This is not how I expected today to go.
Alisha’s eyes flick toward the girls beside me.
“You guys still play with her?”
They all analyze the woman in front of us as Alisha puts her hands on her hips.
“Did the chemicals go from her hair to her brain?” Rissa juts a thumb toward Alisha. “Why wouldn’t we still play with her?”
Alisha ignores the jab, which tells me she’s locked and loaded. “Interesting.”
I feel heat creeping up the back of my neck.
One of the girls behind us asks, “Is everything okay?”
I don’t answer fast enough, but Alisha does.
“You might want to ask her that.”
The air freezes around me. My chest is tightening, and I feel the same way I did the day I saw the headlines about the abusive accusations.
Here it is. The thing I’ve been outrunning for years.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley takes her place beside Paige, forming a wall between Alisha and me.
Alisha looks right at me when she says, “Ask her what she did to me.”
Silence drops over the group like a brick. My pulse is roaring in my ears. I hate the look people get when they hear something like that. The tiny flicker of doubt when they start re-evaluating everything they thought they knew.
“Skye?” Alisha says, toying with the atmosphere.
“Don’t.” I clench my teeth. “Don’t do this.”
“What’s she talking about?” Liv, one of our defenders, asks, eyeballing me like I might contain something contagious.
I see Alisha’s expression, the fox with a rabbit trapped in a corner.
Then I see the surrounding expressions. Not accusing, but uncertain. And somehow that hurts more.
I drag a hand through my hair, looking down at the pavement. How the fuck am I going to explain this without putting everything I’ve kept a secret out on the table? My sex life doesn’t concern anyone, but Alisha is going to make sure it does.
How am I supposed to sayshe liedwithout sounding like every guilty person who’d ever said the same thing after abusing their significant other?
“I didn’t hurt her.” I finally break the tension in the air, adding a million more questions to the already massive list.
Alisha laughs. Actually laughs and folds her arms over her chest. “Sure, you didn’t. That’s why I had the marks to prove it.”
It doesn’t matter what actually happened; it matters which story people hear first.
My teammates look at me like they don’t recognize the person standing in front of them.
And I don’t even know where to begin to change that.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Violet
Sexual ache is a living, breathing thing, and it is currently coiling low in my belly.
