TROPHY WIFE: A Spicy Friends to Rivals to Lovers Sports Rom-Com
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He wants the girl. She wants the gold.
Two rivals. One road trip. A jealous wound too deep to ever heal. Mute, prideful, and constantly underestimated, Nikkos Dior has only ever been interested in winning and proving herself. Then, she meets the talented, cocky, and a little too gorgeous Arden Varick, who learns sign language just to understand her. But when Nikk’s gold medalist father, famous for coaching athletes to stardom, chooses to train Varick as a professional triathlete instead of his own daughter, any future the two best friends had together gets benched. Nikk holds onto grudges like she holds onto her hard-earned trophies—with pride and a tight grip. Now, seven years later, Nikk is stuck on a thirty-two-hour road trip to Las Vegas with Varick, her father’s favorite prodigy. On her way to her biggest competition yet, nothing will distract her from proving everyone—who has ever underestimated her—wrong. Even if the distraction has washboard abs, a gold medal in radiating sexual charisma, and smells like blue Gatorade, grass stains, and human sunshine. She’s the woman he’s always wanted to win, and he’s the man she never wanted to lose to. Both of them are ready to play dirty and work up a sweat to get what they want. But Varick needs to remember one thing. Nikkos Dior does not lose. |
Prologue Available Below
Seven Years Ago
As the only child of a famous gold-medalist athlete, I grew up breathing seventy-five percent competition and twenty-five percent oxygen.
Winning was all I knew.
If I won a race in elementary school, my dad grinned at me and bought me ice cream.
If I broke a record in middle school, he told me he loved me.
It was simple. Being the best meant being loved.
Unless you were a teenage girl trying out to join the high school boys’ soccer team.
“Coach, you can’t be serious,” one of my high school classmates, a boy I had known since middle school, whined as I stretched on the grass for my “tryout.”
“If we have a girl on our team, they’ll laugh at us,” another said.
“What if she cries when she gets hit with the ball?”
“I can’t be exposed to female tears, Coach. I’m too sensitive to shit like that.”
Rolling my eyes, I reached for my toes. It was not as if I wanted to play on the boys’ team. But not enough participants on the girls’ team meant no team at all—and I wanted to play.
“She even stretches like a girl.”
“Isn’t she already in like every after-school sport? Track, swimming, tennis—how is this allowed? She can’t be multiple places at once.”
“I don’t know about that, dude. Have you seen her run? Wicked fast. Pretty much convinced she made a deal with the devil.”
I swallowed a laugh at that. A woman couldn’t be superior at something without it being suspicious and possibly gifted by the devil? Huh.
“Coach, you don’t need to let her tryout just because her dad is some famous gold medalist. Were you bribed? Blink twice if she bribed you.”
Sighing, I ended my stretching and stood on my soccer cleats, bouncing a little on the grass and readying to make the boys cry. One of my favorite pastimes.
“Ready, Dior?” Coach asked me in an aggravated voice that suggested he just wanted it over with.
Knowing he wouldn’t understand me if I used sign language, I nodded.
“Can’t believe Varick is late to practice,” one of the other boys grumbled as I took my position at the halfway point of the field. “As team captain, he would not stand for this,” the boy called out to the others closest to him on the field.
Varick.
The name was familiar. I had seen it doodled inside hearts on many daydreaming classmates’ notes. I had heard it whispered in the hallways as if it were the name of a benevolent and powerful god—not a high school student.
Yet, it was just the name of a new kid—a sophomore like me—who had moved here from Florida a few weeks ago. In less than one month, he had already been voted team captain of the soccer team?
I guess they are only this unwelcoming to new female players.
“Okay, I want to run some drills,” Coach instructed. “Dior, try to get through our line of defense and shoot. Don’t get too discouraged if you can’t get around them.”
Three of the boys stood in my path, blocking my shot at the goal. They puffed up their chests and smirked amongst each other as if they thought they were about to see an amusing comedy show.
Little did they know, I loved this.
Underestimate me more. It made my skin buzz under the caress of the hot sun. My blood heated with competition and warmed my veins the way it always did when I was challenged.
“What do you do when you look your opponent in the eye?” Dad would ask when he trained me as a child to become a future gold-medal-winning athlete. Just like him.
My response was always a cocky: “I grin like I’ve already won.”
“Damn, this will be fun to watch, though,” one of the disrespectful teenage boys said to the others, not noticing my maniacal grin.
“Don’t be an asshole,” another said. “Maybe it would be cool to have her on the team. Could be fun to be around a chick who can’t talk.”
A chick who can’t talk.
My smile slipped from my lips and floated down to the prickly green grass. My back stiffened, and the back of my neck heated like an unfortunate sunburn.
Staring down at the soccer ball in front of my cleats, my eyes narrowed on it.
They really don’t know me at all.
I had grown up with these jerks since elementary school. They knew my condition. Aphonia: the inability to produce sound. I could hear but had never been able to speak verbally. And, of course, none of my fellow classmates had learned sign language to understand me.
My chin jerked up as I stared at the boy who had just spoken from his position to the left of the other two in front of me on the field.
A chick who can’t talk. My blood went from hot to boiling, and I slowly cracked my knuckles.
“I’m going to crush you,” I signed to the three boys on the defense line.
“We don’t know what you’re saying,” one of them told me, frowning at my hands moving in the air with the sign language.
My maniacal grin was back, stretching my lips. I hoped I looked like an evil witch to them—or a mob boss ready to chop off their fingers.
One guy whistled nervously. “Damn, that is a creepy smile.”
The coach blew his whistle.
They approached me.
Calmly, I stepped back and kicked at just the right angle and with just enough force to fling the white and black ball over their heads and into the goal.
From almost fifty feet away.
I was met with my favorite sound—the clicking of masculine jaws dropping.
Honestly, they shouldn’t be so surprised. They all knew who my father was.
Smirking, I made a dramatic show of bowing and pretending I wore a dress to curtsey with, instead of my modest, baggy to-the-knee mesh shorts.
A loud, slow clap came from the opposite side of the field where a masculine silhouette jogged over.
And…my cocky smirk at my stunning goal dropped from my face. And I just…knew. No one had to tell me.
This was Arden Varick; the new kid who had the whole school talking about how amazing, handsome, and perfect he was.
The closer he got, the thinner the air became. When he breathed, did he take all the good oxygen? We were outdoors!
Maybe I shouldn’t have rolled my eyes at the girls in history class who could not focus on the lesson because Varick’s “captivating cyan-blue eyes” and “legendary washboard abs” were more important to them than old battles.
Looking at him felt like a battle. An internal battle I had never fought and thus had no defenses against. High school boys were not supposed to look like him.
The sight of him ripped through me like a basketball spearing through a net.
Broad shoulders. Toned and muscular arms that did weird things to my brain—like triggering thoughts of sinking my teeth into his biceps.
And his quads. Strong, chiseled, and taut quads from what had to be serious, regimented routines. Was there anything sexier than a man who was capable of dedication like that?
“Did you see that?” Varick shouted excitedly to his teammates. He radiated sunshine as he jogged over.
The long, dark tresses of his hair swayed in the wind like the breeze wanted to touch the glossy strands as much as I did. Not that I ever would. It just looked so soft.
Grinning with pure joy, he expelled golden retriever energy as he ran up to me like he planned to jump on me and lick my face. Half of me wondered if I would like it.
He did not stop jogging until he stepped right in front of me. Mere inches between us, it was clear he—much like a golden retriever—had no perception of personal space when he got excited.
His scent of fresh sweat, grass stains, and blue Gatorade wafted over my face like an airborne drug, creating a haze of familiarity. I blamed the haze for my allowing him—a stranger—to stand so close to me. His face hovered above mine, and a warmth swarmed my stomach, swirling.
“Wow, you are very pretty,” he commented before falling to his knees dramatically.
My mouth hung open in shock as he kneeled before me and clasped his hands together.
“Please join our team,” he demanded.
“Dude,” one of his teammates shouted, upset.
Varick ignored the groans and protests. He stared up at me like I was all he could hear and see. “What is your name, soccer goddess?” Varick rasped in a low timbre voice that could have made fifteenth-century damsels swoon.
I bit my lip and stayed silent.
“Her name is Nikkos Dior.” One of the assholes on the team, Mark, jogged over and told him, “She can’t answer you herself. She’s mute.”
Varick’s blazing cyan-blue eyes, resembling the deep end of a crystal-clear chlorine pool, narrowed onto me as he tilted his head. “But you can hear me?” he asked.
I nodded stiffly.
He licked his lips and clarified, “So, you speak in sign language?”
Another nod from me.
He grinned again. “That’s fucking cool,” he said. “Will you please join our team, soccer goddess?”
Mark scoffed. “It was one kick. We haven’t even seen her play—”
Varick only focused on me, never glancing away from me. “If you do not join our team, I will drop out,” he swore. “Without me, the team will become a laughingstock. Do you want that? Don’t be cruel.”
I snorted, choking on a laugh at that.
Mark threw his arms up in the air. “Damn it, Coach.” Apparently, Varick was their best player.
“What do you say?” Varick asked, smiling and looking up from under his long, dark eyelashes in a way that reminded me of a sly fox. This was a man who was used to getting whatever he wanted. “Join us?”
Coming from his lips, it almost felt…dangerous. Like I was about to embark on a journey in the jungle with no map. The energy crackling between us reminded me of lightning recklessly spearing through rain after a rumble of thunder.
Why was I hesitating? Why was my body tingling? He is just a boy.
I had tried out for the team because I wanted to play soccer. I wanted to dip my toe into every sport I could. I wanted to be the best athlete in the world.
Because I wanted my father to agree to train me to win gold like him. Playing soccer was yet another step to achieving my dreams.
“Well?” Varick asked.
Smiling back at him, I signed, “I hope you guys are tired of losing.”
And even though he did not understand my sign language, I swore he heard me say it out loud. His grin. It ate up his entire face. His blue eyes beamed.
He chuckled and looked at me with such an expression of pure adoration, that I felt a second cannonball rip through me at his presence. Was this how he looked at everyone? Was that why the entire school was obsessed with him?
He jumped up from his position on his knees. Varick took another step forward until the tips of our shoes brushed against each other. He was so tall. And I was tall. But he was tall to me.
More electricity crackled in the chilled air as he reached for my hand. I swore it felt as if we were the personification of lightning and thunder. Upon first meeting him, I had no clue then which one of us could inflict the most damage.
When he clasped my hand in his, I squeezed—hard. Maybe too hard. After all, my father introduced me to men who always shook my hand like I was made of glass instead of flesh.
My aggressive handshake did not faze him because his eyes freaking sparkled as he chuckled softly under his breath again. “Teammates,” he said.
His thumb stroked over the back of my palm, and my breath caught. Touch had never felt like this. Like a storm of lightning bolts and a swarm of fireflies.
Little flames sparked in each of my pores. His skin against mine acted as shredded newspaper dumped on crackling firewood. Erasing all inked history. Burning any past. Had I even met a boy before? I no longer had any memory of such.
He suddenly leaned forward, so he could whisper into my ear. At the impact of his breath playing with the strands of my hair at the side of my neck, the world’s temperature jumped up by twenty degrees. Science class would surely review the phenomenon tomorrow. Global warming: caused by deforestation, carbon dioxide emissions, and the sizzling presence of Arden Varick.
His lips rasped next to my ear, “Let’s show these mediocre assholes how to really play this game, huh?” He pulled back and grinned at me like we had been best friends for years. Like it was us against the world.
I shivered. With excitement. With exhilaration. With…something that didn’t have a name to me then.
That was the first time Arden Varick looked at me like he loved me.
And I should have known then that grass stains and bruises were nothing compared to the future pain that awaited me.
As the only child of a famous gold-medalist athlete, I grew up breathing seventy-five percent competition and twenty-five percent oxygen.
Winning was all I knew.
If I won a race in elementary school, my dad grinned at me and bought me ice cream.
If I broke a record in middle school, he told me he loved me.
It was simple. Being the best meant being loved.
Unless you were a teenage girl trying out to join the high school boys’ soccer team.
“Coach, you can’t be serious,” one of my high school classmates, a boy I had known since middle school, whined as I stretched on the grass for my “tryout.”
“If we have a girl on our team, they’ll laugh at us,” another said.
“What if she cries when she gets hit with the ball?”
“I can’t be exposed to female tears, Coach. I’m too sensitive to shit like that.”
Rolling my eyes, I reached for my toes. It was not as if I wanted to play on the boys’ team. But not enough participants on the girls’ team meant no team at all—and I wanted to play.
“She even stretches like a girl.”
“Isn’t she already in like every after-school sport? Track, swimming, tennis—how is this allowed? She can’t be multiple places at once.”
“I don’t know about that, dude. Have you seen her run? Wicked fast. Pretty much convinced she made a deal with the devil.”
I swallowed a laugh at that. A woman couldn’t be superior at something without it being suspicious and possibly gifted by the devil? Huh.
“Coach, you don’t need to let her tryout just because her dad is some famous gold medalist. Were you bribed? Blink twice if she bribed you.”
Sighing, I ended my stretching and stood on my soccer cleats, bouncing a little on the grass and readying to make the boys cry. One of my favorite pastimes.
“Ready, Dior?” Coach asked me in an aggravated voice that suggested he just wanted it over with.
Knowing he wouldn’t understand me if I used sign language, I nodded.
“Can’t believe Varick is late to practice,” one of the other boys grumbled as I took my position at the halfway point of the field. “As team captain, he would not stand for this,” the boy called out to the others closest to him on the field.
Varick.
The name was familiar. I had seen it doodled inside hearts on many daydreaming classmates’ notes. I had heard it whispered in the hallways as if it were the name of a benevolent and powerful god—not a high school student.
Yet, it was just the name of a new kid—a sophomore like me—who had moved here from Florida a few weeks ago. In less than one month, he had already been voted team captain of the soccer team?
I guess they are only this unwelcoming to new female players.
“Okay, I want to run some drills,” Coach instructed. “Dior, try to get through our line of defense and shoot. Don’t get too discouraged if you can’t get around them.”
Three of the boys stood in my path, blocking my shot at the goal. They puffed up their chests and smirked amongst each other as if they thought they were about to see an amusing comedy show.
Little did they know, I loved this.
Underestimate me more. It made my skin buzz under the caress of the hot sun. My blood heated with competition and warmed my veins the way it always did when I was challenged.
“What do you do when you look your opponent in the eye?” Dad would ask when he trained me as a child to become a future gold-medal-winning athlete. Just like him.
My response was always a cocky: “I grin like I’ve already won.”
“Damn, this will be fun to watch, though,” one of the disrespectful teenage boys said to the others, not noticing my maniacal grin.
“Don’t be an asshole,” another said. “Maybe it would be cool to have her on the team. Could be fun to be around a chick who can’t talk.”
A chick who can’t talk.
My smile slipped from my lips and floated down to the prickly green grass. My back stiffened, and the back of my neck heated like an unfortunate sunburn.
Staring down at the soccer ball in front of my cleats, my eyes narrowed on it.
They really don’t know me at all.
I had grown up with these jerks since elementary school. They knew my condition. Aphonia: the inability to produce sound. I could hear but had never been able to speak verbally. And, of course, none of my fellow classmates had learned sign language to understand me.
My chin jerked up as I stared at the boy who had just spoken from his position to the left of the other two in front of me on the field.
A chick who can’t talk. My blood went from hot to boiling, and I slowly cracked my knuckles.
“I’m going to crush you,” I signed to the three boys on the defense line.
“We don’t know what you’re saying,” one of them told me, frowning at my hands moving in the air with the sign language.
My maniacal grin was back, stretching my lips. I hoped I looked like an evil witch to them—or a mob boss ready to chop off their fingers.
One guy whistled nervously. “Damn, that is a creepy smile.”
The coach blew his whistle.
They approached me.
Calmly, I stepped back and kicked at just the right angle and with just enough force to fling the white and black ball over their heads and into the goal.
From almost fifty feet away.
I was met with my favorite sound—the clicking of masculine jaws dropping.
Honestly, they shouldn’t be so surprised. They all knew who my father was.
Smirking, I made a dramatic show of bowing and pretending I wore a dress to curtsey with, instead of my modest, baggy to-the-knee mesh shorts.
A loud, slow clap came from the opposite side of the field where a masculine silhouette jogged over.
And…my cocky smirk at my stunning goal dropped from my face. And I just…knew. No one had to tell me.
This was Arden Varick; the new kid who had the whole school talking about how amazing, handsome, and perfect he was.
The closer he got, the thinner the air became. When he breathed, did he take all the good oxygen? We were outdoors!
Maybe I shouldn’t have rolled my eyes at the girls in history class who could not focus on the lesson because Varick’s “captivating cyan-blue eyes” and “legendary washboard abs” were more important to them than old battles.
Looking at him felt like a battle. An internal battle I had never fought and thus had no defenses against. High school boys were not supposed to look like him.
The sight of him ripped through me like a basketball spearing through a net.
Broad shoulders. Toned and muscular arms that did weird things to my brain—like triggering thoughts of sinking my teeth into his biceps.
And his quads. Strong, chiseled, and taut quads from what had to be serious, regimented routines. Was there anything sexier than a man who was capable of dedication like that?
“Did you see that?” Varick shouted excitedly to his teammates. He radiated sunshine as he jogged over.
The long, dark tresses of his hair swayed in the wind like the breeze wanted to touch the glossy strands as much as I did. Not that I ever would. It just looked so soft.
Grinning with pure joy, he expelled golden retriever energy as he ran up to me like he planned to jump on me and lick my face. Half of me wondered if I would like it.
He did not stop jogging until he stepped right in front of me. Mere inches between us, it was clear he—much like a golden retriever—had no perception of personal space when he got excited.
His scent of fresh sweat, grass stains, and blue Gatorade wafted over my face like an airborne drug, creating a haze of familiarity. I blamed the haze for my allowing him—a stranger—to stand so close to me. His face hovered above mine, and a warmth swarmed my stomach, swirling.
“Wow, you are very pretty,” he commented before falling to his knees dramatically.
My mouth hung open in shock as he kneeled before me and clasped his hands together.
“Please join our team,” he demanded.
“Dude,” one of his teammates shouted, upset.
Varick ignored the groans and protests. He stared up at me like I was all he could hear and see. “What is your name, soccer goddess?” Varick rasped in a low timbre voice that could have made fifteenth-century damsels swoon.
I bit my lip and stayed silent.
“Her name is Nikkos Dior.” One of the assholes on the team, Mark, jogged over and told him, “She can’t answer you herself. She’s mute.”
Varick’s blazing cyan-blue eyes, resembling the deep end of a crystal-clear chlorine pool, narrowed onto me as he tilted his head. “But you can hear me?” he asked.
I nodded stiffly.
He licked his lips and clarified, “So, you speak in sign language?”
Another nod from me.
He grinned again. “That’s fucking cool,” he said. “Will you please join our team, soccer goddess?”
Mark scoffed. “It was one kick. We haven’t even seen her play—”
Varick only focused on me, never glancing away from me. “If you do not join our team, I will drop out,” he swore. “Without me, the team will become a laughingstock. Do you want that? Don’t be cruel.”
I snorted, choking on a laugh at that.
Mark threw his arms up in the air. “Damn it, Coach.” Apparently, Varick was their best player.
“What do you say?” Varick asked, smiling and looking up from under his long, dark eyelashes in a way that reminded me of a sly fox. This was a man who was used to getting whatever he wanted. “Join us?”
Coming from his lips, it almost felt…dangerous. Like I was about to embark on a journey in the jungle with no map. The energy crackling between us reminded me of lightning recklessly spearing through rain after a rumble of thunder.
Why was I hesitating? Why was my body tingling? He is just a boy.
I had tried out for the team because I wanted to play soccer. I wanted to dip my toe into every sport I could. I wanted to be the best athlete in the world.
Because I wanted my father to agree to train me to win gold like him. Playing soccer was yet another step to achieving my dreams.
“Well?” Varick asked.
Smiling back at him, I signed, “I hope you guys are tired of losing.”
And even though he did not understand my sign language, I swore he heard me say it out loud. His grin. It ate up his entire face. His blue eyes beamed.
He chuckled and looked at me with such an expression of pure adoration, that I felt a second cannonball rip through me at his presence. Was this how he looked at everyone? Was that why the entire school was obsessed with him?
He jumped up from his position on his knees. Varick took another step forward until the tips of our shoes brushed against each other. He was so tall. And I was tall. But he was tall to me.
More electricity crackled in the chilled air as he reached for my hand. I swore it felt as if we were the personification of lightning and thunder. Upon first meeting him, I had no clue then which one of us could inflict the most damage.
When he clasped my hand in his, I squeezed—hard. Maybe too hard. After all, my father introduced me to men who always shook my hand like I was made of glass instead of flesh.
My aggressive handshake did not faze him because his eyes freaking sparkled as he chuckled softly under his breath again. “Teammates,” he said.
His thumb stroked over the back of my palm, and my breath caught. Touch had never felt like this. Like a storm of lightning bolts and a swarm of fireflies.
Little flames sparked in each of my pores. His skin against mine acted as shredded newspaper dumped on crackling firewood. Erasing all inked history. Burning any past. Had I even met a boy before? I no longer had any memory of such.
He suddenly leaned forward, so he could whisper into my ear. At the impact of his breath playing with the strands of my hair at the side of my neck, the world’s temperature jumped up by twenty degrees. Science class would surely review the phenomenon tomorrow. Global warming: caused by deforestation, carbon dioxide emissions, and the sizzling presence of Arden Varick.
His lips rasped next to my ear, “Let’s show these mediocre assholes how to really play this game, huh?” He pulled back and grinned at me like we had been best friends for years. Like it was us against the world.
I shivered. With excitement. With exhilaration. With…something that didn’t have a name to me then.
That was the first time Arden Varick looked at me like he loved me.
And I should have known then that grass stains and bruises were nothing compared to the future pain that awaited me.
