melissa snickers. “What is your mom going to do? Ground you?” She rolls her eyes. “You’re already grounded.”

  Melissa doesn’t get it because her parents don’t give a shit what either of their kids do. They don’t care if they fail out of school or come home high. As long as she and her brother don’t bug them, they can pretty much do whatever they want. I’m not sure exactly what her parents do for a living, but they’re rarely home.