Asher Henderson.
Captain of the Highnam Academy football team, and the bane of my existence.
As Alstone High’s team captain, I’ve been pitted against him from the beginning, but our conflict isn’t only reserved for the pitch.
Everyone knows we’re enemies. From our first encounter, our rivalry has been escalating, spiralling out of control.
Until one night when everything between us changed.
He pushed me too far, and we crossed a line that should never have been crossed.
Now, I can’t get him out of my head.
Can we ever be more than rivals, or are there too many obstacles in our way?
One thing I know for sure.
Things between us will never be the same again.
Savage Rivals is a standalone M/M new adult high school romance with enemies to lovers and gay awakening themes. This book contains mature situations and content.
*Originally included in the Brutal Boys on Devils Night collection. This edition of Savage Rivals has been expanded with additional content.
One
Asher
It hadn’t always been this way. The hate that pulsed inside me like a drum, a constant beat that echoed in my head.
Now, it consumed me.
It was all his fault.
Levi Woodford.
Number Seven.
“I don’t get why you want to do this.” Talia, one of my best friends and former on-again, off-again girlfriend, shook her head. “You’re just going to make it worse. Can’t you call a truce or something?”
“A truce? Are you serious?” Attempting to keep my voice calm, I gave her a rundown of the situation for what felt like the fiftieth fucking time. “You know that Highnam Academy and Alstone High have been football rivals forever. Now that dickhead Seven is captain of Alstone’s team, he’s trying to throw whatever intimidation tactics he can at me. It’s my responsibility as Highnam’s team captain to stop him.”
“How is offering to fight him in front of a crowd stopping him?” She huffed, annoyed. “Sometimes it feels like I don’t even know you, the way you’ve been obsessing over him lately, since you both started this whole rivalry thing.”
“Obsessed? No. It’s a matter of pride and showing him that he can’t get away with his behaviour.” I ignored her muttering, “As if you’re any better,” and continued. “If I can beat him on and off the field, he’ll lose respect.” I grinned at the thought. “He deserves a fucking beating anyway after what he did last week. Breaking into our school gym and messing with our shit was crossing a major line.”
“I can definitely agree with you there.” Talia’s mouth twisted. “But I really don’t like the idea of you fighting him. It’s so…uncouth.”
“Uncouth, you say? Right.”
She studied me, brushing her jaw-length honey-blonde hair out of her eyes as she tilted her head. Attempting to hide her smile, she gave a huge, exaggerated sigh. “Times like this remind me why it never worked out between us. We’re too…”
“Different?” I suggested when she seemed to be struggling to find words. She was right, though. We’d been more off than on, our relationship more of a convenience than anything else. Easy, effortless. But Talia was too good for me, too clever, too nice, in all honesty, and she deserved more than what I could give her.
“Different. Yes. We work better as friends, don’t we?” She finally let me see the smile pulling at her lips.
I returned it as I stretched, kicking out my legs in front of me. “We argue less when we’re friends, that’s for sure.”
A snort of laughter escaped from her. “That’s true. We were never right for each other. What you need is someone as crazy as you, who can handle your unique Asher-ness.”
“Asher-ness.” I raised a brow. “I hope that’s not an insult.”
Still smiling, she climbed off my bed and came to stand next to my desk chair, dipping down to kiss the top of my head. “It’s not an insult. You know I love you.” She sighed. “I just wish you’d listen to me, but I know you never will. You’re way too stubborn for that.”
Straightening up, she tucked her hair behind her ear, shooting me a concerned glance before heading for my bedroom door. “Don’t see me out. Look, I’ll be there to cheer you on at the game, okay? I’m on your side, Ash. Always. Just don’t let yourself get so caught up in this obsessive rivalry that you lose focus of everything else.”
“Thanks, T. I won’t.” I was lying through my teeth, and Talia knew it. Levi had to answer for what he’d done, and I was going to be the one to make him pay.
Obsessed, she mouthed, slipping out of the door before I could say anything else.
Talia was wrong. I wasn’t obsessed with that fucking bastard. I told myself this, even as I found myself driving towards Alstone at 10:00 p.m. My mum was in bed—not that she cared when I was home. Since I’d turned eighteen, she’d told me that now I was an adult, I could do whatever I wanted. Like I hadn’t been doing that already. My deadbeat dad hadn’t been on the scene since I was six, so I had no one to answer to, other than my nosy as fuck friends.
But this was my secret. Gathering intel. Not obsession.
There was a difference.
The thirty-minute drive passed in no time, and soon I was pulling into a space at the side of the road just outside Parton Park, two hundred acres of parkland and sports facilities, including a skate park with ramps and pipes, and a long wall behind it, covered in colourful graffiti.
The skate park was my destination.
Drawing my hood up to shadow my face, I jogged towards the crowds surrounding the massive, scooped-out bowl that was normally full of skaters, except on nights like this. Sunday nights. Fight nights.
Fight nights and football games were the only times when Alstone High School and Highnam Academy were on a level playing field. The rest of the time, they acted like they were too good for the rest of us. Just because they were rich, spoilt brats used to having whatever money could buy. You had to pay to go to school at Alstone High, for fuck’s sake, and the annual fees alone were more than my mum made in a year working full-time at the supermarket warehouse. As far as I was concerned, education was a right, not a privilege.
Last year hadn’t been quite so bad. Carter Blackthorne had been captain of the Alstone High football team, and he’d been alright. A fair player and a decent fighter—he and his best mate, Kian, had won more fights at the bowl than anyone else. He hadn’t been interested in our rivalry outside the football field, and that was fine by me.
This year, everything had changed.
Carter had graduated, gone to university, and in his place there was a new captain.
Levison Woodford, known as Levi to almost everyone.
I called him Seven, after his football number.
The bastard started it first. Calling me “Ten” the very first time we’d played against each other in a preseason “friendly” match, sneering out the word as if it was an insult. Well, fuck him, because I was proud of that number on my football shirt.
All because I’d refused to shake his hand in the prematch ritual, and I’d only done that because of the look he’d given me. A condescending, disdainful look, like he thought I was scum. Beneath him in every way. Like I wasn’t even worthy enough to be breathing the same air as him. Shouldn’t have expected any less from someone who had parents that thought Levison was a good name for a kid.
Things had gone downhill after that point. We’d been on each other’s heels the whole match, right up until the eighty-third minute. My best friend and teammate, Danny, got tackled and dived, playing up his injury, and the referee had ruled in our favour, giving the Alstone High player a red card and us a penalty.
After that minute, Levi had been out for blood. I’d hold my hands up and admit that I hadn’t helped the situation by gloating, but we’d both earned yellow cards from our purposeful tackles against one other. By the time the final whistle blew and the game ended in a 1-0 win for Highnam Academy, both of us were completely fucking wound up, and if the game had gone on any longer, I know we both would have ended up being sent off the pitch with red cards.
It had only got worse since then, starting with taunts on social media and escalating to last week’s vandalism of our school property by the AHS players. That had been the final straw.
So I’d put my plan into place, and it was time to begin.
Making my way through the crowds surrounding the bowl, I kept my face lowered, choosing to remain anonymous. I’d timed it just right. Standing with my hands in my pockets, behind a couple of girls sitting on the lip of the bowl, I stared down to see Levi circling another guy in the pit.
His normally impeccably styled ash-brown hair was mussed and falling into his eyes, and instead of his perfectly pressed clothes, he was wearing jeans that hung low on his hips and no top.
I sucked my lip between my teeth, studying him for weaknesses that I could exploit. I hadn’t been expecting him to be so…defined. He was deceptively lean with clothes on, but even from where I was standing, I could see his muscles flexing, so taut and hard, his body coiled tight, waiting to spring on his opponent. Everything about him was harsh lines and angles, and his silver eyes were cold. If it hadn’t been for those long, blond-tipped lashes and his soft, full lips, he would—
Hold the fuck up. I gave myself an internal shake. Levi’s face wasn’t important, other than the fact that I’d like to mar it with a few bruises. And hopefully I’d be getting the chance, sooner rather than later.
As the fight started, I watched intently, looking out for any moves he favoured or any tells that would give me an advantage when it came to me fighting him. When the whistle blew and the referee held Levi’s hand up, announcing him as the winner, I couldn’t even find it in myself to be irritated by his smug, arrogant smile, my mind too busy cataloguing every move he’d made. He favoured his left side, and he always dropped his fist right before he hit his opponent with a right hook. It could be something that would give me an advantage, and I was going to need it. Despite the fact that I could hold my own, this fucker was good. Better than good.
I needed to face him in the bowl. And there was no way I was going to let him win.
Slipping away from the crowds, I moved on to the second part of tonight’s mission and settled down to wait.
“Nice fight.”
Levi threw me his usual disdainful look, seemingly unsurprised to see me. “Following me, Ten? I suppose I should be flattered, but…it’s you. Move away from my car, now, before you contaminate it.”
I remained where I was, leaning against the side of his rich-boy car—an orange-and-black McLaren 540C—with my arms folded across my chest. “Nah, I don’t think I will.”
His grey eyes flashed, his lip curling into a sneer, and I smiled. Getting a rise out of the person I hated more than anyone else was so satisfying.
“What do you want?” he finally asked in a clipped voice when it was clear that I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Does your daddy know that his precious boy likes to get his hands dirty at the bowl?”
I could hear him grinding his teeth, his hands fisting at his sides. “You can leave now.”
“Why would I do that?” Pushing off his car, I drew myself up to my full height. Unfortunately, I was only slightly taller than him, but it still counted in my opinion. “Don’t you want to talk to me?”
“What makes you think I’d have anything I wanted to say to you?” He stepped forwards, his chest brushing against mine, and the image of his toned torso flashed through my mind, completely without warning.
“You. Me. Fight,” I ground out, suddenly flustered.
“Don’t they teach you how to speak in full sentences at Highnam Academy?”
“Shut the fuck up, Seven.” I pushed against him, knocking him off balance. His arm flew out, his long fingers gripping my bicep and digging in. He immediately released me as if he’d been burned, a noise that sounded like a growl coming from his throat.
Regaining my composure, I leaned back against his car. “Bit growly for a posh boy, aren’t you?”
Levi’s reply was to bare his teeth at me. “You’re the one who can’t speak in full fucking sentences.”
“He swears, too. Maybe I am a bad influence,” I mused, watching his grey eyes darken, the tips of his ears turning red as he stared at me as if he was trying to incinerate me with his eyes. “Better stop that before you burst a blood vessel.”
When the punch came, I was prepared, but I still staggered back against his car with the force of the blow. Still, I smiled as I wheezed out a breath, because it meant I’d managed to make him lose his cool, to get under his skin.
“You’re nothing but Highnam scum. A bully with not even two brain cells to rub together, on a loser team. Your little world is so sad that you have to try and provoke me just to make your pathetic life feel a bit better.” The contempt in his eyes froze me in place. “Tell me, Ten. Does it make you feel good to come here and—”
“Fucking shut up!” Shoving at him, I knew I’d properly lost my composure this time, but somehow he’d managed to push my buttons, and now I was just as angry as he was. “You brought this on yourself. If you hadn’t been such an asshole in the first place, maybe things wouldn’t have escalated.”
“Me?” The shock in his tone was clear. Like I’d expect anything less. He’d never take the blame for anything.
“Yes. You. I say we work this shit out once and for all, in the bowl. Pick a date, and we’ll make it happen.”
Silence fell.
“I’m not fighting you.” The anger went out of his tone, and a mask slipped into place, his features blank. “Now get away from my car. I’ve had enough of slumming it for one evening.”
“What’s the matter? Too scared to fight me?”
“Yeah. So scared.” He shoved me aside, which I wasn’t expecting, and dived into his car, locking the doors behind him.
I jumped back as the engine started up with a roar, and all I could do was throw up my middle fingers as he left me for dust with the sound of revving engines and squealing tyres echoing in my ears.
Becca Steele is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling romance author. She currently lives in the south of England with a whole horde of characters that reside inside her head.
When she’s not writing, you can usually find her reading or watching Netflix. Failing that, she’ll be online hunting for memes, or wasting time making her 500th Spotify playlist.
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