Page 34 of Forever Defiant
I told myself it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here for me. She wasn’t writing about me. She shouldn’t be looking at me.
But she was. Every time I looked over, she was watching me.
Constantly.
Accidentally.
Annoyingly.
Her gaze would sweep over me as if she were looking at the whole field, not me specifically. But she was. She was looking at me. Paying attention tome.
She didn’t do it to Dante or Noah; her eyes tracked me like a lioness in the wild searching for her next meal. I wasn’t vain enough to think it was because of the bar, no. Dante was right, she targeted me that night, and the way she tracked my movement on the field now wasn’t because she wanted a repeat.
I needed to remind her that I was not her assignment. More firmly this time.
Every time Mike Whittaker went somewhere, she went with him. Which meant she was in places I wasn’t expecting her to be.
Practice started off normal — thank fuck something about practice was normal. Warm-ups, followed by footwork drills, then route trees. Nothing special. Routine. Steady. Right up until I heard her voice drift over from the sideline.
“Why is he running that drill if he’s favoring his left foot?”
I turned before I even thought about it. She wasn’t talking to me; she was talking to Mike, in that quiet and calm way she had. Her pen was tapping her notebook like she was logging evidence for a federal case.
Whittaker blinked, then followed her gaze to the running back jogging back up the field toward where Dante was talking to the second quarterback. He looked as if he was deep in discussion, and I knew he’d be talking about depth charts.
Mike’s face was screwed up as he watched the running back. “Uh... what? I think that’s just how he runs.”
“No.” Hadley shook her head once, then tilted it as she considered the player. “He’s compensating,” she said with quiet confidence. “He’s stiff on his left side, he hides it better when someone’s watching him.” Her attention was on the field. “Is that something you have to do often, play injured?”
I almost answered before the freshman could, which was stupid because she wasn’t talking to me. As Dante liked to remind me — often — not everything was about me. But her attention was still on the field, seeing things I’d never given a second thought. I watched Whittaker shift his weight as if he were suddenly aware of his limbs.
Great. Now the kid was nervous. That would pique her interest even more.
She wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she was digging. Looking for more andseeingit.
“Yo, Whittaker,” I called, catching his attention. “Just because you have a shadow doesn’t mean you can flake on practice. Move your ass down the field, show the coach you want to be on the first team.”
Whittaker ran off down the field like I’d lit a match under his ass, not even saying anything to his sidekick as he left.
“Nice,” she muttered, loud enough for me to hear.
I made a show of doing some stretches, my head turned toward her, but not obviously so. “Be careful what kind of questions you ask, Peterson,” I warned her. “These walls have people in them.”
Her eyes widened slightly as she looked around self-consciously. When her eyes met mine again, I waited until I saw she’d understood.
“Be smarter, or be quiet,” I murmured as Coach blew his whistle, and I jogged over to the center of the field, wondering why I’d just warned the girl on the sidelines to watch her ass.
I should have let her get caught. It would get her out of here. Instead, I was looking out for her. Why? Was I being reckless? No.Shewas, and she needed to be careful. I watched as the backup running back joined the circle. He flexed his foot once, twice, and winced slightly when he put it back down on the ground.
It wasn’t my business. If he was hurt, he should speak up. I shook it off. Not my issue. Except now I kept noticing every time he tried to flex the foot without making it obvious. Dante barked out a play, and I moved out of the huddle, but I snagged his arm.
“Twenty-one is hurt,” I murmured to him.
Dante looked at me casually, as if I’d made a joke like I usually did, and he grinned at me, but his eyes were sharp and intelligent as always. “Hurt how?”
“Foot. I didn’t notice,” I told him as the coach shouted about the formation. “Shedid.”
Dante cursed. “Later,” he promised.
