Completion (Cambria University Series Book 3) Read online

  Completion

  Cambria University Series, Book 3

  Sadie T. Williams

  Copyright © 2020 Sadie T. Williams

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

  ISBN: 9798679508545

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Completion

  Prologue: Rhodes

  Chapter 1: Rhodes

  Chapter 2: Stanzy

  Chapter 3: Stanzy

  Chapter 4: Rhodes

  Chapter 5: Rhodes

  Chapter 6: Stanzy

  Chapter 7: Rhodes

  Chapter 8: Stanzy

  Chapter 9: Rhodes

  Chapter 10: Stanzy

  Chapter 11: Stanzy

  Chapter 12: Rhodes

  Chapter 13: Rhodes

  Chapter 14: Rhodes

  Chapter 15: Stanzy

  Chapter 16: Stanzy

  Chapter 17: Rhodes

  Chapter 18: Stanzy

  Chapter 19: Rhodes

  Chapter 20: Stanzy

  Chapter 21: Rhodes

  Chapter 22: Stanzy

  Chapter 23: Rhodes

  Chapter 24: Stanzy

  Chapter 25: Rhodes

  Chapter 26: Stanzy

  Chapter 27: Rhodes

  Chapter 28: Stanzy

  Chapter 29: Rhodes

  Chapter 30: Stanzy

  Chapter 31: Jessup

  Chapter 32: Rhodes

  Chapter 33: Stanzy

  Chapter 34: Rhodes

  Chapter 35: Stanzy

  Chapter 36: Rhodes

  Chapter 37: Rhodes

  Chapter 38: Stanzy

  Chapter 39: Rhodes

  Chapter 40: Stanzy

  Chapter 41: Rhodes

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgement

  About The Author

  Praise For Author

  Books In This Series

  Completion

  How many people can say they found the love of their life when they’re six?

  Jessup Rhodes was a kind-hearted boy who grew into a gorgeous, widely recruited football player with a bright future despite his tattered family life.

  Stanzy Sutton is a talented volleyball player with a strong will and a big heart, she also just happens to be Rhodes’ best friend and sanctuary.

  When Rhodes’ world is flipped upside down by a family revelation he makes a decision that ultimately fractures their relationship and sends their lives down separate paths.

  The one thing that Rhodes has craved his entire life is the one thing he walked away from – love. People say life comes full circle. Rhodes better hope that’s true because he hasn’t been complete since the day he walked away from her.

  Prologue: Rhodes

  Nine Years Old

  “You little bastard!” my dad shouts at me in the car on the way home from the junior pee-wee football championship game. We lost by six and dad’s face is so red I think his head may explode as he screams at Rollie and me. It makes me wonder what he’s like in the office because he’s scary at home.

  “Just don’t say anything back,” Rollie, my older brother, whispers to me.

  I nod. I know better, we know better, than to antagonize our dad, Rowen, after a football loss. Football is his life. Our dad was a football star until he got hurt, and now, he just owns a car dealership. He makes a good living, but football is everything.

  Rowen never misses a chance to point out that he’s given us all the opportunities he never was given by his parents. How hard he had to work to make something of himself. We owe it to him to be better.

  Work hard, play harder, and make him proud. The catch? We’ll never be good enough to make him proud.

  “How the fuck could you fumble?” he screams as he slams his hands down on the steering wheel which makes the car jerk to the left sharply. He recovers, but continues yelling, “All you had to do was hold onto the fucking ball and we would have won the game!”

  My dad doesn’t even coach, by the way. He’s just that mad because I embarrassed him in front of his peers. And we lost. Losing is never ever acceptable in our house.

  Rollie played great. Our friend Clayton, the quarterback, tossed him a nice pass and Rollie scampered in for a touchdown.

  I scored twice too, but Rowen doesn’t care about that right now. You’re only as good as your last play and mine was a fumble.

  We were up by three when I took that last handoff. I got hit by the opposing team’s best player, Devontae Wilson, who doesn’t look like he’s nine by the way. He weighs over a hundred pounds easily and he’s taller than my mama.

  When Devontae’s body collided with mine I couldn’t hold onto the football. It popped right out from under my arm and a player from the other team fell on it before someone from my team could.

  I probably have a concussion from the way he slammed my head into the ground, but my dad could give a shit about that right now either. He’ll do worse than that when we get home I’m sure.

  “You’re the only two men in this family who haven’t won the junior pee-wee championships. What a fucking disgrace!” he continues his tirade.

  All I can think about is what he will do when we get home. I’ve been punished for far less than fumbling during, and as a result, losing, the most important game of my life so far.

  I cringe at the thought, silently praying for this ride home to never end.

  We pull into the driveway and I stare at our large, gray two-story house of horrors. We live in a nice neighborhood in Peachberry Park, just outside of Atlanta. It’s a peaceful city. My house? Anything but.

  I don’t make a move to get out of the car. I know what awaits me once I do.

  “Get the fuck out of my car you little bastard,” Rowen growls at me as he exits the car. His heart matches the black interior.

  Rollie is already out and carrying his pads into the house. I don’t expect him to help me. There’s nothing he, my other siblings, or my mama could do to stop whatever my dad has planned for me.

  My pads are in the back seat next to me. I grab them and slide out of the car. Walking up our sidewalk to the house I feel like I’m in the Green Mile - walking to my imminent death.

  Once inside, my dad slams the door behind me and I jump. My back is to him, but I can feel him moving around. Then I hear it. The undeniable clink when his unbuckles his belt.

  No, God, please no. Belts are the worst. I’d rather he just use his fists. The sting of tears prickles in my eyes so I squeeze them shut. I will never cry in front him. The more I cried when I was younger the harder he hit me. I still don’t understand why he hates me so much.

  “Turn around,” my dad says with a low, grave tone. Eerily calm for what I’m anticipating he’s going to do.

/>   I slowly turn to face him, still wearing my white jersey with Raiders across the front in black lettering.

  BAM! Rowen swing the belt and smashes the buckle across my face. The sting is sharp and I can immediately feel where my cheek splits open. The heat from the blow is searing on my skin.

  “That is for your fucking butterfingers. Fucking worthless bastard. I have no idea why I keep you around. You’re nothing but a disappointment to my name.”

  I can feel the warm blood dripping down my cheek and as I make a move to wipe it away Rowen slaps my hand.

  “Leave it,” he snarls. “You need a visual reminder of how you fucked up.”

  The logic is lost on me as a nine-year-old, but I don’t dare move. It will only make things worse.

  He stands in front of me, watching as I stand there and bleed onto my jersey. Some even drips onto the hardwood floor. I have no idea how long we stand face to face, Rowen just watching my blood drip, but eventually the bleeding slows and my cheek feels sticky.

  “Outside to the shed,” he finally says.

  I close my eyes for a moment. The shed is just a small maintenance building on the back of our property. Lawnmower, tools, and other property essentials are stored in there. It’s also a fucking torture chamber. Nothing good comes from going into the shed with Rowen.

  Rollie dropped a “for sure touchdown pass” in the pee-wee division a few years ago and Rowen put his hand in a vice and squeezed it so hard I’m surprised it didn’t break. Rollie was screaming like crazy until his hand went numb. Rowen left him in there for three hours to “think about what he did” during the game.

  “Face the wall,” Rowen tells me as we get into the shed. He’s changed out of his suit and into cargo shorts and an old gray t-shirt.

  I do as I’m told. I can hear my dad moving around. First, he opens the refrigerator and cracks what I assume is a beer. Then there is more shuffling around and it sounds like he’s opening packages of some kind as he chuckles to himself.

  The wait, not being able to see him and prepare for what is to come, is excruciating. Most of the time I can mentally prepare myself for whatever punishment is about to be handed down. It’s times like this when I don’t know what to expect that my heart is pounding of out my chest thinking about all the ways he’s going to make me pay for that fumble.

  “Turn around.”

  I do.

  “Hold out your hands.”

  Again, I comply.

  My dad places a football in my hands and I’m very confused until I see what was in the package he opened. Super Glue. My heart sinks to my stomach.

  Rowen removes the football from my hands, coats both hands in a thick layer of glue, hands the ball back to me and says, “Squeeze. Hard.”

  After a minute he tries to pull the ball from hands, but it is frozen in place. I wince at the feeling of the ball pulling on my skin as he tries to remove it from my hands. A smirk turns up in the corner of his lip.

  He grabs a wrench from the workbench. This isn’t going to be good.

  The pain that rockets through my hands, up arms and into my neck is agonizing as the glue pulls on my skin, and the vibration from the wrench hitting the ball is igniting my nerves on fire. Rowen takes swing after swing, hitting the football with the wrench. Occasionally, he misses and hits my hands causing them to involuntarily clench harder around the football stuck to them.

  “You’re nothing. A worthless piece of shit who can’t even hold onto a football,” he seethes at me.

  By the time he lets me out of the shed it’s dark. No one came looking for me, which isn’t surprising. When Rowen is pissed off its best just to let him finish whatever he started or incur his wrath.

  I missed dinner, my rumbling stomach and the dozen empty beer cans on the workbench tell me that. However, I’m not interested in food. I just want out of here. I want to be in my safe space, with her.

  With the football still stuck to my hands I run as fast I can into the cool Georgia night air. It feels good on my skin after hours stuck in that shed. The smell of beer, blood, and sweat clogging nostrils, but now I feel free.

  I get to Stanzy’s house and her bedroom light is on. Thank God.

  The two story Victorian with a wraparound porch is classic Georgia and it’s my favorite place in the world.

  Sneaking around back, I check the windows to the kitchen to make sure no one is currently sitting there. Her parents usually go to bed fairly early, but I don’t even know what time it is.

  When the coast is clear I pull myself up on the porch railing. Normally, I’d use the railing to get a boost onto the trellis, climb that until I could catch the edge of the roof, and pull myself up onto it, making my way to Stanzy’s window, but it’s a lot harder when my hands are otherwise occupied. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to be able to climb onto the roof like this.

  After a few failed attempts and a fall into the bushes I give up. Totally defeated and covered in scratches from the prickly bush.

  As I’m about to leave the backyard, I notice Stanzy’s curtains are blowing in the wind. Thank you, God. Her window is open.

  “Stanz!” I whisper-shout so her parents don’t hear me.

  “Stanzy!” I try again. She appears in the window, but she doesn’t see me. She’s just gazing out into the backyard.

  “Stanzy!” I whisper-shout a little louder. Now I’m flailing my arms like crazy while waving the football back and forth over my head.

  Her head tilts and she looks down, a smile spreading on her face.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I can’t climb up.”

  “Just put the football down and get up here before my mama sees you!”

  Her parents have no idea that I’ve been sneaking into Stanzy’s room on nights when I just can’t bring myself to go home. I’ve been doing this since I was seven, but it’s become more recent in the last few months. For some reason, Rowen’s anger towards me has escalated and she’s my haven, my safe place.

  “I can’t!”

  “Why?”

  “My dad glued it to my hands.” The words are bitter saying them out loud. I should be embarrassed, but I’m never embarrassed in front of Stanzy. She never judges me.

  I try to show her by shaking the ball with all my might. The force of my movements cause the ball to start move and rip my skin.

  “Meet me by the backdoor, but be quiet.”

  I nod.

  Stanzy opens the door with a creaking noise and freezes. After a second, no one shows up so she lets me in. She’s wearing a pale blue nightgown with wide straps on her shoulders and a lace design around her neckline. Her blonde hair is a mess, but she looks heavenly glowing in the moonlight that is lighting the kitchen. She truly is my angel in all the darkness. Deep thoughts from a kid who just got his ass kicked by his father.

  “What happened?” she asks, looking horrified, but still reaching a tiny hand to stroke my non-injured cheek. Football stuck to my hands, cheek slashed open, blood soaked into my jersey. I don’t even know how bad my face looks, but judging from her reaction it’s not pretty.

  “I fumbled.” She nods understandingly. This behavior has become normal for Rowen, which is really depressing.

  “Come on, Jess,” she whispers and wraps her arms around one of mine.

  Leading me upstairs to her bedroom, she cleans the glue off my hands with nail polish remover and a Q-Tip. Ever so gently so she doesn’t tear my skin. She uses some kind of antiseptic to clean my cheek and bandages it after she smears some ointment on it that “should help with the scarring.” Not that I care if it scars.

  After I’m cleaned up she sneaks into the laundry room and grabs one of her dad’s shirts.

  “It’s not clean, but it’s better than that,” she says and motions toward my bloody jersey.

  I slip off my jersey and my football pants so I can put the vintage Guns-N-Roses t-shirt on over my head. Huh, never pegged Cada Sutton for as a rock music kind of gu
y. He’s so proper. The t-shirt smells good. Like a man’s cologne, clean and fresh even though Stanzy said it was dirty. It still smells better than beer and sweat.

  Lifting her blanket, Stanzy slides into her bed as I walk around to the other side and climb in next to her. She rolls over to the face me.

  “I’m sorry this happened, Jess.”

  “I know.”

  “Here.” She hands me Pucker. A soft, pink stuffed pig that she’s had since she was really young. I love this stupid pig. It smells like Stanzy, flowery and like spring time. I snuggle it against my chest as Stanzy runs her hand through my hair, the gesture always helps me calm down after an incident.

  She’s always been the only person who’s shown me affection of any kind. Even though my mama loves us, she’s not allowed to “baby” us which means she can’t hug and kiss us for fear it will make us weak. Rowen put an end to coddling us when we were really young.

  By now, I’m calm, peaceful even, putting today’s episode behind me thanks to an ugly stuffed pig and my best friend resting on the pillow next to me.

  “Night, Jess,” Stanzy says as she squeezes me into a hug before her breathing slows and she drifts off to sleep.

  “Night, Stanz.”

  I don’t know what I would do without her.

  Chapter 1: Rhodes

  Present Day

  I’ve never felt so much pain in my life. Third down and three yards to go for a first down that would seal the win against Green Bay, our offensive coordinator called a run play that’s designed specifically for me in this situation.

  I was lined up in the back field behind our quarterback and on the snap we were set in motion. Trey turned, handed me the ball, which I secured with a cradle hold, and began my run to the right.

  Just as I rounded the corner off the shoulder of our offensive lineman, I planted my right foot to change direction and cut back middle when my ACL popped like an overstretched rubber band.

  I dropped like a sack of potatoes as the searing pain shot through my knee into my leg. After the initial shock and shooting pain subsided, a dull pain took over. And now I’m just lying here.