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I grinned. "I’m good."
"If anyone looks at her—"
"I’ll help you scare them." I shrugged. "Understood."
My team captain stared at me, mystified, while I whistled, getting back to the weights in the training room, slipping on my headphones to listen to an audiobook about scuba diving. A recommendation from Piper’s mom.
How happy can you be?
Happy enough not to worry about the bullshit. Happy enough to take the little inconveniences and breeze past them without a care.
Days later, I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing from my nightstand. My phone. Not Piper’s. I pushed up from the bed and had to stop to gaze down at the love of my life, with her blonde hair all draped across my pillow.
She groaned. "Who—who is that?"
"Mine—sorry," I apologized and dipped down to kiss her shoulder.
I didn’t recognize the number. No doubt, Ryan had gotten another virus and had to pay for it by memorizing a new phone’s layout. I chuckled and answered the call.
"What’d you do to your phone this time, dumbass?" I grinned, pushing out of bed. One look at the time and I made a noise at the back of my throat. "It’s three, man. Can this wait until the morning?"
"Broken Nose. Laceration to the jaw. Metacarpal Neck Fractures—"
I stared at the wall, unable to move from the floor. The voice listed off the injuries that Thomas Sullender received when I beat the crap out of him at the rodeo but it wasn’t the injuries that made my heart stop.
In a cool tone, my high school coach continued to list off everything that Thomas sustained.
Dad.
"Adam?" Piper asked, her voice soft. "Who is it?"
I jerked back to stare at her in the darkness. My blood ran so cold, icy lines crept up my back and left me speechless.
"Who is that?" my dad mirrored her question.
No.
My parents weren’t allowed to know about her. I knew how they could worm themselves into someone’s soul and strip it to pieces. The idea that they would even interact together, even something as innocent as hearing each other in a room, left me clenching the phone between tight fingers.
"I’ll be right back," I managed, shutting the bathroom door behind me.
I couldn’t risk Piper hearing anything. I left Piper’s whale-print towels and grabbed mine off of the bar, shoving them down to the inch of space between the door and the floor to block out the noise. The bathroom itself would carry sound but I shut the closet door and leaned against it, so angry I could barely speak.
There was an audible pause over the phone. "And all you received was community service. For fighting with another football player."
"You don’t know the full story," I snapped.
"It’s about the girl."
I froze.
"Your mom has eagle eyes," my dad said, humorless. "She recognized her right away. It’s the same girl that you elbowed into a pool—"
"I didn’t elbow her," I interjected. “And I apologized for—”
“You don’t apologize. That’s admitting guilt and someone could be recording. We taught you better than that.” There was a pause over the phone. "The same girl who’s working for you. What are you doing, Adam? I told you these girls will fuck with your head. How stupid can you be?"
My hand curled into a fist at my side.
