Hail Mary: An Enemies-to-Lovers Roommate Sports Romance (Red Zone Rivals)

Copyright (C) 2023 Kandi Steiner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written consent of the author except where permitted by law. The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Published by Kandi Steiner Edited by Elaine York/Allusion Publishing Cover Photography by Ren Saliba Cover Design by Kandi Steiner Formatting by Elaine York/Allusion Publishing 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 Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Epilogue A Note From the Author On the Rocks - Sneak Peek On the Rocks - Chapter One On the Rocks - Chapter Two More from Kandi Steiner Acknowledgements About the Author To the girls who love tattoos, video games, fucking shit up, and hot, cocky, infuriating playboys. This one’s for you. Then Mary Asking for Halo 5 for my fifteenth birthday was the biggest mistake of my adolescent life. First of all, my mother about fainted when I did. It was hard enough to get her to even allow me to have an Xbox with a few single-player fantasy games, and that was because she thought it was a phase I would grow out of. But asking for an Xbox Live subscription and a game I could play with people around the world where our main goal was to kill each other? My poor mother didn’t know what to do with that. “What about cheerleading? What about hanging out with your friends, shopping at the mall, boys?” She’d asked each question more frantically than the last, all the hope dwindling in her eyes. Fortunately, I had Dad, who I think knew from when I was a young age that I was not going to be what he and Mom pictured. Mom wanted a cheerleader and debutante just like her. She wanted her daughter to rush the same sorority she’d been a part of in college and dreamed of planning a huge wedding day with a fluffy white dress. Dad wanted me to be in acquisitions, just like him and my older brother, Matthew, who was in college and destined to follow in his footsteps. To be fair, I did get my sass from my dad, and my take no shit attitude. But using those skills to be ruthless in a business merger was not exactly on my radar. No, what they got instead of all that was an emo kid with a love for doodling and a dream of being a tattoo artist. But that’s not even why Halo 5 was the beginning of my demise. Because as much as Mom hated it, Dad encouraged her that it was fine for me to play. Good for the brain muscles, he jokingly said over dinner as Mom angrily chewed an asparagus sprig. And so, on my fifteenth birthday, I ripped open the present shaped like a video game first and squealed with delight, abandoning all my other gifts and running back to my room to play immediately. It took me a while to figure the game out, but not too long to realize that I was years behind most of the people I was playing live with. Not that that deterred me. I was a teenager on summer break with all the time in the world. And if there was anything I loved more than drawing or gaming, it was a challenge. I played as much as I could those first few weeks of summer vacation, leveling up and honing my skills. It wasn’t unusual for me to still be awake when Dad’s alarm went off for him to go into the city. He’d pop his head into my room, smile, and warn me to at least pretend I was sleeping when Mom got up. I loved that summer. I loved the feeling of a winning streak, of staying up until the sun rose, of surprising my team when I spoke into my headset and they realized I was a girl. At school, I was a nobody, a loser, just another overweight teenager with acne and bad teeth and baggy clothes who lost more and more friends as she discovered her true interests. But online? I was a bad ass. I was almost a god — or goddess — when I was playing Halo. I controlled what I looked like, who I played with, and what a huge part I was of our team’s victory. People wanted me on their team. They wanted to play with me. They wanted to be me. Everything was going great. And then, a month and a half after my birthday, when summer was in full swing but school was looming on the other side of it, I was popped into a game with the absolute last person I ever expected. Leo Hernandez. Anyone who went to my high school knew who Leo was. Every girl knew his messy hair, his crooked smile, his lean, muscular body, his golden skin and infectious laugh. Every boy knew his speed and agility, the ease with which he excelled on the football field and off it, too. He was a star athlete with a dad who used to play in the NFL. He was popular. He was funny. He was rich. He was the kind of boy who could smile at you and make you feel like the only girl in the world. Little