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“I’m not telling you that.” I head toward the door. “I’ll find another way in.”
“Don’t try to, Elias. I mean it. I’ll have to call security if you do.”
Fine. I’ll climb the walls then. Or find a back door. “I’ll see you later, Kit. Thanks for nothing.”
Kit calls after me but I’m already out the door.
Outside, I scan the front of the building. It’s four stories. I don’t even know which floor she’s on.
There’s an open window on the second floor. And a drainpipe that runs the height of the building. Thick ivy clings to the brick. It might be sturdy enough to take my weight. Or it might not. I guess I’m about to find out.
But before I can get a reliable hold to pull myself past the ground floor window, I hear familiar voices behind me.
Damn it. That was fast. Kit must have told them it was urgent.
“Step away from the freshman dorm or we’ll be forced to shoot,” West calls out, and I guess I can be glad it’s not an actual cop.
Fuck.
“He’s losing his mind,” I hear Jake say. He’s not wrong. He grabs my shirt. I like to think I could take Jake in a fight but we’d be evenly matched. He’s strong as fuck and he easily yanks me down.
Jake slings his arm around my shoulders. I try to pull away from him but the three of them pull me in the direction of our house and I finally let them. Fighting with my teammates when I’m this fired up would only injure one of us. Scaling the building probably also isn’t the best idea, especially since I would have had to climb in some random freshman girl’s window. Which probably wouldn’t have gone down that well with the local authorities.
“We need a plan,” Gabriel says. “We need to get you and Zara together so you can talk this through before you get fucking arrested.”
“Good idea,” I growl sarcastically. “I wish I’d thought of it.”
“We’ll get Isla to bring her over to our place,” Jake suggests, “so the two of you can talk this through without distractions and you can get your head back in the game. No one else has to know about it.”
“She won’t come,” I tell them. “She won’t answer my calls. I’ve left shitloads of messages. She’s refusing to talk to me.”
“We’ll ask Isla not to tell Zara where she’s taking her. We’ll set it up so Zara doesn’t know.”
“We’ll ambush her,” West says, enjoying this.
Gabe, not so much. “We’ll do whatever it takes, Chief, to make sure Coach has no idea whatsoever that you’re obsessed with his daughter.”
At this point I’ll agree to anything as long as it means I can see her again.
18
The sky is clear and blue. Fall leaves are glowing with the kind of light you can only find in the golden hour on a September afternoon in New England. There’s a soft coolness touching the edges of the sunlight’s warmth, like summer and fall are wrapped in a slow, erotic dance.
Get your head out of that loop of slow, erotic dances, girlfriend.
It’s game day.
Even before we get anywhere near the stadium I can feel the excited rumble of 75,000 cheering fans. The marching band is playing, the sound almost drowned out by the noise of the sold-out crowd.
Isla, Mollie, Lauren and I hold hands as we make our way inside, so we don’t lose each other in the seething mass of humanity. I tried to suggest to Isla that we get the seats my dad offered instead of taking the box Elias reserved for us, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
It seemed kind of wrong to use it when I’ve basically made it clear to him that we can’t…do what we did. We can’t see each other again, when we’re clearly like magnets that can’t resist each other’s pull. Especially with all that’s riding on the season.
“If the quarterback gets you a fully catered executive box, then you take it,” reasoned Isla. She also insisted we paint our faces with stripes of red and white across our cheekbones. We’re dressed head to toe in school colors, just like the rest of the stadium.
People are waving red feathers and wearing the trademark cat’s ears headbands. Thousands of red flags are flying. A group of girls are wearing skin-tight red catsuits with Marry Me, Elias! written across their chests.
I ignore the flash of jealousy. My little devil-mermaid whispers, You know what he tastes like when he comes.
