Redemption (Cambria University #2) Read online

  Redemption

  Cambria University Series, Book 2

  Sadie T. Williams

  Copyright © 2020 Sadie T. Williams

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and the work of the author's imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. The book is not associated with any product, vendor, or brand mentioned. None of the entities mentioned within the book have endorsed the book.

  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.

  ISBN-13: 9798651156474

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

  Tennessee Williams

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Donovan

  August

  Chapter 2: Maisy

  Chapter 3: Donovan

  Chapter 4: Maisy

  Chapter 5: Maisy

  Chapter 6: Donovan

  Chapter 7: Maisy

  Chapter 8: Donovan

  Chapter 9: Maisy

  Chapter 10: Donovan

  Chapter 11: Maisy

  Chapter 12: Donovan

  Chapter 13: Maisy

  Chapter 14: Donovan

  Chapter 15: Maisy

  Chapter 16: Donovan

  Chapter 17: Maisy

  Chapter 18: Donovan

  Chapter 19: Maisy

  Chapter 20: Donovan

  Chapter 21: Maisy

  Chapter 22: Maisy

  Chapter 23: Donovan

  Chapter 24: Maisy

  Chapter 25: Donovan

  Chapter 26: Maisy

  Chapter 27: Donovan

  Chapter 28: Maisy

  Chapter 29: Donovan

  Chapter 30: Maisy

  Chapter 31: Donovan

  Chapter 32: Donovan

  Chapter 33: Maisy

  Chapter 34: Donovan

  Chapter 35: Maisy

  Chapter 36: Donovan

  Chapter 37: Maisy

  Chapter 38: Donovan

  Chapter 39: Maisy

  Chapter 40: Donovan

  Chapter 41: Maisy

  Chapter 42: Maisy

  Chapter 43: Donovan

  About The Author

  Praise For Author

  Books By This Author

  - Excerpt -

  Acknowledgement

  Chapter 1: Donovan

  August

  “Coach Hayes is in a fucking mood today, boys!” I shout as I squeeze Gatorade from a bottle into my mouth during a break at practice. It’s only 6:15 in the morning and we’ve been out here for almost an hour. Having three-a-day practices since the beginning of August basically means we get our asses kicked in the morning, afternoon, and evening until the sun sets, with breaks just long enough to eat something from the cafeteria to heave it back up during the next round of conditioning. It’s the consensus of the team that our coach is on a mission to kill us since it’s our last week before school starts. We’ve done more up-downs today than I think I did my entire junior season. Fuck my life.

  But, it’s a perfect August morning for football in Woodbury with a slight breeze, a few clouds, and just enough sunshine to make it warm. As team captain this season, I’m in charge of the defense. I’d give my left nut for any one of my teammates, and they’d do the same. I fucking love this sport and this school, even if I’m about to puke up my protein shake onto the turf.

  Cambria University sits just outside of Boston and is home to my Golden Knights. I gaze around the stadium, known as “The Fortress,” that has been my sanctuary for the past three years. It’s a large, gray-stone, open-air stadium with large turrets on the north and south entrances. The Fortress seats about seventy thousand people, and thanks to our national championship last season, most of those black plastic seats get filled every Saturday. The whole stadium is buzzing right now with about a hundred and twenty football players, who are all vying for a spot on the team.

  By now, my senior year, I’m known as the hardest hitting linebacker to ever play for the Golden Knights. Growing up in Manhattan, I didn’t fit in. Maybe I was born with a silver spoon shoved up my ass, but I’m not a preppy candy-ass like the rest of my classmates at Dayton Prep were. I’m six-feet-two-inches tall and a rock solid ball of muscle and attitude. Cut, thick and mean as hell. With my size, attitude and my tats, I’m pretty fucking intimidating, and I love the image I’ve built. I didn’t wear fucking monogrammed sweaters and dock shoes on the weekends. I fight, I fuck, and I am a tatted-up train wreck without a conscience. I’m not really the type of guy you bring home to meet your parents.

  I had your typical Upper East Side family – rich-ass absentee parents, raised by a nanny, and a substantial trust fund. My dad, George, owns The Echelon Group. He’s always at a meeting, dinner or drinks with clients, or working on his latest project. My mom, Eleanor Huntington Blake, is a British fashion mogul who has made clothes for big-name designers from Chanel to Dior, but she mainly works under her own label, EHB. She’s always jetting to Paris or Milan or working in her rented warehouse space with her team. My little sister, Mia, is a senior in high school and a complete shit-show. She’s been in rehab twice already and things aren’t looking any better these days. I partied hard and fucked a lot in high school, but Mia is on a whole new level. Welcome to the Upper East Side.

  In high school, football and boxing became my outlet from the mundane existence I lived in. Yeah, feel sorry for the angry rich boy. Don’t get me wrong, I had it easy growing up without consequences and I had plenty of fun at Dayton Prep, but while my friends were getting shitfaced or snorting enough cocaine to kill a small horse, I was boxing at a gym in Queens. Eventually, I worked with an up-and-coming MMA fighter who took a liking to a punk kid from Manhattan. We sparred often and I learned a lot from him. Football and boxing let me hit people legally. Our high school football team was horseshit, but I was recruited to Cambria because my parents are alumni and donated a shitload of money to the school. Makes a person feel really good to never know if you’re actually wanted or if your parents bought your way into Calvin’s sixth birthday party, or Evelyn’s sweet sixteen, or your collegiate football scholarship.

  “Get your pansy asses back on the goal line!” Coach Hayes shouts through his bullhorn, bringing me back to the present. Tension, excitement and anxiety are at an all-time high since we’re the reigning champs. We upset Louisiana State University last season to win Cambria’s first ever national championship in football. Coach wants a repeat. Good fucking luck with that. We’re going to be lucky if we make it to a bowl game this year.

  Our star quarterback, and one of my roommates, Brooks “Mac” McCarthy, declared for the draft after we won. He swore he was coming back for his senior year, but he had a helluva difficult year, and besides, no one expected us to win it all our junior year. I can’t blame him. We rode his arm all last year, and he rode the wave after our big win. I miss the fucker. The only time it appears I may have a heart is when it comes to my roommates. I’m loyal as fuck to those assholes.

  This year, we got a transfer from the University of Washington as a replacement QB. A scrawny little piece of work named Jaxon Taylor. He’s about my height, but I’ve got him by at least thirty pounds. He can sling it alright, but he’s
no McCarthy. Coach asked us if he could move in with us since Brooks is gone and this kid is an upperclassman like us. My fucking roommates said yes because they’re balls are deep in Coach’s pocket.

  I look over at the freshman next to me and he looks like he’s about to show us his breakfast. I pat him on the back. “If you puke on me I swear to God I will strangle you with your own shoelace,” I growl as I choke down my own vomit. “No mercy, bitches!” I shout as I run back to my unit. Captains don’t show weakness.

  “Get your pansy asses on that line!” Coach bellows again. Coach Hayes is a great guy. I’d run through a wall for that man, but shit, he can run a team into the ground when we don’t perform. The whistle blows as we are off, again and again and again and again.

  Chapter 2: Maisy

  I’m going to miss this. The sounds of the ocean, the breaking waves, the birds squawking as they fly overhead, the feeling of the waves rolling underneath my surfboard. I love taste of the salty droplets that occasionally jump from below when a wave hits my board and land on my lips. I leave for college in one week and despite my love for the ocean, I can’t wait to get out of here. Cambria University is an east suburb of Boston, totally landlocked, but it’s all the way across the country. That’s the reason I chose it. Anonymity and a generous scholarship.

  It’s seven o’clock in the morning and I’m lying on my back on my board in my black bikini with the sun shining on my body. My arms and legs are sprawled out to the side of my board and I’m just letting the water take me away, my long black hair floating behind me like seaweed. I should have left for work by now, but instead I’m staring at the cloudless, beautiful baby-blue sky above. I’m on borrowed time here.

  If I’m not out here surfing or floating, I’m usually lying on the beach with my toes in the sand reading. I love reading novels and I’ve read most of the ones considered “great books.” Novels allow me to avoid my reality and get lost in someone else’s life. Books are beautiful in that way.

  Books and the ocean are my sacred places. My hiding places that I’ve gone to since I was a child. While the ocean frees my body, books free my mind.

  The Pacific would swallow me whole if she got the chance. She’s peaceful, yet terrifyingly unforgiving if you wrong her. I’m at her mercy and I love feeling vulnerable when I have to be so strong in real life. Books allow me to escape and be someone else. My mind is consumed by someone else’s words, and I can get lost in the pages. It’s the timeout I need from life and being, well, me.

  “Maze!” I hear Bates shout as he paddles over on his board.

  Alistair Bates is a drop-dead gorgeous millionaire who happens to be one of my best friends. Convenient, right? Except he’s never looked at me as anything other than a sister – except once.

  Bates dropped out of Vista del Cielo High School when we were sophomores. His dad is a billionaire oil tycoon, and he’s content mooching off his parents for the rest of his life. He is California gorgeous, basically a hotter version of every guy that attended VCHS, with chin-length, wavy, sun-kissed blond hair that is always wet and perfectly messy, a superior tan, and lean muscles. His board shorts hang so low you can follow his treasure trail almost all the way down to his hidden jewels. His ripped abs make a perfect V-shape from his hip bones on down. His nose is a bit crooked from when he broke it as a child, his teeth are white and his incisors are a bit bigger than the rest, but his imperfections are sexy as hell. They peek out from his luscious lips, which are highlighted by a silver hoop in the corner of the lower one. His chiseled jawline is covered by blond whiskers, because he doesn’t care enough to shave, and they tickle your skin when he gets close. His dark blue eyes are the color of the deepest part of the ocean where all the danger lives. He has so many tattoos he could be a Machine Gun Kelly impersonator. He’s always high and has zero motivation to leave Vista del Cielo or his surfboard.

  So, that “except once” happened when we were fifteen and my life had just gone to shit. Traumatic events mess with our minds and our emotions, and as an emotional fifteen-year-old who was about to become homeless, I wasn’t thinking clearly the night I gave my virginity to Bates. But the way he looked at me that night made me feel something other than the shame of my normal life. As a result, I thought I felt something for him that I now know was not love. For him or for me.

  I knew he wasn’t a virgin at the time, which didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that he slept with a classmate the following weekend, and his reckless disregard of my emotions crushed me at the time. It just proved that our encounter meant nothing to him. Notch on the bedpost and all that.

  I learned then that there is a difference between loving someone and being in love. I don’t regret sleeping with him and allowing my first time to be with someone I trusted, but I have definitely learned from my experiences, first with my parents, and then with Bates, to better protect my heart.

  Everything in life is a learning experience. All failure is just a chance to improve. If I didn’t believe that I would have let the Pacific swallow me years ago. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn in my life, and I’ve taken every opportunity that has presented itself, including an almost-full academic scholarship to Cambria.

  “What’s up, man?” I say casually without moving from my position on my board. He looks chill and simply gorgeous, as always. He tosses his head to the side, which sends his long locks flying and sprays water off of them.

  “Lookin’ good, babes.” He gestures toward my body floating on my board and licks his lip ring. My tiny five-foot, two-inch frame is ripped from my years of surfing. I have toned abs and lean muscles, and thanks to my mother’s Colombian roots, my skin is always bronzed. My favorite part of my body though? The two small, swooping black swallows tattooed on my collarbone. One on each side. Legend has it that when one drowns the swallows come down and carry our soul to the heavens. I’ve never been afraid of the ocean, regardless of her power. But just in case, it can’t hurt to believe my soul will be safe on the wings of these graceful birds.

  “Love those birds, sweetness,” he smirks while staring straight at my chest, “but those perfect B cups would look better in my hands.” Since I’m always broke, Bates paid for my tattoos on the condition he could watch them being done. I forgot to mention he’s a ridiculous flirt and takes dirty talk to a new level. It took a hot minute, but I’ve accepted that his words are empty, and that’s just his way. Bates is simply Bates.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be to work soon?” he questions when he finally pulls his eyes off my chest and realizes I’m not going acknowledge his shot about my small boobs.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to go,” I sigh.

  “You never want to go,” he replies.

  “Serving coffee to lawyers or running errands for their PAs is not my idea of a good time when I could be out here, but sadly, I need the money.”

  “Blowie in the Surf Hut bathroom before you go? That’d be a good time.” He winks at me. “For me.”

  “Hard pass.”

  “Well you got part of that right,” he says as he shoves his hand into his board shorts and shakes it around.

  “I’m going to miss your disgusting attempts at flirting, Bates,” I reply and sit up as my board rocks underneath me.

  “You know you could be surfing all day if you just lived with me,” he reminds me for what feels like the millionth time. He offered me a place to stay when I lost my home, but I don’t do pity or charity, so I always say no when he asks.

  “Don’t bring this up again, bro. You know I would never take advantage of our friendship like that. I gotta go. I’ll see you tonight at Pete’s.” Bates knows my struggles with my family and my deepest secrets. He knows that my mom abandoned me when I was just four years old and that my dad is incarcerated. Those little life events really caused some self-esteem issues. We’ve all heard of daddy issues – well, I have mommy and daddy issues. I hit the parental jackpot. I shut down for years and felt worthless and unworthy. Bates sa
ved me for a hot minute – or tried the best he could until his instinct to be a man-whore took over.

  One day, Juliana Rossi just up and left and we never saw her again. From what I was told, she was a Colombian stunner with dark hair, flawless tanned skin, chocolate eyes, and a perfectly symmetrical face that should have graced the cover of Vogue. My dad always said that I look a lot like my mom. They met while he was in Tumaco and saw my mom in a restaurant. He swept her off her feet with his good looks, charm, and money. They were married before they even crossed the border back into the U.S.

  My dad, Andrew “Drew” Knight, bought a house in Vista del Cielo, which is one of the richest zip codes in the country and right on the Pacific Ocean. It boasts one of the best public school systems in the country and since I’m, and I quote, “gifted,” it seemed like the perfect fit. I didn’t attend high school much, basically graduating by the end of my sophomore year. I decided to take every college-level general education course I could at UCLA because they were free through the school district as long as I was enrolled as a high school student. Basically, half of my college education was paid for before I graduated high school.

  I would like to say that my dad did what he thought was best, but I’d be lying. My dad was a drug smuggler long before my mom bailed. He was known as “El Camaleón,” or The Chameleon. He was good at hiding and blending in wherever. He was a rich white male in a world of Colombian drug dealers, able to smooth talk his way through any situation and hide in plain sight. That’s why he was a top dog in the El Cartel del León, the Colombian Lion Cartel. He didn’t get there by chance.

  Like Bates, my dad is California handsome. Blond hair and sapphire eyes – I get my eyes from him – and a strong jawline that make it seem like his features were carved in stone. When he was younger, he would have given Bates a run for his money being the most handsome guy in Vista del Cielo.