Title: God’s Gift
Author: Auburn C. Piper
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 11/15/2022
Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 55750
Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, alpha males, athlete, coming of age, coming out, revenge, sports
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Description
Robert Lee, a high school football star, is treated like a god in his small town as long as he keeps winning and bringing championships.
Lee has his sights set on breaking a sacred football record and all systems are ‘go’ until a new student, Justin, moves into town and turns his world upside down.
A simple kiss has his once-perfect life shattered into a million pieces.
God’s Gift
Auburn C. Piper © 2022
All Rights Reserved
I don’t catch a lot of shit from Coach Steele. Fact is, he’s happy to get out of the game with a win. He tried not to show it, but those Dragons had him scared. My showboating did almost get him into a fistfight with Paducah’s coach during the after-game handshake. That got him all fired up and pissed off, and he told the papers, sports pods and bloggers, and the Amarillo TV reporters who came down for the game that he’d called the play.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he rumbled, his barrel chest all puffed out. “Them boys were roughing Lee up something awful, and I can’t have that. I’m not saying they played dirty ball. All’s I’m saying is if we want to go anywhere in the playoffs, we’ve got to keep our quarterback healthy. That’s all I’m gonna say on the matter.” Coach Steele is a whore for the vid-clip or sound bite. He’s one of those good ole boy coaches who reporters love. Quick with a joke and a quote. He’s good content, and all of ’em know it. To me, he’s like a bad meme.
After the game, I head out quick for the locker room, then exit the field, dodging the fans. I didn’t feel like giving any interviews, and since all the media found out about me shooting for the record, it’s all they want to talk about. The thing about the stats, hey, it’s not so bad, but catching all the face time on the news and social media, man that’s sinful. I can’t have my team mad or jealous about shit like that, so every time I get on the news or someone’s channel or podcast, I make sure some of my teammates make the show. Look, I’m a cocksure dick sometimes. Not cocky. Cocksure! There’s a big difference. Sure, I may come off as a tool to some, but those who know me know I don’t say or do anything I can’t back up. And I know football is a team sport. Without my boys around me, I wouldn’t look like a superstar. Simple as that. So I take care of them as best I can. I’m the team leader, team captain. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Great words from Uncle Ben.
So, me, Lloyd Sagger, and Joe Earl King pile into Hollis’s big ole burnt-orange 4×4 and head to Amarillo after I slip into my Wranglers and boots. It’s time to unwind, and you gotta dress comfortably when you do it.
Plains ain’t a big place, about fifty-five hundred people is all. But it is the home of the Plains’s Petro-Chemical Processing Plant, the biggest petro-chem plant in the Panhandle, owned by the Continental Oil company. Plains is a company town, has been ever since Continental put its steel-and-poison monster here in the fifties. Half the people in town work there.
I hate the place. I hate Plains. The fumes from the plant wash over the town most of the time, and it makes a god-awful stink. It’s the kind of smell that stays with you, even when it’s not there. Seems like it’s always on your skin. There isn’t anything to do here either, unless there’s a dance over at the A.C. “Arb” Piper community center or VFW. No dance tonight, so we’re making the eighteen-mile trip to Amarillo to kick up some trouble. Amarillo’s the biggest city in the Texas Panhandle, sort of the hub of the great high plains. It’s where we go when there isn’t anything else to do.
Hollis hands me a beer. Hollis always has beer.
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Auburn Piper is an author from rural Paducah, Texas. His first novel is the self-published GOTHA.
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