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chapter 31- Luke POV

I want to drive away with you, I want your complications too ~TS, Paper Rings 

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Luke Mcgowan POV

I'm down bad. 

Let me explain what happened to me earlier. So I was in the cafeteria sitting with Carter and Noah and Eli and Owen and some other guys on the team. I was only half listening to anything they were saying because I kept looking over at AJ. She was sitting across the room talking with Millie, and she still had that adorable blush on her cheeks from earlier in the hallway. 

So I was pretty distracted the whole lunch period which didn't go unnoticed by Eli. He kept wiggling his eyebrows at me like a damn idiot. And while Carter was talking to me about the fight tonight, I felt someone staring at me. And when I looked over and saw James and she smiled at me, my stomach did this thing. It felt all weird and I thought I was sick or some shit before I realized what was happening. 

I got butterflies. 

I got fucking butterflies in my stomach when she smiled at me. 

I've been counting down the hours until I get to see her tonight. School just ended and I'm in the locker room right now lacing up my skates. Most of the guys are already out on the ice. We've only got a 2 hour practice this afternoon since we practiced early this morning. 

I make my way from the locker room to the ice to join the guys for warmups. Noah is standing off to the side with coach, their heads pressed together probably to talk strategy. 

Noah's an amazing team captain. Probably the best I've ever played for. He's attentive to his teammates and their strengths and weaknesses, and he's smart. He can strategize a new play based on the team we're playing in seconds. He and I are attuned to each other on the ice because we both can think on our feet. 

Coach lifts his head and shouts at us to do some warm up drills and we all jump into action, skating over to the wall for two by two drills. Carter skates up behind me and leans against the glass, seemingly deep in thought. 

I nudge him with my elbow. "You good man?" 

He shakes his head to clear it and looks over at me. "Yeah, I'm just going over combos and shit for tonight. Diego's no walk in the fucking park." He mutters. 

Carter's got a big underground fighting match tonight against one of his biggest nemesis, Diego Altrua. Like most of the crowd at the matches, he's a gang member. A gang leader actually. I don't know much about the west side of town where all the gangs reside except for the fact that the underground ring is there. 

I honestly couldn't guess why Carter fights there so often. We've asked him a hundred times and every time he just says that he likes the adrenaline rush. And he's fucking talented. He wins almost every match he fights, unless he goes up against some fucker on steroids. Which he's actually stupidly done before, claiming he likes the challenge or whatever. 

Regardless, the guys and I go to watch him as often as we can, or in Bennett's case as often as his girl will let him. The company's a little rough and it's definitely not the safest place to be but we're not gonna get shot or anything. Probably. 

I would never let the girls go though, especially not James. Thank god Noah's already forbidden her from going because I would not want to have that argument with her. Lord knows she would fight it just for the sake of not being told what to do. And honestly, if she did go she could probably defend herself better than me if you take size out of the equation.