Bride for the Quarterback by itsvlada
Bride for the Quarterback
Description
She signed a contract. She didn't sign up to fall in love. And she definitely didn't sign up to fall for two men at once. Mia Scott is barely surviving - single mother, night-shift janitor, her five-year-old son William months from death without heart surgery she can't afford. Then Jared Morgan walks back into her life. She spent all of high school watching him from the bleachers. He never learned her name. Now he's an NFL quarterback, a tabloid disaster, and the man offering her a deal: a fake engagement to save his career before the Super Bowl, in exchange for the money that saves her son. Simple. Transactional. An expiration date on page three. Except Jared isn't the arrogant playboy the cameras sell. Then there's Luke Matthews. The boy who saved her a seat since high school when nobody else bothered. Now he's a linebacker on Jared's team, and he's back. Where Jared is fire, Luke is the ground beneath her feet. Steady. Patient. Always there when the smoke clears. And Mia can't tell anymore which feeling is love and which is gravity.
Chapter 1
Mar 19, 2026
Mia’s POV
* Ten years ago *
My father dies the same night Jared Morgan asks for my name, and I'm pretty sure the universe is just fucking with me at this point.
But let's back up a bit.
A few hours earlier, I'm standing at this same kitchen island pretending I came to this college party for the cheap beer. And Olivia—my best friend, my conscience, my personal hype woman—has been watching me watch the backyard like I'm on a stakeout.
"You're staring. Again," she says, sipping something that looks like radioactive waste and grimaces. "He's drunk, Mia. Plastered since seven. This is not your Disney moment."
She's right. She's always right, which is honestly annoying.
But Jared Morgan is out there in his football jersey, all broad shoulders and effortless charisma. He’s laughing at something and my stupid treacherous heart does its thing.
That pathetic flutter I've been trying to kill for years. That no amount of logic, self-respect, or deliberately dating Ron has managed to fix.
Here's what you need to know: I've been in love with Jared Morgan since high school.
Not the cute, healthy kind of crush where you giggle with your friends and move on.
The pathetic, all-consuming kind where you memorize his practice schedule and "accidentally" walk past the gym at 3:47 every Tuesday because that's when he comes out.
I tried, okay? I really tried.
I started dating Ron specifically to stop this. Pick the guy who actually notices you, who texts back immediately, who asks you to sit with him at lunch instead of making you orbit his world from three tables away.
Ron noticed me. Ron chose me.
That was supposed to be enough. That was supposed to fix everything.
Except standing here with my pulse climbing every time Jared's laugh carries across the yard, I understand exactly how spectacularly that plan failed.
"I need air," I tell Olivia.
"You need therapy."
"Same thing." I slip toward the porch before she can physically restrain me, weaving through drunk seniors and red Solo cups, and that's when my friend Luke catches my eye.
He's standing with the football team, all six-foot-something of quiet intensity. He knows about Jared. Has known since junior year, carrying it alongside with every secret I've ever told him and several I haven't.
Then a voice behind me says, "You're way too pretty to be standing here by yourself."
My stomach drops three floors.
I turn, and Jared’s right there. His jersey clings to his chest, damp from whatever drinking game he just dominated, and when he leans against the railing beside me, his arm brushes mine.
This is it. This is the moment. Two years of fantasy sequences compressed into one perfect…
"Daddy's money or good taste?"
He's looking at my dress and his eyes travel, slowly and deliberately. Starting at the neckline and dragging down, taking their time with every inch, before climbing back up to meet my gaze.
I should probably say something charming. Flirty. The kind of thing the girl in his head would say. My chin lifts and, "At least I don't have to work some shitty job to afford college."
Oh god. Oh dear god. Did I just…
His eyebrows shoot up and for half a second I think I've blown it completely. Then he laughs—this surprised, genuine sound that seems to catch even him off guard.
He bites his lower lip, shaking his head like he can't quite believe what just happened, and when he looks at me again everything's different.
"Okay." He sets his drink down on the railing, never breaking eye contact. "Okay, I see you."
He takes a step closer. Not much but enough that I have to tilt my head back slightly to maintain eye contact. Just enough that the space between us becomes something I'm acutely, painfully aware of.
"You're not like the rest of them, are you?"
He says it quietly, almost to himself, and his arm shifts on the railing behind me and my spine straightens into that warmth like a plant toward light. "The rest of who?"
"All the girls who've been throwing themselves at me all night." His gaze flickers down and when it comes back up there's something in his eyes that makes my skin feel too tight. "You've got this whole... ‘I don't give a fuck about you’ thing going on. It's hot."
I should say something clever. Something that matches the girl he seems to think I am.
I just look at him instead, and he looks at me, and the party noise compresses into a distant hum.
For five deranged seconds I'm living inside every diary entry I've ever written. The one where he notices me in the hallway, where he sits beside me at lunch, where he says my name like I’m his.
Jared’s one hand comes up to brush a strand of hair back from my face—his fingertips grazing my cheekbone, trailing down to my jaw. His lips brush the shell of my ear as he leans in. "Ditch the party with me. I know a place that's quieter."
His hand drops from my face to my waist, fingers splaying across my hip bone and the touch sends electricity straight through my nervous system.
My mouth goes dry and my brain is completely offline because Jared Morgan is looking at me like I'm the only person at this party and his hand is on me and he wants to go somewhere quieter and this is happening.
Then he says, "What's your name, beautiful?"
And the whole thing cracks clean down the middle. Two years of this guy living rent-free in my head, years of attending the same high school and the same classes and he doesn't even know my name.
He's not finally seeing me.
He's just blackout drunk and hitting on the nearest girl standing alone.
"I have a boyfriend, Jared."
He holds my gaze one beat too long, shrugs with that infuriating grin. "His loss when you change your mind."
One of his teammates shouts his name from the driveway, jangling car keys, and Jared heads for the car without missing a beat. I watch him climb in with three other guys, all of them swaying, laughing, too drunk to walk straight let alone drive.
They peel out into the dark and I turn back to the party and think nothing of it. I barely take a breath before Ron's hand closes around my elbow.
"What the fuck was that?"
My stomach drops. "Nothing. He was drunk. He didn't even…"
"I saw you two." His fingers close around my wrist, squeezing hard enough to hurt. "Don't insult my intelligence. You disappeared for twenty minutes, Mia."
"I was just out here with O—"
"With him?" He steps closer, backing me against the railing. "You think I'm stupid? You think I didn't see the way you were pressed up against each other? Like you just…" He laughs, but it's ugly. Cruel. "Jesus Christ. Did you at least have the decency to fix yourself up before coming back down?"
"I didn't go anywhere!" My voice cracks. "I was here. Ask anyone."
Olivia appears behind his shoulder, face pale. "Ron, what the hell."
"Stay out of this." He doesn't turn his head.
Luke steps forward from somewhere to my left, shoulders squared. "Everything okay here?"
"Fine." I move between them fast, my hand on Ron's chest, steering the explosion away from an audience. "We're fine. Let me get you a beer. Tyler's here—he was asking about you."
His eyes search my face for something to punish, but I hold still and give him nothing.
Ron’s grip finally loosens then, blood rushes back into my fingers, and I lead him to fetch the drinks. His arm eventually drops across my shoulders, heavy and proprietary, and I fold myself into the space he's decided I'm allowed to occupy.
I drink more than I should for the next hours, trying to blur the edges of his grip on my arm and the sound of Jared's voice. Olivia stays close, watching me with that crease between her brows that means she's cataloging things she'll bring up later.
The party thins and Ron drifts inside for a card game while I'm sitting on the back steps alone. The concrete cold through my dress, head buzzing pleasantly for the first time all night, when my phone rings.
Mom's name is on the screen and it’s not a good sign.
Not at midnight, not when she knows I'm out.
"Mia. Baby. Your father…" Her voice sounds like something that got shattered and someone tried to put it back together with shaking hands. "There was a car accident an hour ago. He… The police called to confirm his…"
She can't finish. She's choking on tears, and she doesn't need to finish.
The words she's not saying land anyway.
My father is dead. I didn’t imagine in the moment that from this point my life would become a real-time nightmare.
I also didn’t know that I was pregnant at the time, until two weeks after dad’s funeral.
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Bride for the Quarterback
45 Chapters
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