On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [1]
He ignored the occasional glances he caught from the corners of his vision, as well as the familiar catcalls and kissy noises.
After a dozen years in the Trenton public school system with these knuckle-headed losers, Devon was immune to moronic comments about his looks. Nicknames like “Pretty Boy” and “Baby Face” had long ago lost all power to faze him. He never flinched, never blushed, never showed weakness.
But was that enough for his old man?
Devon spotted his family clustered stiffly under one of the gymnasium’s raised basketball hoops. Angela Sparks smiled when she saw Devon, and raised one hand to wave at him. She looked older than the other moms, even though she wasn’t. Still, underneath the worry lines and graying hair was the source of Devon’s overblown, inconvenient looks.
Devon’s younger brother, Connor, shot him two thumbs up, then made the code signal for “Mom and Dad are driving me nuts, so I’m sneaking off.” Devon jerked his head once in agreement. He didn’t need any more of an audience for this, anyway.
Connor grinned and said something to their dad, who grunted and waved him away. Phil Sparks was never anything but gruff, although Devon easily read the quiet pride and satisfaction in the man’s eyes as he followed Connor’s exuberant jog across the gym floor to join his buddies.
That look, accompanied by a complacent “boys will be boys” shrug, was never aimed in Devon’s direction. Never had been, never would be. It was one of the main ways Devon knew there was something about him that was just . . . wrong.
As a rising junior, Connor would be the starting quarterback next year. He played football in the fall and baseball in the spring, and excelled at both. At sixteen, he was already as tall as Devon, and the accident of genetics that cursed Devon with perfectly symmetrical features, vivid blue eyes, and the much-loathed long lashes had bypassed Connor entirely. Not that he was ugly or anything, just normal. Average.
In short, Connor was everything Devon wasn’t. For instance, Connor was a nice person; too annoyingly nice for even Devon to despise.
Devon, on the other hand, was the opposite of nice.
He was also the opposite of average. Who the fuck wanted to be mediocre? Most of his graduating class did, as far as Devon could tell. They wanted nothing more than to go to Rutgers, get a boring desk job, get married, and die.
Devon already knew. That kind of life wasn’t going to be enough for him.
“Hi, guys,” Devon said, projecting his best nonchalant, devil-may-care attitude. “You caught the show, huh?”
Angela’s eyes brightened, the deep, electric blue of them sparkling with rare happiness. “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she said and clasped him close in a quick, hard hug.
Phil frowned. Big surprise there. “For God’s sake, Devon. You couldn’t comb your hair before you went up on stage? You look like somebody dragged you through a bush backwards.”
Yeah, Devon wanted to say. But if I’d slicked my hair down you’d have complained I looked like a brown-nosing nerd, so what’s the point?
He managed to hold his tongue, though, because he had bigger issues than his hair to tackle, and he wanted to get it over and done with in the middle of this crowd where there was a slight chance his dad would be too embarrassed to go all out and explode.
“We are so proud of you,” his mother jumped in, ever the peacemaker, and Devon smiled at her. He was grateful for the lie, or at least for the affection that prompted it.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Phil snorted like a startled racehorse. “Speak for yourself. For me, I can’t see being proud of a kid too lazy to take advantage of the work and sacrifices his parents made so he could go to a good school and get into a good college.”
And there it was. The opening Devon had been waiting for and dreading in equal measures ever since he got his letter from the Academy.