H. E. Ellis

The Gods of Asphalt H. E. Ellis

Seventeen year-old Sawyer Hayden isn't a nerd. He never misses a free throw and his good looks always get him the girl. But good looks and a good handle aren't enough to get him what he really wants, and that is a shot at a basketball scholarship. For that to happen he needs to stay in one school long enough for a scout to watch him play.
 
Sawyer knows a semester is about as long as his flighty, on-again, off-again mother can handle living in one place before she takes off with the boyfriend no one wants to mention. He knows it's a matter of time before he's back in the family big rig with his jilted father and brooding brother on his way to another new school, another round of try outs and another day further from his dream of basketball stardom.
 
With the clock ticking on his senior year and chance for a college scholarship, Sawyer abandons his father and brother for a permanent life in Nebraska with his grandfather, Gus. But life in his father's hometown isn't what Sawyer expected, and soon stories of his father's former glory days as a high school football star begin to surface; tales of gridiron greatness and career aspirations that end tragically with his marriage to a flighty, on-again, off-again girlfriend.
 
Determined to avoid the same fate that robbed his father of his own professional sports career, Sawyer makes a vow to never fall in love. Enlisting the help of his awkward teammate Jeb, the two devise a game plan to keep the girls away. But there is an obstacle in the road that Sawyer never sees coming: a blue-eyed obstacle who reveals a fate worse than failure-- success.