Slammed #4 (The Slammed Romance Series - Book #4) by Claire Adams Read Free Book Online

if Jess considered going to college to be little more than an excuse to
get with as many guys as she possibly could. It wasn’t fair of me—I knew she
was making good grades—but sometimes it seemed like she spent more time making
plans to ensnare a hot guy for a night or two than she did on her classes.
    “Okay,” I said finally, thinking to myself that it
was likely I would easily regret this. “Okay, fine. I will go to the game, and
you can go with me. And if either of us ends up actually hooking up with
somebody, we will work out how to give each other privacy. Let me borrow your
ID and I’ll get the information the office needs to issue our tickets.” I shook
my head. The last thing I had wanted to do was actually go to the game; but if
I had to go, I thought to myself that at least it would be interesting, with
Jess there with me.

 
    CHAPTER
SIX
    I had thought that our stadium was impressive; when
Jess and I got out of the bus carrying students to the bowl game, I was shocked
at the hugeness of it. The parking lot was crawling with people—tents and
campers and RVs were scattered across the place, with team colors flying on every
conceivable corner, and the smell of dozens of different kinds of food filling
the air. In spite of the fact that I’d been dreading going to the game and
having to watch Zack, I found myself getting swept up by the excitement that
everyone else was contributing to . Everyone was
amped—cheering as they made their way towards the stadium, calling out to the
opposing team’s fans, in a mood for a really good game. I had to wonder just
how well Zack would perform; if he was going to crack under pressure, it would
be a game like this where he was going to be televised across the country,
where the stakes were the highest—a rare, championship game.
    Jess and I split away from the group at the gate.
The tickets I had as a reporter for the campus newspaper were much better than
the general ; it was one of the perks of the job—after
all, I needed a good view of the game to report on it. As we moved through the
crowds flooding through the stadium, Jess was looking around—for the best food
options, for people heading to our section that might be interesting, for the
possibility of getting a cheap beer where she wouldn’t be carded. I was focused
entirely on the game. How would Zack perform? Would we win? I was trying to
think of just how I would cover it for the article, as well. After all, the
game itself was a big draw—but what story about the game would I tell? It was
one of the exercises Professor Grant had us do: pick an angle on an event and
try to come up with the way that you would go about writing an article from
that perspective.
    We finally got to our seats and I started setting
up, taking out my camera to get action shots and taking a few pictures of the
steadily growing crowd. Some of the people attending the game were, I knew,
folks who attended the championship every year; they weren’t invested in one
team over another, but came just to enjoy that particular event. There were
also—obviously—those who were either students or alumni of either school,
crowding the stands in seas of school colors, faces painted and banners waving.
It was hard to separate myself from the intense emotions that everyone around
me was obviously feeling; I could barely hear the marching band for the other
team across the stadium, but they would have been loud indeed for the fans of
that school—just as our school’s marching band was on our side.
    I snapped pictures of the crowd, capturing a few
banners. One of them made my stomach flip-flop inside of me; on our side, a
bunch of girls in school color bikinis and tiny shorts were waving a
hand-painted banner that read, “Win the Game and Get a Kiss, Zack!” I told
myself that I didn’t care—that I had broken up with him and he was a free
agent. I might have my regrets, but I couldn’t hold it against the girls that
they were