Page 48 of Forever Defiant
She laughed — humorless and small. “Right. And you confronting me right now is because half your team has suddenly started looking at me like they want me gone.”
My jaw clenched so tight it hurt. “Peterson,” I said, low enough that the word felt like a warning, “now isn’t the right time to go looking for a different story. Stick with Whittaker’s piece.”
She studied me. “And if I don’t?”
My gaze dropped to her notebook. Then back to her face. “Then you only have yourself to blame.”
Her eyes narrowed, just a fraction. “Did they tell you to say this?”
I looked away. “Fuck me, you’re obstinate,” I muttered. “I already caught you in a place you weren’t supposed to be, and you saw his reaction the same as I did. As Mike, your newfriend, did.” She flushed at the reminder. “Use your head. If you try to do more than Mike’s story, then it’s not going to end well.”
“For who?” she asked. “Me or your program?”
I met her gaze, and something in my chest twisted.
“Use your head,” I repeated.
She stared at me for a long second — long enough for the sound of drills and slamming weights and shouting coaches to fade into the background. Then she closed her notebook. “If there’s something wrong,” she said quietly, “I’m not going to pretend I don’t see it.”
“Yes. You are.”
She looked at me, intelligence sharp and clear in her eyes, and I softened a little.
“You heard what he said to Whittaker. This is people’s lives, Peterson. Every fucking five a.m. start, every ice bath, every missed holiday.” I shook my head slightly. “It’s not just a piece on a blog and a headline in a local paper, and it’s much more than ruining someone’s dream.”
“You know about the blog?” Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed with suspicion.
Fuck.
Her eyes searched mine for falsehood, or bullshit, or fuck knows what she was thinking, but suddenly she gave me that same narrowed glare I was becoming used to, and her gaze went past my shoulder. Hadley scoffed. “You’re a player, and I don’t mean football,” she said with a light shake of her head. “So, thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“Slater, are youflirting?” Coach Merriman snapped, coming up behind me.
She’d seen him approaching and giving me an out.
“Keeping in practice, Coach,” I joked lightly. He muttered something, but he bought it.
I watched her as she walked away, head high, shoulders squared — just like she had in the weight room, on the field, in film, every moment she’d been taking hits that weren’t meant to be hers.
I was protecting her from the team and them from her, but all I needed to do was keep her from the truth.
And God help me, I don’t think it would matter to her. If she kept digging... she’d only have herself to blame. I’d warned her not to. That was all I could do.
I turned back to practice, and I caught Dante’s look across the field. He looked pissed.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I muttered as I jogged back to the line of scrimmage.
His look was impassive. “Slater.”
“Later.”
He nodded in agreement. A time and a place. Dante knew that better than anyone.
* * *
I’d just come out of the locker room, hair still damp, shirt half tucked because I couldn’t be assed to fix it, head a complete mess of Hadley’s voice and my own bullshit. The hallway was empty except for the hum of the air-conditioning and the squeak of my sneakers on tile.
When a shadow stepped into my path, I almost knocked the fucker out until I realized it was Dante.
