FOOTBALL ROMANCE: Tight (Bad Boy Alpha Male College Football Player and First Time Virgin) (Contemporary New Adult Athlete Sports Romance) Read Free Page B

a sheet of paper from her binder and handed it to him. "What are you working on?" he asked.
    "Our bio homework."
    "Oh. Are you doing that extra credit question?"
    She glared at him from the corner of her eye. "Yes, but don't even think of asking me for the answer. I've already spent a half hour trying to figure it out. I'm not sharing it with someone who hasn't even tried to do it."
    "I wasn't asking," Mason said, irritated, turning to his paper. "Why do you get so upset about stuff all the time? It seems like you're not very happy."
    Emma started. Mason's words stung her without meaning to. She was happy. Wasn't she? "I'm... I just don't like being disturbed when I'm trying to work. My grades are important to me. If I don't keep them up I can't stay at Stanford."
    Mason turned back to her, curious. "You're on a scholarship?" he asked.
    She nodded.
    "Me too," he said. "Only what I need to keep up with is football. It's not easy. I bet it's not easy for you either. There's a lot of pressure."
    "Well," Emma said, softening a bit. "Yeah. There is."
    They looked at each other a moment, their eyes locked. It was the first time Emma realized they might actually have something in common. Finally, she shook her head, clearing it. "I really need to finish this," she said.
    "Yeah, of course," Mason said, turning back around and continuing with his letter. Emma was deep into hating Professor Douglas for his stupid biology riddle when something struck the side of her head. She looked at her bed and saw a paper airplane flittering to her mattress.
    "Mason!" she yelled. Even without Zoey here she just couldn't get any peace. "Get out!"
    "Sorry," he said, grinning.
    "Just go!" Emma said, and threw a pillow at him. He scurried from the room, and Emma let out a loud scream. He was so irritating!
    She picked the airplane up and tossed it into her wastebasket. Its nose hit the bottom and Emma noticed some writing on the inside of the right wing. She picked it back out of the waste basket and unfolded it, curious what Mason had been writing to Zoey before deciding to play darts with her head.
    Emma's jaw dropped open. Written on the paper was not a letter to Zoe, but the answer to the riddle she had spent the last forty minutes working on.

Chapter 5
    Zoey spent the entire night at the sorority she was pledging. Emma couldn't have asked for anything better. But instead of sleeping like a baby, she tossed and turned all night. She couldn't get Mason out of her head. How had he known the answer to that question she had struggled so hard with? Surely someone else in class must have given it to him. He couldn't have figured it out by himself... could he?
    In biology the next day, Emma waited anxiously for Mason to appear. She didn't know why she was so bothered by him. So what if he'd gotten an answer to something she had struggled with? Good for him. Right? But it burned her up. There was nothing right about it. Either Mason was brilliant and was faking the whole dumb football player thing, or he really was as stupid as he appeared and was cheating. Either way, she had to know.
    He got to class late, which was not atypical for him. Professor Douglas sighed as Mason stumbled across the room to his desk. His eyes were bleary. He looked like he'd barely slept.
    When their professor was finally finished with his lecture, he released everyone to their experiments. "Remember, these experiments are due at the end of class today." Emma opened her lab notebook. Mason followed along. She watched him set up his things, trying to figure him out.
    "How did you know?" she finally blurted.
    Mason looked up at her from his book. "Know what?" he asked. He genuinely looked like he had no idea what she was talking about, which only infuriated Emma more.
    "The answer to the riddle," she said. "Last night."
    "Oh," he smiled. He actually had sort of a charming smile. She felt her pulse quicken ever so slightly and willed it to go back to normal. He shrugged. "I just