Jake’s defending me. But somehow that makes it worse. I’ve been a part of this team for weeks—so many sweaty hours together, and no one, no one, warned me that Grey had a past with Stacey. Any one of them could’ve pulled me aside and filled me in on the backstory so that I wouldn’t be so blindsided.
I wheel on Jake. “So you knew about all of this and you didn’t tell me?”
Jake’s lips fall open in surprise. A memory of us in the parking lot that first day flashes in front of my eyes, when he told me he didn’t like the thought of Grey using me. But that could’ve been anything—if Jake had really wanted me to know, he could have said something else in any of the days since then.
I search the faces of my teammates. Topps. Brady. Tate. Smith. I even spare a second to read Kelly’s face.
“You all fucking knew?”
Silence. I take the collective lack of an answer as a yes. They all knew about what happened with me and Stacey, and they all knew about Grey and me. And yet not a single one of them had the balls to come clean.
I swallow, willing my voice not to break, and turn to Grey. “I’m a human being, not some pawn. If you got burned by some stupid girl, how dare you bring me into it? How dare you bring the team into it?”
A few of the players’ heads nod in my periphery, but I don’t care. They should have said something earlier if they didn’t agree with what Grey was doing.
“I was taught that a team is a family,” I say, my voice like iron. “And families don’t do this shit to each other. Human beings don’t do this shit to each other. And this human is out.”
Every eye is on me as I jam my keys back into the lock, wrench the car door open, and slide into the seat. As soon as the door latches, the tears fall free. I hope against hope they can’t see.
31
BY THE TIME I DRIVE HOME, BAWLING MY EYES OUT THE whole way, Dad’s out front again, Danielle drinking beer with him. When I reach the top of the drive, he’s taking a swig of Boulevard Wheat, and so Danielle speaks first, a big stinkin’ grin on her face. “There you are, superstar.”
Though I should be all cried out by now, I burst into tears.
Confusion crosses Danielle’s face and she pushes up to her feet, tucking me into her arms. Dad’s standing now, too, hand on my back. “Liv,” he says, “what’s wrong?”
When I shake my head into Danielle’s shoulder, she gently pushes me to arm’s length, the two of them trying to read the words I can’t say.
That Dad was right. That I couldn’t trust Grey. That the people who play football are brutal.
It doesn’t help that I can feel my left knee swelling, my jeans too tight around it.
Two car doors slam.
“Look,” Dad says softly, brushing a tear from my cheek. “Adeline’s here for you. Another friend, too. I can tell them to come back tomorrow, if you want.”
I shake my head, and Dad nods and touches his forehead to mine. “Pancakes after practice tomorrow, baby girl.”
There’s a thrill in his voice as he tries to get me to smile, and a look on his face I haven’t seen in forever.
What I wouldn’t have given for this Dad that first week of practice. For his joy rather than his anger. And now I’ve tossed it away because boys are assholes. He’ll be just as disappointed tomorrow when I tell him I’m not going to practice as he was last week, but for totally different reasons.
I am such a freaking letdown, no matter what I do.
Danielle gives my arm a squeeze before grabbing the beer bottles and disappearing into the house. “You really were super tonight.”
As the storm door clicks shut and both of them disappear into the house, I pivot toward the street, mindful of my knee as I twist. Addie is standing there, and Nick takes up space behind her. He can’t seem to look straight at me, eyes unfocused, almost as if he’s ashamed. Good. If he knew what was going on, then he deserves to be ashamed.
“Is it true?” Addie asks, her voice unbelieving.
I close the distance between us. We’re away from the house, down the driveway, Heather’s favorite maple shading the streetlights and moon.
“What part?” I say, tears pricking my eyes again. “That I basically left the team? That Grey used me to get back at Stacey? Or that every single teammate knew what he was doing and no one thought to say something?” I shift my gaze to Nick and give him the exact same glare I gave his sister seconds before she hit me with a fastball.
Addie blinks and although the light is low, it’s easy to spot the clear sheen of tears against her beautiful dark eyes. She lunges forward and wraps me in a vicious hug. I stifle a gasp, my sore muscles complaining, but wrench my arms around her anyway.
We stay like that for a good minute before Addie draws back, hands draped gently over my upper arms, her natural strength subdued.
“What do you need? What can I do?”
My gaze strays to Nick. Without a word, he disappears into the passenger side of Addie’s Toyota. When he’s gone, I sob-smile. “Get my Windsor Prep scholarship back?”
“Something more realistic?”
I chomp down on the inside of my cheek, willing the fresh tears to back off.
“Want me to talk to Grey?” she suggests.
I shake my head.
“How about Jake? Want me to talk to him?”
I shake my head.
“Stacey?” She throws a right cross into the shadows. “I can drive straight to Arizona and talk the hell out of that one. Or, you know, just deck her.”
She says it to be funny and laughs a little with it, but instead, her words stick in my mind. I think of Grey running into that brawl and how worried I was that he might take a punch his brain couldn’t handle. I shake my head to clear it, and force out the words. “She’s actually here. She’s the one who told me about her and Grey.”
The tears start coming again.
“I’ve got my gloves in the car.” Addie adds a one-two, hook-uppercut combo to shadow Stacey. That kickboxing class this summer really paid off in good form.
It’s all so ridiculous that I laugh through the sob in my throat, words loosening. “How about you land one on my temple so I don’t have to go to school Monday?”
“If your dad wouldn’t kill me, I’d take you out of your misery, yes.”
“You are the best friend.” And she is. And I suck—again missing her games this week, because I’m the worst.
“Correction, I am Olive Rodinsky’s best friend. And Olive Rodinsky is a damn good quarterback.”
That just makes the tears fall harder. “The whole point of football was to show what a team player I am, and I just basically left the team. Kitt is never going to see past that. Never.”
Addie clutches my shoulders. “Then don’t make it an issue.” I blink at her, vision blurry. “She doesn’t know the whole story. Were your coaches there? Did you say the words ‘I quit’ to Coach Lee?”
“Well, no—”
“Then go to practice tomorrow. Finish the season. In a few weeks, she’ll be so impressed, you won’t even need to try out.”
“I can’t,” I say, voice shaking at a dangerous pitch.