Can a sexy bet on a basketball tournament change their relationship status from frenemies to something more?
Bubbly Oliver Marshall has long been a pain in Edwin Schultz’s side. Now seniors and competing dorm resident advisors, the two are in constant conflict. However, Edwin’s been nursing a secret crush on Ollie for years. When Ollie proposes a bet on a basketball tournament, Edwin seizes the chance to get over his inconvenient feelings for Ollie.
One kiss. That will get Ollie out of his system. But Edwin’s not the only one suffering a case of unwanted attraction. Ollie doesn't understand why Edwin makes his pulse pound even as he drives Ollie up a wall with his strict adherence to rules. And now Ollie’s never been so eager to lose a bet in his life.
One kiss. Then another. Before they know it, they’re burning up the sheets. When their real challenge becomes avoiding their emotions, the two frenemies must risk their hearts to win a shot at lasting love.
Winning Bracket is a standalone, steamy, low-angst, opposites attract novella between a nerd and party boy. Originally published as part of the Campus Cravings bundle, Winning Bracket is now available on its own with a bonus epilogue/short story! The Winning Wedding bonus features a lost receipt which threatens their special day. Brand new cover, but same great story!
Chapter One
TO: Residents of Gilmore Hall
FROM: Oliver Marshall ohmarshall@cathia.edu
SUBJECT: Watch Party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Greetings my pretties!
Can you believe it? Cathia is in the NCAA March Madness for the first time in twenty-three years! And the second floor lounge in Gilmore Hall is your place for all your tournament watching. We’ll have the TVs tuned to the tournament starting with the first game Thursday all the way through the weekend. And don’t forget to get your brackets registered for the Cougar Bracket Challenge! Wouldn’t it be awesome if someone from our hall wins? I’ll have prizes for the best brackets from Gilmore as well.
For Friday’s BIG game, we’ve got pizza sponsored by the LGBT Alliance. Studying can wait! This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cheer our guys on national TV! So bring your munchies and bring yourself and come make some noise for our boys! Go Cougars!
~Your faithful 2nd Floor RA, Ollie
TO: Residents of Gilmore Hall
FROM: Edwin Schultz ezschultz@cathia.edu
SUBJECT: Rules Reminders
As I’m sure you are all aware, Cathia is a fifteenth seed in that national basketball tournament. I am told this means we will most likely have to deal with only one weekend of the “madness.” However, I wanted to remind ALL Gilmore Hall residents that all the usual rules will apply this weekend—including noise restrictions for quiet hours, visiting-hours, alcohol prohibitions and respect for fellow residents and property. MANY of your fellow residents will have no interest in these games, and their need to study MUST be respected above all else. Win or lose, let’s not be like those low-class schools and have a riot over a GAME. It’s just a game, people. One we are very likely to lose. Did you know that the graduation rate for Division One basketball players is under fifteen percent? How about we respect the students who are committed to their studies and graduation by not going too crazy this weekend? I WILL be enforcing the rules to ensure that we ALL have a safe and productive weekend.
Respectfully,
Your First Floor RA, Edwin
Rat-tat-tat. Edwin’s door rattled with building-on-fire forceful knocking. Before he could get the door halfway open, Ollie was waving his phone in Edwin’s face.
“Dude! I hope you’re happy.” Ollie barged into the room, door slamming shut behind him. Even the door knew to be wary of amped-up Ollie. This was exactly what Edwin’s Sunday night did not need.
“Can I help you with something?”
“Did it occur to you that you might want to talk to me before you went all Emperor Palpatine on our residents? Aren’t we supposed to be a team?”
“What? I merely reminded people that there are rules—”
“Dude. You’re trending as hashtag ‘buzzkill RA.’ People are sharing your email.” The fake crystal “O” on Ollie’s purple phone case caught the florescent light in Edwin’s room. Ollie shoved the phone in Edwin’s face. Scowling, Edwin snatched the phone from Ollie’s hand and looked at the screen. It showed some social media app, where indeed #buzzkillRA was appended to several posts.
“People put my email on Twitter? Campus emails are not supposed to be shared off-campus.”
“Oh yeah. Like that’s going to stop people from talking about your crazy-pants rant.” Ollie strode over to Edwin’s bed, not waiting for an invitation before he plopped down, rumpling Edwin’s blue comforter. He had a perfectly serviceable desk chair, but Ollie always ignored it in favor of occupying as much of Edwin’s personal space as possible.
Kicking off his sandals, Ollie tucked his feet—which were clad, of course, in rainbow argyle socks—underneath him, getting all cozy like he planned to stay for a nice long chat. As usual, he was dressed like a thrift store exploded. Wrinkled blue striped oxford shirt, colorful socks, plaid shorts—never mind that it had snowed last week—and hair sticking every which way. The hair was intentional. Edwin had watched his complicated blow-dry and product routine a time or twenty back when they had been freshmen in this dorm.
Edwin tossed Ollie’s phone on the bed. “The hashtag simply proves people are way too obsessed with a game.”
“Oh yeah. ‘Game.’” Ollie paused to make air quotes. Very dramatic air quotes. “Could you have used more all-caps in that email? Maybe get some bold and italics in there for variety? Just in case, you know, we’ve forgotten that floor one is a quiet floor. But, dude, not all of us are planning to do laundry Friday night. I’ve been planning the watch party for weeks!”
“For weeks? And you want to get mad at me for not talking to you before I sent my message? Did you ask me about the party? Did you submit a request for funds for the Alliance to pay for pizza?” Edwin paced from the bed as far as his tiny room allowed. RAs might have the perk of single rooms with private baths, but the room was barely big enough for Edwin’s bed, desk, and the bookcases he’d squeezed in along the back wall.
“Oh please, Mr. Scrooge, please can I have a tuppence for a crust of bread for me and my lads?” Ollie emphasized his atrocious British accent by leaning forward with cupped hands outstretched, his expression urchin-like, eyes wide and pleading
“Submit. A. Form.” Edwin refused to be moved by the cute. Everyone was moved by Ollie’s cute. Everyone overlooked the rules and procedures for Ollie. He was just that damn fun. Everyone loved him. But Edwin hadn’t been the treasurer of the Alliance for three years only to watch all his hard-won policies fly out the window for another one of Ollie’s crazy schemes.
“Do we have the funds, Mr. Treasurer?” Ollie picked up his phone and tapped at the screen. “Here. I, the over-burdened social chair, have formally submitted an email request. And didn’t you say at the last meeting that we were over nine hundred bucks in the black?”
“Maybe.” Edwin’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Ollie’s email no doubt. “Is sponsoring a party to watch a game played by straight, bigoted jocks really the best use of our resources?”
“Oh come on. Don’t you read Out Sports? Two Division One guys are out now. And you are unreasonably jock-biased. Don’t you think after three years you could learn some tolerance and acceptance of unfamiliar lifestyles?” Ollie batted his big brown eyes. Annoyingly appealing, those eyes. Their tilt, their burnt-sugar color, their perpetual mischievous twinkle.
Ha. He doubted tolerance and acceptance were what drove Ollie to be a jock chaser. More like hormones and unrealistic aspirations. Edwin had watched him through several obsessions—Ben the soccer player freshman year, Larry the lacrosse god sophomore year, Marco the seriously straight quarterback junior year. This year’s winner was Jace, the also probably straight star of the basketball team. Closest Ollie would come to scoring with Jace would be having one of Jace’s frat buddies pinch his ass. Getting ignored and dissed wouldn’t stop Ollie from trying—he would nurture his crush right up until the next hot jock caught his eye.
Not that Edwin was bitter. No. Not even a little. Ollie was just… Ollie. He was the human equivalent of a campus-wide hot tub party, spewing hot, bubbly affection for the athletically inclined. Meanwhile Edwin was the frozen North, plodding along, trying to endure his way to graduation. Whatever. Not like Edwin wanted to be on the receiving end of any of that affection. He might smother to death under the cute.
“Fine. Have the party. But I’m not budging on the usual rules. And you better keep receipts this time—I’m not cutting you a check for the pizza without a real receipt.”
“Hey, my credit card bill totes counts as real.” Ollie bristled like his inability to keep good records was all Edwin’s fault.
Edwin didn’t point out how nice it must be to have a parent-provided credit card that could easily absorb a hundred-dollar pizza hit. Instead, he looked meaningfully at his door. “You need anything else?”
Ollie didn’t take the hint, stretching out on the bed so the tails of his shirt rode up along his lean torso. Oh God, Edwin’s bed was going to smell like Ollie again. And tonight when he climbed into that bed, the image of Ollie’s shirt coming this close to showing some of that pink-gold skin combined with the intoxicating strawberries-and-Ollie smell would plague him until Edwin was forced to do something about it.
“You know, you don’t have to be Buzzkill RA. You could at least come to one of the watch parties. Help supervise?”
“I’ve got a Business Ethics mid-term paper due on Monday.” Edwin rubbed the back of his neck. His ethics professor was a major prick, and he was not going to let this class wreck his GPA.
“Aww.” Ollie made a sympathetic face. “Instead of going all spastic in an email, you could try this thing called talking. ‘Hey, Ollie, I’ve got a huge paper due. I’m worried about the noise level. Think you can keep a lid on things?’ Or other words that don’t get you immortalized in Internet memes.”
Edwin took a steadying breath.
Ollie meant well, he really did. He was one of the nicest guys on campus, but Ollie seldom walked his talk. He would promise to keep an eye on his residents and the noise, but then two a.m. would come and he’d be right in the thick of whatever noisy game they had going in the lounge, reluctant to send his guys packing off to their rooms. Not surprisingly, the residents all loved Ollie.
If anyone was going to keep the dorm from sliding into chaos, it would have to be Edwin. It had been that way ever since they had been freshmen—Ollie’s mom had checked the “quiet floor” box on his housing application for him, landing him next door to Edwin, and Edwin had spent the next three-and–a-half years trying to outrun Ollie’s party train.
Ollie kept looking at him, dark eyes patient and kind, like he really did care about Edwin and Edwin’s GPA. The dark slashes of his eyebrows were a contrast to his creamy skin and heart-shaped mouth, offsetting his elfin features with a masculine edge that had always intrigued Edwin.
Edwin exhaled a long, you-win sigh. “Maybe I’ll try not to go all RA Buzzkill while the games are on.”
“Awesomesauce! You should come grab some pizza too.” Ollie grinned widely, showcasing a row of perfectly white, straight teeth. Having an orthodontist dad had its perks—high limit credit cards and a gorgeous smile. “And you should do the bracket challenge!”
“For what reason?” Edwin refused to be dazzled by Ollie’s smile. Or charmed by Ollie’s attempts to rearrange the English language. If he wasn’t adding “-ie” sounds to perfectly good nouns, he was coining his own adjectives. Like “awesomesauce.” Ridiculous word.
“For fun.” Ollie snorted like Edwin had asked an absurd question. Like randomly picking game-winners from an array of schools Edwin had never heard of was the best way to spend Sunday. “I’ve got some great prizes lined up.”
“I don’t need a prize.”
“Oh come on. We could bet.” Ollie’s eyes sparkled. “Like if my final-four bracket beats yours, you host the watch party.”
“Dream on.” Edwin tried to ignore the feeling of intrigue curling low in his gut.
“Oh come on, Eddie. Think about what would happen if you won! Isn’t there something you want from me?”
You have no idea. Really, none. Edwin had spent the last three years being very, very careful to hide even a hint of “something” from the too-perceptive Ollie. This year had been the worst. Ever since August…
And okay, he was not going to think about August right then. Not with Ollie sitting on the bed looking all eager. Like he’d enjoy nothing more than making Edwin’s dreams come true, though Edwin knew that was far from the case.
Edwin wasn’t a jock, he wasn’t a party guy, he wasn’t tall, he wasn’t cute—he was nothing like the guys Ollie crushed on. No, Ollie was a lit firecracker, and Edwin knew better than to grab on and hope the bang wouldn’t explode in his face.
“I don’t know anything about the teams—no point in doing random guesses.”
“No point? The whole point of the tournament is random guesses! Grady won our floor’s pool last year by picking all dog mascots to advance and all cat mascots to lose. I kept track of the teams the whole season, and I came in second. There’s no way to predict which big-time teams are going to choke.”
“Choke?”
Ollie’s hands grabbed at his own throat, his fingers curving like claws, his eyes crossing, his mouth emitting horribly realistic gagging sounds. Right when Edwin started to get a bit worried, Ollie dropped his hands and grinned. “You know. Choke. Whiff on their chances. Lose even though everyone thought they’d win. But that’s the absolute best part of March Madness—the Cinderella stories. The tiny teams that no one sees coming, and they seize the moment!” Ollie’s hands grabbed at the air in front of him. Like the moment was a real thing to seize. Like randomness and chaos were things people should want.
“Cinderella stories?”
“Because they finally get a chance to go to the big dance.” Ollie’s hands stopped moving. His face sagged. Like Edwin’s lack of basketball IQ was zapping his energy. “Come on. You make some guesses, and if you’re right, I’ll do whatever you want. And if you’re wrong—”
“Hold up. If I filled out a bracket and mine beat yours, you’d do whatever I wanted? Like anything?”
“Sure.” Ollie shrugged, an insolent lift of surprisingly wide shoulders inside a too-big shirt. “I mean not all day. But sure, you want me to be a slave for an hour or something, I can take it.”
Ka-pow. The firecracker exploded, hot want raining down on Edwin, sparking against his skin. Anything. Ollie-as-slave images began to run on repeat in his brain, Ollie getting considerably less clothing with each pass. Edwin could ask for anything, and it would just be a joke to Ollie—a lark to be laughed over later, no more of a big deal than opening up with a can of silly string or shorting his sheets every night for a week.
Oh my God. Would it work? Could he use something like this—a stupid bet on stupid basketball—to exorcise the Ollie demons that had plagued him for years, all without having to admit how he felt about Ollie? Because while Ollie had been busy with the jock-crush-of-the-month plan, Edwin had been hung up on Ollie. For three and a half years. If a stupid bet could shake Edwin free, then it was worth having to learn something about basketball.
“Okay,” he whispered.
“Yay!” Ollie clambered off the bed, springs squeaking as he hit the floor. “You’ll see. This is going to be a great couple of weeks! So what are we going to play for this week? If my bracket does better by Sunday night, you send an email supporting the next watch party and you show up. And if you win…”
“I want a kiss.” The words escaped Edwin before he could call them back, before he could temper them with logic or suppress them with reality.
Annabeth Albert grew up sneaking romance novels under the bed covers. Now, she devours all subgenres of romance out in the open--no flashlights required! When she's not adding to her keeper shelf, she's a multi-published Pacific Northwest romance writer.
Emotionally complex, sexy, and funny stories are her favorites both to read and to write. Annabeth loves finding happy endings for a variety of pairings and is a passionate gay rights supporter. In between searching out dark heroes to redeem, she works a rewarding day job and wrangles two children.
Emotionally complex, sexy, and funny stories are her favorites both to read and to write. Annabeth loves finding happy endings for a variety of pairings and is a passionate gay rights supporter. In between searching out dark heroes to redeem, she works a rewarding day job and wrangles two children.
