I swallowed, the dry air rough against my throat. Dad brought his head to mine and inhaled painfully. He didn’t say anything this time; he didn’t have to. Nothing was okay and everything was on the line. And part of me was pissed they’d kept this from me. But they were the adults, the decision makers. They got to choose how and when to break the news to their kids. Of course, Xander was too young to understand. All he knew was his mommy got sick sometimes, she shouted and cried and then held him tight and apologized over and over. And it was messed up but part of me envied him. On some level, his innocence would protect him from things to come.
My stomach plummeted. “I need to go,” I rushed out, stepping out of Dad’s embrace.
“Cameron—”
“I’m fine, Dad. I just need some air.” And I needed for him to not be looking at me like that. Like the worst had already happened. “I have practice after school, so I’ll be late.”
“Xander will be at Katie’s. Me and your mom will be—”
“Yep, got it.” I grabbed my bag and keys and waved him off. It was a dick move. But I didn’t know how to deal with this, how to handle the anger and fear festering inside of me. I didn’t know how he expected me to go to school and play football like everything was the same.
When really nothing was ever going to be the same again.
We were all gathered around Coach Hasson for his pre-game pep talk. The last twenty-four hours had been a daze, my mind occupied with only two things: Mom; and this crap with Jase, Thatcher, and Hailee. She hadn’t looked twice at me all week and I felt lost. It was crazy, how the one girl I’d spent the best part of six years keeping at arm’s length had become the one girl I wanted by my side more than anything. I’d contemplated trying to talk to her again, to explain, but deep down, I didn’t know what I would say. And if she rejected me again, I wasn’t sure I could handle that.
“Fourteen, your head screwed on right, Son?”
“Sure, Coach.” My helmet hung in my hand as I nodded.
“St. Odell have some big players. Keep your eyes open and your head down, you hear me?”
A round of grunts filled the locker room. “This is the one, ladies. We win this and there’s no stopping us. We’re the ones to catch, the ones to beat.” His steely eyes ran over each one of us. “Gather in, Raiders on one.”
The locker room electrified as we prepared to run out onto the field. I focused on the huge blue and white ‘R’ painted beside the door; our lucky charm, a reminder of who we were and where we were going.
“Hey,” Jase came up beside me after the circle broke up. “You good?” It was the first time he’d tried to talk to me outside of practice in three days.
“If you’re worried I won’t get the job done,” I ground out. “I will.”
“Chase.” He snagged my wrist and I glanced back at him. “Come on, that’s not...” A heavy sigh escaped his lips. “This shit between us, it doesn’t feel right.”
“Yeah, well, a lot isn’t right anymore.” I shrugged him off and joined my teammates as we poured onto the field under the bright Friday night lights, silently praying I could make it through the next hour.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Hailee
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” I whisper-hissed at Flick as we sat wedged in between a sea of blue and white.
“Call it research.” She flashed me a droll smile.
“More like a slow and painful death.”
“Really, Hails? You’re telling me not even a tiny part of you wants to be here to cheer him on?” Her brow rose, her expression dubious.
“Cheer who on?”
She gave me a knowing smirk. “If you think for one second that I believe this thing between you and,”—my best friend leaned in closer making sure no one around us could hear, not that anyone could over the simmering noise—“Fourteen is over, then you’re more foolish than I… oh, here they come.”
Imagine Dragons blasted over the PA system, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Only it didn’t spark the adrenaline in my veins the way it had before. Not when I’d spent the last week trying to avoid my peers, which was hard when you spent almost seven hours of the day with them. As if that wasn’t enough, the atmosphere at home was toxic. And Cameron had barely looked at me all week. So sitting in amongst four-thousand Raider fans, cheering the team onto victory, wasn’t exactly my idea of escaping all the shit going on in my life.
But Flick was nothing if not persistent, and if I pretended really hard and tried to avoid searching out Cameron across the field, I could kind of convince myself I was here for research purposes only.
Well, almost.
Going into the fourth quarter, the game was tied. It had been hard to watch. Something was wrong in the Raiders camp, everyone felt it. My step-brother was pissed, yelling at his teammates every time they fumbled the ball or didn’t make the play, and Coach Hasson looked ready to blow a gasket on more than one occasion.
“This should have been a walk in the park for them,” Flick grumbled beside me. She’d really found her stride as the team’s latest fan, the blue and white ball cap sitting proudly on her head. “Come on,” she yelled as our defense took down one of the St. Odell Saints offense; the crowd responding with a ferocious roar.
The players switched, my eyes tracking number fourteen as he jogged onto the field, moving into position. Jason yelled the play, and there seemed to be a collective intake of breath around the stadium as he hiked the ball to Cameron who took off down left field, right under its trajectory. The crowd was enraptured, a crackle of anticipation in the air, as he hooked his hand up ready to receive the ball. It was a good pass, an even better catch, and the crowd went wild, the noise deafening.
“Go, go,” Flick yelled, her fingernails digging into my arm so hard I felt sure they might draw blood.
But I didn’t cheer, I couldn’t. My eyes were too focused on Cameron, the way he cut through the air, his strong legs eating up the yard markers. Thirty... twenty... ten.
“Oh God,” my best friend breathed as the world slowed down. A Saints lineman appeared out of nowhere, set on a collision course with Cameron.
“Flick,” my voice quivered as I watched, along with the rest of the crowd, as the huge defensive player ploughed into Cameron, knocking him into the air. His body sailed backward and he landed hard. The whole place winced, the four-thousand strong hiss of breath making my hair stand on end, nervous energy churning in my stomach.
It wasn’t my first game. I’d seen other players take a hit. Watched as bodies were strewn across the field like rag dolls, but I’d never felt the impact before.
“Flick.” My voice no longer sounded like my own as I clutched onto my friend while watching players swarm Cameron’s lifeless body.
“He’s fine,” Flick said, her voice catching. “He’ll be fine. Players take hits like that all the time.”
But he didn’t look fine.
He didn’t get up and shake it off the way players usually did. He just lay there, unmoving.