Page 64 of Forever Relentless

Noah moved.

I only caught pieces of it: his shoulder turning, Kevin stepping backward, Noah’s cleat skidding over loose turf pellets. Then Kevin stumbled back, hand flying to his jaw as he fell on his ass.

For one frozen second, no one spoke.

“What the hell!” I looked at Noah, who looked down at his coach.

“You hit me?” Kevin looked at Noah in disbelief and a whole lot of wonder. “Are you crazy?”

Perfectly reasonable question.

“I slipped.”

My eyes bugged out of my head. I couldn’t form a sentence as I stared at him in stunned amazement.

Kevin scrambled to his feet. “You slipped? That’s bullshit.”

“What’s going on?” Dante asked quietly as he joined us, and I saw Dustin at his shoulder. “Noah?”

Dustin was at my side. “Are you okay?” he murmured.

Oh my God, they were going to fuck this up for all of us. “I’m fine,” I snapped, louder than I intended.

“Noah?” Dante pressed again.

The linebacker took his eyes off Kevin for a second and looked at Dante. Whatever Dante saw was enough for him to stand shoulder to shoulder with Noah, and both of them fixed their hard stares on Kevin.

“He hit me!”

Dante nodded. “Yeah. I saw him slip. You have new cleats, Noah?”

Noah sniffed, lifted one foot, and shrugged. “Might be.”

“He’s got new cleats,” Dante told Kevin. “Simple accident.”

Kevin looked close to choking. “He hit me because I was speaking to her.”

Four pairs of eyes landed on me, and I felt very self-conscious. “Um . . .”

“You asked an inappropriate question of a fellow staff member.” Noah’s voice was calm and measured. “You insinuated a sexual relationship with a student. This was after you had her cornered and, quite frankly, intimidated her.”

He glanced at me, and his lips twitched when he saw my glare. Did I look fucking intimidated?

“So you hit me.”

“I stepped forward—”

“And his foot slipped,” Dustin confirmed. “We saw it.” He gestured between himself and Dante.

Dante nodded, and I watched Kevin as he looked between the three of them.

“You think you’re the shit?” he asked them with a sneer. “Just wait, assholes.” He barged past Noah, tried to shoulder-bump him, but the immovable wall of Matthews meant Kevin hurt himself more than the linebacker, and simply made him look even more pathetic.

They watched him stalk up the field and then turned back to me.

“Briar?” Dante asked me. “All good?”

“Yes.” I held Noah’s gaze. “What the hell were you doing? I can handle myself!” I knew, even as I said it, that I was being unfair.