Maybe not.
Maybe what was going on between Eve and me had bled onto the team as a whole.
We had work to do to change the dynamic—and very little time to do it.
To start, I needed to defend myself.
Just not like this. Not in some dressing down in front of everyone.
“Guys…stop.” When their chatter died down, but didn’t stop completely, I raise my voice. “Just stop!” My voice almost broke—almost.
And the way Priest cut a glance at me made me think he heard it.
I didn’t know why he did this. At the moment I didn’t care. I hurt too much to care. The only thing keeping me from bursting apart in a million little pieces—the big picture—the kids hanging in the balance.
My team’s rumblings faded away and an awkward silence filled the room.
Priest looked at me, but those feelings, his thoughts, he kept them close. He didn’t show me one damn thing to reassure me that he hadn’t done this to be cruel.
All I had was the echo of his words in my head.
And the memory of raw kisses that weren’t polished or by design. If anything, they were pieces of our hearts—bursting from the cages we’d tried to keep them locked in—finding their way around old wounds, clawing their way through the scar tissue we’d both built up to protect us from others.
From ourselves.
“We need all the help we can get,” he said, his voice low and final. “A fifteenth player means three fresh sets of five. It’s one more powerful player to use to your advantage. She’s in it for Crossroads too. She knows what hangs in the balance.”
The bit of camaraderie that had bloomed in reluctant smiles and winces of pain on my team’s faces retreated to wary distrust. Maybe not back to the beginning, but he practically demolished the fragile bridge he’d built in the past hour with this addition.
I didn’t feel one bit of sympathy for him. Not at all.
“You,” he said, pointing at Tilly who’d made her way onto the track and into the infield. “No dirty play. You throw even one elbow here and you’re out. Got it?”
Tilly nodded like she was in boot camp. “Got it.”
Ass kisser.
But then, she’d always been. It wasn’t how she behaved when everyone was looking. It was the words she’d sharpened, delivered on her cruel tongue when no one else was listening that had been the problem.
“No warnings. You know the rules, you know what I expect. No second chances.” His mouth had thinned into a hard, angry line. His eyes narrowed, irritability in the set of his rigid shoulders. A complete one eighty from how he dealt with us even in the beginning when Eve pushed his boundaries.
Maybe he wasn’t as comfortable with this addition as he let us all believe.
Or maybe he was one hell of an actor.
“Understood,” Tilly said.
“Good. Get your gear on and get your ass on the track.” He turned to us then and I thought I saw it, a flash of apology in his eyes. “Laps!” he snapped. “One skating forward. One skating backward. Don’t roll off that bank until you’ve done another fifty.”
Guess I imagined it.
Maybe I didn’t go back far enough in the instinct department because it looked like I should have been trusting my flaming asshole instincts all along.
16
I eyed my door at the sound of the knock on the other side and immediately regretted coming straight home. A ball of restless agitation settled in my gut and fuck if anyone thought I was hiding and licking my wounds.
I wanted to drop-kick a certain coach right in the grapes for the stunt he pulled.
And I needed someone to talk it over with, but after the stunning realization that my team had turned into this hardened shell on the outside, treating me like some shiny, dainty pearl on the inside, I sure as hell couldn’t talk to any of them.
Because we still needed him.
Especially now that we not only had money into applying to the WRDF, but we’d paid to register for the exhibition and had travel expenses coming for that too.
I couldn’t say he didn’t warn me of impending doom—he did, kinda.
The fucker.
But I deserved a hell of a lot more than some vague warning while he busied himself collecting another hot kiss on a technicality.
If he tried to kiss me now, I’d bite his tongue off.
And that better not be him on the other side of the door.
I’d literally take anyone else. Maybe even Tilly and that was saying something. At least with her I knew what to expect. I hadn’t managed to let her shitty comments roll off just yet, but she didn’t have any new material.
If anything, her willingness to stand there while Priest hammered into her the expectations as we all looked on was new. Authority had never really been her thing, landing her in Bay Wilderness to begin with when her family decided she was too much of a behavioral issue and signed her over to the state.
Something I always pitied when we were teenagers. Not that I told her that.
For her to take Priest’s rules without a flicker of nastiness in her eyes or a sneer twitching at the corner of her lips was new territory entirely.
I opened the door, ready to give whoever was on the other side hell, when Eve sailed right past me and let herself in.
“We need to talk,” she said, her voice bone-white with fury.
I threw the door shut behind her. “Yes, we do—”
“We can’t trust him,” she said, cutting me off.
I sighed. I’d put a whole lot more value in her words if they were really about him, but this had our personal relationship written all over it.
This newfound clarity could kiss my ass. “And why is that?”
She whirled on me then, her jaw slack, and huffed out a livid breath. “He brought Tilly onto the team without saying a fucking word. That’s
