Kickoff Blues: Last Chances Academy, #3

By Parker Avrile

As long as nobody knows how you feel, they can't take it away.

Grayson:
My parents don't believe I was born this way.
They think I'm gay to peeve them off.
But I'm not about to change my truth.
So they ship me off to the all-male academy to get turned into their idea of a real man.
At first, I'm pretty burned up about it.
Then I meet the rookie quarterback.
The sparks between us light up the sky for miles.
Where are we if my folks yank me out of the academy?

 

Sparky:
I was meant to be a star.
Then I fumbled the ball, and I don't mean the football.
That senior year arrest lost me my scholarship and my first pick for college.
So now I'm stuck here. The worst team in the southeastern conference. No future.
Or so I thought.
Turns out Gray and me together... we've got something special.
Both in and out of the spotlight.
The "in the spotlight" part is what causes all the problems.

 

Kickoff Blues is a full-length new adult gay romance with sports and academy themes. There is no cheating, no deep angst, and a guaranteed Happily Ever After. This book is a complete standalone romance in the Last Chances Academy series. Other books include Hot Roommate Blues, Hot Mafia Blues, and Freshman Blues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paris April Press
• Release date: Jan 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215920855

Parker Avrile

Like Kyle, I ran away to Vegas. Now I'm running from it. 

Book preview

Copyright & Disclaimer

Story & cover ©2022 by Paris April Press

All Rights Reserved

Except for brief passages quoted for reviews and/or recommendations in magazine, radio, or blog posts, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to anyone, any time, or any place is not intended and is merely coincidental. The cover models appear for illustration purposes only and have no relationship to any events in this story. Brief mentions of real persons, places, or products are used fictitiously and in accordance with fair use. All trademarks remain the properties of their owners.

It is a violation of international copyright law to upload this book to free, pirate, and sharing sites. Many independent authors and publishers have been forced out of the business by piracy. The small fee you pay to buy this book helps support an indie author. Thank you for respecting my hard work.

A Note from the Author

The Last Chances Academy series of books are fast-paced, page-turning escapism with a healthy serving of steam. Kickoff Blues is a complete standalone gay romance with two new starring characters. There are no spoilers for the first two books, Hot Roommate Blues, and Hot Mafia Blues, so you can read this one first if you want to.

From the days of my first novel, The Runaway Model, I've always been excited by the challenge of writing page-turning longer novels. When I first got the seed of an idea for a last-chances academy for hot gay bad boys, I knew it was a natural setting for fast-paced male/male romances full of deception and twists.

My wish for you is to enjoy reading this steamy gay romance as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Prologue

Everybody was gone . The coaches, the other players, the reporters. The after-party was already raging at Nikolo's. But it wasn't a real party until the quarterback landed on the scene.

So why was I lingering in the locker room? Why the need for a second shower, longer, with more suds? My hand, squeaky from the soap, slipped down my naked body. My fingers curled but exerted no pressure.

He might be waiting for me. Might be.

I turned the water up. Hot water, almost too hot. A cascade of slaps against my reddening flesh. A cold shower would cool me off, but who said I wanted to be cooled off?

A door opened. I shouldn't be able to hear it over the pounding water, but I did. My ears were wide open.

I turned off the tap. Stepped naked from the shower. The towel—almost in reach—was a million miles away. I made no bashful dash and grab for it.

His cheeks flamed to the point where his freckles disappeared. He'd come this far. Come to me.

One more step.

Come to me, Gray. Can you take one more step?

Chapter One

July 2019

Gray

My bright blue Mercedes C-Class Coupe looked lonely in the empty student parking lot. I was the first incoming freshman to arrive on campus. Not by hours or by days but by weeks.

See, rich people went to summer places in the summer. Some of them even dragged their troubled children along. Chestnut Dale Academy, an elite all-male private college in eastern Tennessee, offered no in-person summer classes and very few on-campus activities between final exams in mid-May and orientation in mid-August.

The dean of students, Professor Conrad, presided over my early move-in. He'd called an orientation meeting in his office where he sat behind a wide desk carved from a single slab of mahogany. A man of expensive tastes, he boasted attention-getting Einstein hair that came not from nature but from a stylist.

You will have to focus on self-directed library study for a few weeks, he said.

Yes, sir. I fiddled with the rainbow bracelet on my wrist. I wasn't intimidated exactly, or not by his sense of drama anyway. I'd been surrounded by expensive men with expensive tastes all my life.

My—I didn't want to call it shame, but what else could you call that icky sticky feeling?—came from the knowledge he knew my parents had more or less tossed me out on my ear. Anyone who'd given my records half a glance knew that. In my last few weeks of high school, they'd turned me into the system over a trivial offense, which meant I missed my high school graduation.

Which in turn meant I missed my first, second, and third choice of college.

Which put me here.

Chestnut Dale Academy, the official college for rich fuckups. And I was supposed to feel grateful my folks were shelling out for that much.

Conrad whipped off his antique tortoiseshell reading glasses in a theatrical gesture. The lenses probably weren't antique, but the frames had to be. Genuine tortoiseshell was banned years ago because it came from endangered sea turtles.

You must seize this opportunity with all your might, Mr. Easterly. He gestured with the glasses. If you run away again, you give your parents an excuse to wash their hands of you. Do you understand me?

Yes, sir. I turned eighteen three days ago. Being the son of a lawyer didn't make you a lawyer, but I understood a lot of things years before I felt I should have to. If I don't stay in school, the courts could say my parents are no longer legally responsible for me. My parents could seize on the smallest excuse to throw me away.

We won't give them that excuse, will we, Mr. Easterly? Conrad studied my face with eyes the same ice-cube color as my mother's eyes. Your parents would very much like to avoid a scandal. That's all to your advantage. Use that fact to make sure you are afforded a good education.

Being gay isn't a scandal, I said. Not in 2019. My mother doesn't seem to realize it's the twenty-first century.

The future doesn't come for everybody all at the same time, son.

Son. Was I really still anybody's son?

There's another thing. I took a deep breath. I've never had any kind of job. I think it might be a good idea for me to get some kind of experience working for money.

That won't be a problem. There are always available openings through our student work program. He didn't say—didn't have to say—that most of the elite kids who attended Chestnut Dale had zero interest in working. Ms. Aimes will put you on the calendar for an appointment with the work-study director when he gets back from his vacation.

Thank you, sir. I didn't know how I felt about working while other people were partying their way through school, but I had to plan ahead. My father was still holding out hope I was going to somehow change into a straight, but he'd figure it out sooner or later. And I didn't think I could count on his money anymore once he did.

Conrad stood, thrust out his right hand, and I found myself shaking the hand. That fast, the meeting was over.

So. Chestnut Dale Academy. An expensive school with ivy twining over red brick. Trees on hills all around the picturesque campus. Pretty but too quiet. Too lonesome.

With in-campus dining closed for the season, I spent lots of time driving around to scout out restaurants where I wouldn't feel weird eating alone. The town wasn't very big, and I'd already seen enough. Today, for a real adventure, I'd try the country. One direction was as good as another when you had nowhere to go.

Trees, more trees, and then a roadhouse. At eighteen, I wasn't legal to drink, so I started to tap the gas. Reading the sign, I tapped the brake instead.

A long banner in the green, white, and red of the Italian flag had been strung from one eave to another. Bold black letters in a Roman-Empire-style font proclaimed the place, NIKOLO'S PIZZA: Chestnut Dale County's most authentic Italian pizza.

Sure, why not?

Bright outside, dark inside. For a minute, I saw nothing but a vague impression of a blonde girl in her late teens or early twenties. Welcome to Nikolo's. Her voice was a flute. The Sparks party is in the back.

The Sparks party? She'd mistaken me for somebody else. It was an eastern Tennessee college town. There must be a ton of tall, slender boys who still had freckles in their late teens. I started to say something, but she was already hurrying away.

Her square heels tapped an important rhythm across the brick-red saltillo tile. I would've had to raise my voice or put my arm on her shoulder to call her back, and I didn't feel easy about doing either one to a strange girl.

I found myself swimming behind her like a duckling after the mama duck.

Through the restaurant, down a hall, into a back room where a rowdy live band was playing. When she opened the door, Nicki Minaj's Barbie Dreams blasted loud enough to push me back like a bully's shove. The girl launched forward like a rocket, the side of her right hand drawing a cutting motion across her pale throat.

She shouted, and somebody shouted back. Impossible to make out words through the blast of noise. Then somebody—probably the girl—pulled the plug on the amplifier. The music cut off like a knife.

She bounced back in my direction. He knows he's not supposed to play that crap while there's customers in the store. If Papa heard!

If I was supposed to react, she didn't wait for it. Briskly shoving me through the door, she headed back to her station. I stood flat-footed a minute, wondering how I'd gotten here.

A couple of guys were already breaking down the small stage. The swirl of a green satin dress disappeared through a far door. The legs exposed by its short hem were hairy, strong, and male.

A drag performer.

Nobody was looking at me. Nobody even noticed me.

Why was I here? I touched the braided rainbow bracelet on my wrist. Was that why? The girl thought all the gays in Chestnut Dale County knew each other?

Well. Maybe I didn't mind. The place wasn't exactly a teeming metropolis.

The party had already begun. Men were seated at three long tables set with pitchers of cola, water, and beer. Baskets of garlic-cheese breadsticks were being passed from hand to hand.

Whoever delivered the beer didn't see—or else pretended not to see—what I saw at a glance. The kids in this rowdy crowd were in their late teens, not their twenties. They were in no way legal for alcohol in the great state of Tennessee.

High school graduates celebrating all the way into July? Future freshmen for Chestnut Dale Academy?

It was a party either way. I hadn't had much opportunity for party in my life.

On impulse, I slotted myself into an empty chair at the end of the nearest long table. The man across from me nodded from the chin, but otherwise no one took any notice of my arrival. Fine. I could help myself and I did, taking the nearest pitcher to pour some beer into the empty mug that came with my place setting.

A man of nineteen or twenty stood up. He caught the eye even before he picked up an empty pitcher to bang on its side with a stainless steel spoon. It was that quarterback's build. Broad shoulders. Well-muscled thighs. The torso's exaggerated taper down to flexible hips.

I swallowed.

Good face to go with the good body. Dark hair kissed by sun streaks that came from long summer days spent outdoors. Smooth jaw dented by the devil's footprint—an old North Carolina name for a dimple centered right in the middle of a sculpted chin.

Have I seen him somewhere before?

He was clearly a leader—which, around here, almost certainly meant he was a football star. I never paid all that much attention to high school football, but maybe I'd noticed him somewhere.

In a video on social media. On the local television news. The usual places I'd catch a glimpse of a hotshot blowing into town for a regional championship.

A locker-room fantasy flashed through my mind.

Down, boy.

All right. The guy lifted the pitcher in an impromptu salute toward the room. Put it down without looking down. Welcome, all y'all, to the first-ever official meeting of the Freshman Overthrow Committee to Unfuck Shitty Football. That's FOCUS Football, y'all.

I froze in my seat—a funny kind of frozen that made me burn hot all over. Cheers erupted around the room, but I couldn't move, couldn't clap two hands together to fake the feeling.

The body wasn't the same body. The voice wasn't the same voice. And yet...

The speaker adjusted his volume to be heard over the applause. And, in case any of y'all still don't know, I'm your president, Connor Sparks.

Shock struck me like lightning from a clear blue sky.

The shoulders had changed—gotten wider and broader. The torso had changed—targeted exercise had created the deep ridges and hard mounds of eight-pack abs. The face was older, stronger. The hair was cut in a different style—short on the sides, longer on top.

But the voice. Older, deeper, no longer touched by little creaks and cracks. And yet somehow it was the same voice. Maybe it was the accent or the easy rhythm of the words.

I knew that voice beyond any doubt.

Connor Sparks was Sparky from all those years ago. Fate had stepped up to the batter's plate.

All along, all this time, my lost Sparky and I had been destined to meet again.

One problem, though.

Fate wasn't real.

How many times over the years did I think I heard Sparky's voice, and then the speaker turned around, and the bubble popped, and it was all a dream? The brain plays tricks, especially when you're fifteen and you've got a crush on a boy who never told you anything more than a street name.

No trick tonight. It was him. He was real.

Whatever real meant.

For fuck sake. Would I never learn not to build up all kinds of crazy fantasies out of air?

Sparks was a good speaker with a talent for milking the last drop of drama from a situation. His brown eyes moved confidently from face to face and man to man. I thought it was part of the speechifier's act—that he wasn't really looking into eyes and faces.

I told myself he didn't even see me.

Oh, he saw me. A catch in his speech. A momentary stiffening of his posture.

You wouldn't notice unless you were watching for it, hoping for it, but...

I noticed, all right.

He was looking at me and nobody else there at the unpopular end of the table with its scatter of empty seats. I'd imagined a lot of wild things in my life, too many wild things, but I wasn't imagining this.

Our eyes locked.

Did he recognize me? Did he remember me?

Or was he thinking, huh, who's that guy? I don't think I know that guy. Who the hell invited him?

Impossible to read eyes at this distance, and this room was full of strangers. Too full. Big men, football players, the serious kind with serious opinions about the sport.

Still, there was that momentary stillness in his face. His shoulders.

A stillness broken when he gestured with a spoon that no longer had a pitcher to clank against.

Was that a question? Or an answer?

Was the gesture intended for me or the crowd around me?

He said something else. Something about football. Nothing to do with me.

I couldn't let myself get too out there. Not this time. Chill, inhale, deeper than that, inhale again.

None of it had anything to do with me. I didn't belong. I was an imposter who'd been ushered into this private party by mistake. An illegal private party, where alcohol was being served to underage boys.

What if they thought I was a spy?

His hot brown eyes had held my gaze too long. Other boys were starting to look at me.

Starting to wonder.

Who the hell is he? What's he doing here?

Somehow, I was pushing away from the table and out of my chair. Somehow, I was already out the door.

Connor Sparks. I never had a name before.

You could've had more than a name if you didn't run like a rabbit.

Sure, you could.

I had to laugh at myself. Gay football players weren't real. Maybe up north somewhere. But Tennessee was still the south. Even in a backroom party hall where somebody wore green satin to sing, Barbie Dreams.

I needed to get gone from Nikolo's before I did something really stupid. Hope was the enemy. Memories flooded in, and memories always hurt.

Chapter Two

Gray

"Y ou have too much imagination , son."

My father's voice echoed in my head. If he was wrong, it would be easier to shut it out. Connor Sparks wasn't Sparky, couldn't be, and even if he was—because I knew perfectly well he was—there was a reason he'd never come looking for me all those years. And even if the reason was he was a teenager and couldn't find me any more easily than I could find him...

I needed to shut down this line of thought.

This line of fantasy.

Needed to shut it down so hard.

Fantasy could only hurt. The reality was there in front of me. That good-looking hunk of athlete was way too far out of my league.

From Nikolo's, I drove back in the direction of the town center and then out the other side. Somehow, I landed on what could only be described as your basic good old-fashioned wrong side of the tracks.

Scraggly weeds grown into hedges told me two things. One: It was a long time since an actual railroad came through those tracks. Two: Tight-fisted town fathers hadn't bothered to hop on the rails-to-trails bandwagon.

Days are long in July, but it was finally the golden hour. The warm light of sunset did zip to improve the ambiance of a boarded-up square box of a building. The smaller box next door was an even less inviting structure complete with a broken window cheaply repaired with a square of brown cardboard. Its open door spilled out burly people in Walmart jeans drinking from mass-market beer bottles.

People outside meant no air-conditioning inside.

I parked the C-coupe well away from a defiant gathering of battered trucks. Walked slowly across the lot. There was a lot of time to reconsider my strategy. Too drunk to be subtle with the side-eye, everybody was openly staring in my direction.

Fuck 'em. I couldn't possibly be the first college boy in search of a dive bar.

What do you want, cutie? someone hollered. I'll get it for you. His buddies guffawed.

Bottles in hand, a couple of the guys were already sauntering in my direction. This was stupid. I hopped back in.

Don't go away mad, princess. Just go away.

I drove around some more.

All that time, my phone sat in the passenger's seat—a magic box that might hold all the answers to all my questions.

No. No. Absolutely not.

As long as I was driving, I could resist the urge to check out Connor Sparks online. The road demanded my attention.

Forget Sparky. Forget the past.

Eyes on the prize. Be practical. Don't want what you can't have.

This isn't a second chance. There wasn't even a first chance.

YEAH, SO. WILLPOWER takes you only so far. The day after Nikolo's found me in the Chestnut Dale University library. Pecking on a phone alone in an empty dorm seemed all too pathetic.

Connor Sparks was weeks away from turning nineteen. A former star quarterback for an expensive private prep school in Nashville. That much was easy to learn.

His age suggested it was possible he'd been held back a year at some point. I didn't have to know the ins and outs of football to recognize the tactic. Schools and coaches—not to mention the more fanatical parents—liked to give a kid with potential more time to develop some size. Standard practice in the South if your school liked those state championship trophies.

I thought about those wide shoulders which didn't need shoulder pads to look deliciously exaggerated. I thought about those tapered hips, those long graceful legs. Connor Sparks had grown, all right. Assuming he really was the same Sparky I met in the wayback.

Which he is.

I closed my eyes. Remembered a crisp smell of autumn breezes. Remembered a knee pressing into another knee.

Eight boys in the dorm. Not a minute to be alone—to share a real name instead of a street name. You had to be casual in juvie. Tough. Nothing could matter too much, or they'd take something else away from you.

Connor Sparks wasn't real. He was another popular boy like my old former friend Zach Logan. Sparky was a fantasy. Always was, always would be.

I started to get up. Walk away from the computer station.

Sat down again.

Fuck.

Having fantasies about popular boys wasn't hurting anybody. Well, nobody except me. Sparks would never know.

As long as nobody knows how you feel, they can't take it away.

If it was sickness to indulge my imagination, I couldn't even care. Suddenly, I had a thousand questions. Hey. Did Sparky maybe have an Instagram? Did people still use the RichKidsOfInstagram hashtag?

I got out my phone after all. A mistake.

My feed opened on a new image of my first crush. Location tag: Nevados de Chillan, Chilé. Zach Logan stood between two hot boys, an easy arm around each of them. Behind them, a jaunty ski lift pointed into white mountains. Everybody smiled to show a lot of snow-white reflective teeth.

Zach's parents didn't care if he was gay. They were even proud of him. He was their kid. Anything he did was amazing and wonderful and deserved to be rewarded with expensive vacations