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How I didn’t wrap my hands around his neck right there and then was a fucking miracle. But Coach’s warning rang loudly in my ear and I barge past him, hardly satisfied with the smarting of my shoulder where we connected when it should be my fists aching from teaching him a lesson about going near my girl.
Practice is brutal, although I’m not sure if that’s because I’m off my game or Coach has stepped it up a level. I’m not exactly with it, even I know that I’m not in top form.
“What?” I bark at Hayden as he stands there with his arms crossed in front of him. Aaron quickly joins him.
“Can you handle tonight?” Aaron asks.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I hiss.
“You’re a fucking mess, Jagger. How Coach hasn’t benched you, fuck only knows. You’re a fucking liability.”
I take a step forward, my muscles tense, ready to fight. There might be two of them, but it wouldn't be the first time I’ve started something where the odds weren’t in my favor.
“Ladies, get your asses ready for the bus. We have a hard night ahead of us,” Coach barks when he finds the three of us ready to go at it.
Aaron backs down almost immediately, but Hayden holds his ground.
“I’m fucking watching you,” I grate out.
“Me?” he asks with a laugh. “That’s fucking rich. You’re the one who needs to watch their back.”
A smile curls at my lips. He has no idea who he’s dealing with here. I could snap him in two before he even saw it coming.
“Fuck. Off.”
He looks me up and down, his lip curling in disgust, but he does take a step back.
The journey is fucking torturous. Everyone around me seems excited, whereas all I can think about is the fact that I’m sober, which means the memories come thick and fast. And it’s not just of that night now. All sorts of memories hit me, from that first night Hadley found me covered in Charlie’s blood, to our ‘date’ on the beach where I opened up for the first time in my life and, for a very short time, let her in.
Pain lances through my chest as I remember that night. The way she looked down at me, the passion, the hunger, the awe, the… love that poured from her eyes.
I rub at my chest. The pain gets worse with every day that passes.
Glancing back at the minivan behind us that’s filled with our squad, I wonder if she’s back there as miserable as I am right now.
I can’t imagine she’d be anything but. Hadley hates those girls on a normal day, let alone now. I rest my head back and close my eyes, but I don’t sleep.
I can’t.
The game is tough, and, in the final minutes, we lose. I watch as the home team and their crowd cheer and celebrate their last second win, but all I can do is stand and stare at our disheartened cheer squad. A squad that is minus Hadley.
Why didn’t she come? Is it because of me?
My mind takes me back to her door room the day we found her missing. “She might be pregnant.” Remi’s words slam in
to me like a truck.
I have refused to acknowledge what they might mean, but as I stand here now, I wonder if that’s the reason she’s not here.
Remi has tried to talk to me, but I push her away before she even gets close. Is that what she’s been trying to tell me, that I’m going to be a father?
“Fuck,” I mutter, ripping my helmet off and running my hand down my face.
I can’t. I can’t be responsible for someone else, for someone so helpless. If she is p-pregnant, then she needs someone better than me to look after her. Someone like… someone like Conner.
Fuck.
I won’t follow the rest of the team to the commiseration party tonight. The only party I want to be a part of is a party for one with a bottle or two of vodka, or the pills I keep stashed away in my room just in case shit gets too hard to deal with.
