Page 19 of Forever Relentless

I walked across the room.

“Finish the semester. Talk to your old school or a new one if you’re nervous about what your future here looks like. I really don’t care. Leave this one, and you can forget you were here. Stay here, keep your head down, do what that snake says, and you still have your future. This has nothing to do with you. Thank you for whatever you think you’ve been doing to help, but please, stop.” I put my hand on the door handle to let him out, but his huge hand covered mine.

“What are you doing?” I looked up at him, a spike of fear shooting down my back.

“I’m not ready to leave,” he said softly. He took his hand off mine and stepped away from the door, away from me. “Don’t give me that look. I’m not like that.”

I felt slightly guilty about the thought, but at the same time, I didn’t know this guy. Had Tiffany thought her attacker the night she was assaulted was ‘like that?’ I doubted it.

“I could walk away. I probably should. But I’m here now. This is happening now. Spence and I are already on their radars for the wrong reasons. I just want to know what I’m fighting against, because I am, we are, fighting against it.” He looked so believable. “You said we’re not directly involved, that doesn’t mean the fucker can’t make it look like we are. So it does concern me. I already transferred. I need tape of me playing at a D1 college for the Draft. Two years of tape at a D1 are better than what I have now, championship winner or not. So yeah, I could transfer, but it hurts my progress to do so. So I’m here, and I need to know what the fuck you know, so I can beat it.”

And all of that made sense, and I completely believed him, and that didn’t make me happy.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

He dipped his head, his eyes meeting mine. “How do you know you can’t?”

Chapter 5

Noah

She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine for an answer to whatever question was in her head.

She stepped back.

“I think I told you enough. I’m not comfortable with you here—”

“I’ll go.” I reached for the handle.

“You’ll go?” She looked even more suspicious. “I already asked you to leave. You didn’t, so why now?”

I answered her honestly. “You asked me to leave because you didn’t want to talk. You didn’t mention you were uneasy with me in your space. Now you have, I don’t want that. So . . . I’ll go.”

“That simple?” She didn’t believe me.

“I’m a really simple guy.” I opened the door. “Are you still going to cover the team?”

“Yes. It’s currently my job.”

“Cool. Dust says you take a lot of pictures of me. Make sure you catch my good side.” I winked as her mouth dropped, and I left her in her apartment as I jogged down the stairs.

A door slammed hard somewhere above me, and I knew it was hers. Good. It meant I got to her. Not just in a ‘I’m asking uncomfortable questions about your brother’ way, but in a ‘I’m getting under your skin’ way.

I was okay with that. Actually, I was very okay with that. I walked back to the dorms thinking about the way she’d looked at me when she said she couldn’t trust me. I looked around at all the clueless people passing by. Groups of students, even the ones who walked in twos. They all looked happy. Oblivious to the crap happening around them.

I envied them.

Yesterday had been tense. This morning at practice was tense, worse than the new normal we all had to endure. And this afternoon, yeah, just as bad. I longed for the normal I saw in my fellow students’ faces as they passed me.

Dante and Dustin had been on edge all morning, so much so that they’d eventually made me feel like I had to get away from them.

I wanted to go back to the way it had been, but the way Coach Sutherland had sent us all packing last time had been a harsh reminder of who held the power in our battle against him.

A few people called out to me as I passed them. I gave a quick ‘hello’ back, or a wave of my hand.

I thought about something Hadley had brought up the other week. We had a presence. The fans loved us. The alumni loved us. To get rid of one of us would be easier than to get rid of all three of us.

People would notice. People would question.