Page 60 of Forever Defiant
She was digging anyway.
And if she dug into Mason Sterling?
I looked across the field one more time, searching for her even though I knew she wasn’t there. Mike jogged toward hisgroup, leaving me standing in the middle of the grass, helmet dangling from my fingertips, pulse hammering hard enough to feel in my throat.
“Is there a reason you look lost on this field, Slater?” Coach Sutherland’s voice sounded from behind me.
“Enjoying the calm before the chaos, Coach,” I told him with a wide grin. “Are you looking forward to the spring game?”
“I am.” He stopped beside me. “I got rid of that menace reporter,” he said with a smug smile. “You running across the field like that this morning, genius,” he congratulated me.
Oh fuck, it really was my fault she was gone.
“She was persistent.” I tried to keep my voice light.
“Mmhmm, she was.” His stare was hard as he looked downfield. “I’m not a man to tell his players where to spend their time when it’s not on my field, but you’d be better off away from that one.” He gave me a side glance. “I know you’ve got a reputation. You like the ladies, they like you back, but that one? Poisonous. Plenty of others out there, Slater, stick to them. That one’s not worth the aggravation, no matter how good she is in the sack.”
Fuck you.
I forced my expression to stay neutral. Sutherland was watching me, and I gave him the nod, the easy smile that he’d come to expect from me.
“No danger of that, Coach.” I forced a grin. The last thing I wanted was for him to be looking at either me, Dante, or Noah any closer than he was.
“Good boy. Right, move your ass and get to training. You may be the best wide receiver on the team, but your place isn’t guaranteed until I put it on the roster.” He grinned.
I think he was joking, but yeah, another reminder of who held all the power here.
And it wasn’t me.
When I got to the huddle, Dante gave me a look, and I gave him the same smile I’d given the coach. Only Dante knew me better, and I saw his reaction in the way he gripped the ball a little tighter, but other than that, you wouldn’t know QB10 was pissed.
When the coach blew his whistle, we both put our all into practice and played the game, on and off the field.
* * *
I’d had a very intense, heated exchange with my roommate after practice. He kept giving me mixed signals, and now I wasn’t sure if I was running the ball or faking the pass. He had gone from ‘keep away from her’ to ‘okay, talk to her,’ back to ‘I think you and her together are a bad idea, but you do need to talk to her.’
I’d also seen the clips on social media from this morning, and how was I supposed to know someone would film her chasing me? We weren’t allowed phones at practice, so it never occurred to me that it would be caught on camera. Plus, I was just trying toavoidher, but... yeah. It didn’t look good.
I’d even got a text from Naya about it, telling me to get used to becoming a meme because that would be the first of many, now that I was famous. But I wasn’t famous.
Not yet.
Give me time, though, and I would be, and it wouldn’t be because I was getting chased by women.
I pulled my baseball cap lower as I headed across campus. I had to skip dinner to go find her. I needed to think about what that meant. I didn’t like it. I’d told the others what I was doing, and they hadn’t liked it either.
Noah had offered to come, but Dante vetoed that, saying it would look like we were trying to intimidate her. Had he seen her chase me across the field? Had he seen her stare CoachSutherland down and not blink? I don’t think she understood the meaning of the word ‘intimidated,’ and if she did, it was only because it was being usedabouther, not the other way around.
I found her coming out of the one place I really didn’t want her to be. The school paper building. It didn’t take long to put two and two together.
I didn’t know where to start looking, and I’d been going to the library, and I caught sight of that fucking ponytail that kissed the top of her ass every time she walked. Her head was down, her brow knitted in concentration, and she looked... guilty.
In fact, she looked guilty as fuck.
“What have you done?” I murmured as I picked up my speed to catch up to her. When I fell into step beside her, she looked at me as ifIwere the reason she had problems.
“What do you want?” Hadley snapped at me. She took in the baseball cap, the hoodie with the Alabama Lions logo on it, and my gray sweatpants, and her glare grew hotter. She snorted. “Of course you’re a gray sweatpants guy.”
