Chapter Text
Charlotte Heywood, a brilliant student, at Lone Star University was halfway into the semester when she was hired by the university, mainly to tutor athletes. Even though she had just turned 18 years old a few months before starting college, she was a prodigy in English, Literature and Philosophy.
Charlotte had applied for a tutoring position located at the center of campus just outside the main library of Lone Star University, with the Pit Crew, the name for the tutoring center, and was asked to report to the athletic department.
Charlotte rolled her eyes when she was told about this below-the-table organized tutoring arrangement where parents paid hefty sums of money personally so that their child could continue to excel in their given sport while getting the best tutoring available on campus. She didn’t see why athletes deserved a prime spot and not allow other students the same level of tutoring. However, at least in her case, money talked.
An assistant coach for the football team came to Charlotte early in the semester wanting her to help tutor a football player. When she realized who she was going to tutor, she realized he was the most well-known athlete on campus, having been the quarterback to lead the team to two championships during his four years of play, and had also won the Heisman Trophy the previous school year.
She was told by the assistant coach how imperative it is that Sidney pass the class, since they were fully expecting him to be a first-round draft pick if he carried this season as well as the past ones and could slip by with no injuries. She knew who Sidney Parker was by seeing his face plastered everywhere on campus and social media. He was already a star in his own right. People loved him. He won games and brought the university back to the position it had once held in people’s minds as being a winning football team.
Everywhere she went on campus, she noticed students wearing his jersey with the number 2 and Parker plastered on the back. It annoyed her how much attention one person could get just because he could throw a ball, to be honest. She had never had much tolerance for athletes, especially those as good as he was… and knew what power that held, especially among football players. Where she had gone to high school, football was king. She knew firsthand the egos that went along with being a relatively good player. She couldn’t imagine how this guy’s helmet fit his head, given how much attention he garnered.
~
However, after meeting Sidney Parker and tutoring him for the past three months, anyone would understand her dilemma. He was devastatingly handsome, at 6’2”, with wavy dark brown hair and honey brown eyes that she could spend all day looking into. He was muscular, with lean muscle, like most quarterbacks..
Charlotte was always considered a book nerd. She read literature and philosophy for fun, starting when she was around 12 years old, reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time. She joined online discussion groups with those double or triple her age, simply because literature fascinated her. She moved on to more complex reading and had soon earned her reputation.
High school coursework had been a breeze for her. Her school leaders had wanted to move her up a few grades, but her parents insisted she stay with her class. They didn’t particularly care to send their daughter away to college at 16. She was barely 18 when she started her college classes, as it were. Charlotte didn’t hurt for friends necessarily and never felt like she wasn’t desired by boys. However, boys didn’t swarm around her like they did some of the other girls, mostly because of her hyperfocusing on her studies in order to take the top spot as valedictorian.
Dating seemed to be a waste of time to her. She would date when she was ready to marry. Most of her friends from Wilingden were already wearing engagement rings and putting their wedding plans into place, satisfied with staying in their hometown. There was nothing wrong with that. It just wasn’t in her plans to go that route. College had been on her radar for as long as she could remember.
Charlotte’s feelings towards boys had never been challenged until she had to sit close to Sidney two nights a week, sometimes three, and help him with his philosophy class. When she first started tutoring Sidney, he had a girlfriend named Eliza. She was a gorgeous sorority girl. She was everything one would expect his girlfriend to look like when she started coming along with him to his tutoring sessions several weeks in.
Eliza was tall and slender, with bleached-blonde hair and crystal-blue eyes. She couldn’t blame Sidney for dating her. They were the perfect match, like a real life Barbie and Ken. When Eliza posted a photo on social media of the two of them looking adorable and madly in love, it put a damper on her crush. That’s all it took to remind her to keep their tutoring all business.
Then one day, Eliza stopped coming. They’d had three sessions so far without Eliza, and her curiosity got the best of her. When Charlotte asked about her, he simply said they had broken up. He didn’t go into detail as to why.
The tutors had a private room at the library where they met with students, but as the semester progressed, students had figured out Sidney’s tutoring schedule. The librarian told her that Sidney being in the library was too distracting, and Charlotte agreed. They could not seem to get through a session without someone coming up to him wanting to talk football. Several times, gaggles of girls stood in line for tutoring only to get a glimpse of him, one girl walking up to them and slipping him her number and another flat out asking if she could wait for him outside.
After telling Sidney about the librarian’s concern, he picked up his books and asked her to follow him. They walked across campus to a very quiet and less popular library in another building. They were able to secure a room there and be behind a closed door with a small window. The library was most frequented by grad students, so there was little chance of being interrupted. She changed their meeting times to make sure he was her last student of the day so she wouldn’t have to rush back over to the tutoring center for her next appointment.
As the semester progressed, she found herself watching the games on TV and even attending a few of the big rival games, even though she cared nothing for football. She never let on to him about it, but seeing his photo splattered across the screen sometimes made her heart skip a beat. The last month or so had been a mixture of emotions for Charlotte. She had realized he was really a nice guy, not the cocky jock that everyone, she included, thought he would be.
They laughed together and had fun. Sometimes she caught him gazing at her as she spoke. He asked her to read to him sometimes, saying his eyes were tired. She would look up, feeling his gaze, and sure enough, his eyes were locked on her like she was the flame and he was the moth. It made her stomach plummet, a feeling she was unfamiliar with. It was nothing he had ever said. He never really said anything outright. But the casual touches, his scent, that raw masculinity, left her breathless. When it had suddenly turned cool one day and he noticed she was cold, he slipped out of his sweatshirt and gave it to her. He had a t-shirt on underneath and sacrificed his comfort for hers. Even though the sweatshirt swallowed her, she felt like she was enveloped in his warmth, the smell of his soap, and a faint cologne. It made her want to bury her face in it.
~
Sidney came out of the test feeling good. He had never felt so good about a test in his life, especially in philosophy that he had taken for the second time. The class was one he should have passed last year, and he was sure his coaches were the only reason he had been able to put it off until his last semester of college. They handled all his schedules for him and made sure his last semester included only the philosophy class and a blowoff class.
His parents had never raised him to think he would be a college football player, much less play for the NFL. Hard work and determination had gotten him where he was. The love of the game made it easy to be his best. Thankfully, he was graced with height, a natural agility, the ability to think fast and a good eye for placing a football into someone else’s hands from a distance.
Even through his successful high school career of football in Sanditon, his parents made sure he understood it was a blessing to have a full-ride scholarship to a top university to play a game he loves, and to not take it for granted. Use the scholarship to get his education, and that should come first because even though it was rare to be able to play football in college, the odds of playing past that level were next to impossible. They always believed in him and let him know that, but they had also let him know his worth was not tied to his ability to throw a ball.
He had texted Charlotte to let her know he was done with his test.
Charlotte had become a fixture in his life when his coaches had set him up to meet with her twice a week so he could pass the ridiculous philosophy course. The class just wasn’t his thing.
He hated the class and everything about philosophy and literature. But when he walked in and was introduced to Charlotte Heywood, the pretty little brunette who spoke with a faint British accent, he pretty much overnight developed an interest in anything she was going to teach. He didn’t think meeting with her twice a week would be all that bad after all.
Of course, there was Eliza. She was his girlfriend, and he had once thought he loved her. But at some point the past summer, he had realized he had rarely even given any thought to her, to send her a text or to call her. When he’d looked at his phone that day, he’d had at least 12 unanswered texts from her freaking out about him not responding. He’d send her an obligatory text telling her he had been busy and not to take it personal.
He was mostly away at conditioning camps and working with trainers, so he always had a valid excuse. But the real reason was sometimes a week had passed and he had barely given her a thought. Though he’d never been in a relationship before her, he didn’t think that was how it should work.
When they returned for the fall semester, he knew he just had to get through it, and he would be gone. He would tell her goodbye and be on his way. It would be as good an excuse as any, no matter how life turned out for him, whether he went on to play in the NFL or he went to work somewhere. He had never promised her anything, after all. When she spoke of marriage, he assumed she was talking about it in general, not with anyone in particular.
His plan had been to play in the NFL for as long as he could and then be a sports commentator or broadcaster. As a child, he would practice calling games and making commentary as the game played out. His family was sometimes entertained by his ability to remember stats like no one else. He could call up a game from memory from years before and know who won the game, and sometimes be able to quote the exact score.
The day he met Charlotte changed everything with Eliza. That’s when he knew he couldn’t just wait it out with her until he could waltz out of her life at the end of the semester and disappear. He’d realized his attraction to Charlotte went past the physical. She was also intelligent, kind, and there was just an unexplainable ease he felt with her that he hadn’t felt being around any other girls.
For once in his life, he knew love was the farthest thing from his mind with Eliza. In fact, he’d never met anyone that had stirred things in him the way Charlotte did without even trying. She was just herself and natural. Eliza was always made up to perfection, every detail from her hair down to her neon pink toenails. She had a spray-on tan and her bleach-blonde hair never showed roots. When she had the breast augmentation a few summers ago, he was sure she was about as close to every man’s dream girl as one could possibly get. If there was an improvement that could be made with Botox, filler or a nip and tuck, she was sure to get that done, too. However, it never made the person behind it look better to him. Meeting Charlotte had just brought more awareness to something he’d never put much thought into.
He remembered the day when he met her for the first time. Charlotte had her curly hair piled on top of her head with a few strays falling on the side, wearing very little, if any, makeup. She had beautiful, full lips, large chocolate eyes with thick eyelashes that were, in every way he could see, completely natural. She was wearing a t-shirt over some white shorts since it was early September and still hot in the south that time of year. The shorts were white and her tanned legs shimmered. She smelled of nothing but clean and crisp woman. There was just something about her, something so innate that he couldn’t begin to explain. She unnerved him when he took her small hand into his large one and shook it for the first time. He knew he held on just a little too long.
She was all business. She wasn’t like every other girl he met that became giddy and insanely annoying when he first met them. Charlotte acted as if he were just another guy. He wondered if she even knew who he was or that he had won the Heisman Trophy last year. It had been huge news for their college of 50,000 students. But surely if she told anyone she was tutoring Sidney Parker, they would tell her.
Then there was the day Eliza had sensed a change in him. Women and their damn instincts. Sidney had brought her name up one too many times, letting it slip in conversation about something Charlotte had said. He was a little too eager to get to his session one day when he was having lunch with Eliza, and she decided that suddenly she wanted to meet her. He rolled his eyes to himself, and she followed him like a little puppy dog to his tutoring.
Afterwards, while they were walking back to their respective dorms, she said, “Oh, I don’t know why I was so worried. She’s so… plain.”
Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut at that comment? Why did he react the way he did and say, “I kind of think the British accent is hot, and she’s really attractive from a guy’s perspective.”
But, no, he didn’t even leave it at that when she’d pushed him and laughed in his face saying that her sorority would never accept a girl like her.
“She has no style! She’s practically a boy, not even wearing makeup. And what’s with the baseball cap? Are you kidding me?” she’d asked incredulously.
He shrugged. What a dumbass he was at times. He’d looked at Eliza square in the eyes when he said it, too, which didn’t help matters, “Eliza, just for your information, Charlotte is pretty much every guy’s dream girl.”
“What?” she’d chuckled. “You’re kidding me, right? There is no way!”
He shook his head. “I’m not at all kidding you.”
She put her hands on her hips and hissed when she said, “There is a reason my sorority sisters look and dress a certain way!”
“You do that for yourselves. Not for men.”
“What are you talking about, Sidney? You love how I look! So do all men.”
“I’m not complaining, but Charlotte is more than just looks, and that’s easy to see. Every guy I know that gets tutoring is lined up waiting for her to have an opening.”
“Not football players!”
“Yes,” Sidney chuckled. “Football players.”
But the next tutoring session, with that conversation fresh on their minds, Eliza sat on one side of him scrolling through her phone and taking selfies, while he and Charlotte studied. It was like he’d been whopped upside the head in regards to women. It was as clear as day. The feelings he had thought he’d once had for Eliza were gone. Completely.
Not that he had feelings for Charlotte because the girl had never let their tutoring sessions linger, nor had she even cracked a joke with him. He assumed she wanted him to get the best bang for his buck and didn’t want to waste his time. But dammit, he wanted to waste time with her. He wanted to know something about her. It wasn’t as if he were in a position to pursue her, nor did he want to. His life was about to turn upside down. But still, there was that attraction that just set him on fire when he was around her. He had caught himself fantasizing about her constantly. He’d dreamed of feeling her delicious body next to his. In his dreams, he had felt every curve and kissed and tasted her.
But there was still a problem: She didn’t give him a second of special attention.
After that night of tutoring, Eliza must have felt it. She had insisted he come to her place. He had refused for the umpteenth time since they had arrived back at school. But he hadn’t spent the night with her since her sorority’s big blowout party right before school started. He’d flirted with another girl at the party that got his blood flowing - not that he remembered remotely who that girl was - and Eliza became jealous. She immediately took him to the bathroom and gave him a much-welcomed blowjob, and reminded him she was his girlfriend. She always did the same thing when she felt threatened. The blowjob. Not many guys, including him, turn that down.
They’d gone back to the party and drank more, and the same girl had found him again and flirted relentlessly with him until Eliza drug him from the party to her bedroom. She had a condom waiting for him, since he had stupidly forgotten to put another one in his wallet from the last time he had sex with her before they had left for the summer. He slipped the condom on and had sex with her. That was the one and only time he had been with Eliza that semester, and it was a huge mistake. He’d known it seconds after the brain fog from lack of sex cleared. It was his mission to make sure he didn’t make the mistake of going back to Eliza’s room from then on.
Even though Charlotte was nothing but professional, Eliza had whined that he needed a new tutor, that she couldn’t even understand her in that English accent…no wonder he’d failed the class. He’d cleared the air real quick, wasting no time. “I can understand her perfectly, and I’ve made straight A’s so far.”
He’d decided to take Eliza up on her offer to come to her room. He needed to break it off with her for good and stop stringing her along, and there was never going to be a better time. He no more than stepped over the threshold when Eliza yanked his athletic shorts down and started to work on getting him hard. He stopped her, and pulled his shorts back up. He told her he wasn’t feeling anything in their relationship anymore.
He gave up the blowjob she was still offering. It wasn’t because his hormones weren’t raging in his 23-year-old body. They were. He, at times, wished that he could accept sex from Eliza without feeling anything. He certainly had no problem with it the year before that. But he hadn’t been able to get that pretty tutor off his mind even though she had given him no reason to think she’d had any sort of attraction to him.
Eliza accepted the breakup, finally, after a few meltdowns in front of his dorm.
The next time he saw Charlotte, she was wearing a yellow sundress that made his mouth go dry. When she leaned forward to point at something in his textbook, the neckline gaped just enough to give him a glimpse of soft curves and golden skin. He couldn't focus on a single word she said. He didn’t learn a thing that day because his mind took off in a complete other direction, wondering how her breasts would taste on his lips, what her nipples looked like, how she would feel when he touched her, what she had on underneath the sundress. Was she wearing panties that were sexy or maybe a thong? He didn’t even care, really, but his mind was in overdrive. No one had ever quite made the animal in him come out like she did without even trying.
And the funny thing about it was, as he laughed to himself, he was pretty sure she was one of the few girls on campus who he’d had the chance to know who wouldn’t have already slid her hand up his leg or given him some indication that he could have her. She would have at least thrown a hint his way. But none of that. She’d not even given him a glimpse of interest on her part.
As time went on, he worked to loosen her up, especially when he told her he and Eliza were no longer dating. Since they had moved to a different library, his thoughts ran wild because they were alone during their tutoring. Very much alone.
Once in a while, Eliza would blow up his phone with text messages wanting to meet him here and there. He figured he knew what she wanted, but she had told him she had some of his things to give back and they could meet at the commons. When he arrived, she asked him to follow her to her room, and she would give him the best blowjob he had ever had.
It was nothing more than a desperate cry to him. He didn’t understand a lot of things at his ripe age of 23, but he understood there had to be more than sex between two people to have a lasting relationship.
As Sidney spent more time with Charlotte, he had grown to care for her. Even though he still couldn’t get his damn mind off sex with her, he thought highly of her and didn’t want to bang her for the sake of banging her. She deserved better than that.
She was different from anyone he had ever known, and meeting her confused him at times because while he knew he had a future before him, he wanted her and desired her. He didn’t just want to make love to her; he wanted something with her. He wanted to take her places and make her happy. He loved the look on her face just seeing her reaction when he had a test and he made a good grade. Or when he’d played a good game or had a successful pass that he had been working on. It was as if the things he did mattered to her.
He loved the purity and sweetness about her. She was intelligent and witty, and they carried on deep conversations sometimes since he was now her last student for the day. She asked him questions about himself, and she liked hearing about how things progressed with football, seeming to be genuinely happy for him when something good happened.
Thankfully, by the end of the semester, the tide had turned.