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“Wait. Let’s all calm down,” I said, because the situation was going south. When my boyfriend got mad like this, he would fight anybody, and Garrett Bowman could kill him. “Ward, remember what the counselor said about—”
It was the wrong thing to remind him of. His frown turned into a snarl. “Shut the hell up,” he ordered me. “Not another word out of you.”
“Ward, please—”
He used my own arm to shove me, to push me away from him. I had no balance in these high, high shoes; my back glanced off the guardrail and I had a fleeting impression that I was sliding on the paint, but then I tumbled off the loading dock. I was in the air only for a few seconds before I crashed to the pavement with an ugly grunt, and I lay there in shock and pain.
Above me, voices rose and mingled. A deep one boomed, “You damn bully!” and then a higher voice, Ward’s voice, squealed, “No, don’t!”
A moment later, my boyfriend whipped through the air like he’d been shot out of a cannon. I watched his body collide against a large recycling container with a thump and a jangle of cans, and then he slid to the ground.
“Ward?” I asked. “Ward!” He moaned but then started to get up. He was ok.
“Sit your ass down,” the football player told him. “Don’t move.”
Ward froze on his hands and knees and looked over at me. No, not at me, but at the figure that was now bending down to me.
“Ma’am? Lissa?”
I nodded. “I’m fine,” I announced. “It’s all good.” That wasn’t really true, because there was something very wrong with my foot. It hurt so much that I bit my lip so I wouldn’t moan.
“I’m going to help you up,” Bowie told me. My boyfriend made a noise and the football player looked over at him. “Don’t talk, either,” he instructed. “Not a word.” Then he turned back to me. “Ready, Lissa?” He reached out a pair of giant hands and I recoiled.
“Wait! I can’t stand,” I said. Sweat broke out on my forehead even though the spring night was chilly and I wore a shroud. I looked over at Ward. “I’m fine,” I announced, but he didn’t answer.
“I can help.” Instead of standing me up, Bowie plucked me off the ground and I sailed into the air. I did moan a little when my foot left the pavement.
“You’re carrying me?” I asked confusedly.
He nodded. “We’ll go inside and tell—”
“No,” I broke in. “I don’t want anyone to know what happened. I don’t want to ruin my sister’s wedding.”
Our forward movement slowed. “They’ll worry if you’re not there.”
No, they wouldn’t. “I think I should just go home,” I said. “I’ll put some ice on this.”
“I think we’ll go to the hospital instead.” He started walking again, covering huge swaths of the alley with each stride. My leg hurt so much now that I was having trouble focusing on anything but the pain, but I did peek back over Bowie’s big shoulder to look at my boyfriend. He had gotten up by himself and stood in the glow of that single bulb, watching me retreat. I turned my head so I couldn’t see him anymore but I still knew how angry he was at me.
I couldn’t do anything about it right now. We were moving fast and I tried not to cry again from the bumping and jostling. “Thank you,” I remembered to tell the man carrying me.
“It’s my pleasure. I’m sorry that you got hurt.” He also looked back toward my boyfriend. “It would be my pleasure to hurt him, too, if you—
“No thank you,” I said. “Please don’t.”
I was sorry as well, sorry about this whole night. We kept going and I closed my eyes. Maybe I would wake up and the speech, the paint, and whatever was wrong with my foot would only be a dream. I kept my eyes shut as I rode in this stranger’s arms and wished hard for that.
Chapter 1
The Season
He reached for his glasses and balanced them on the end of his nose to look at the papers I’d placed on the desk between us. “It’s not that we don’t trust you, Sissy,” Coach Sam said, “but—”
“But we don’t trust you,” Coach Rylah finished. She picked up another folder of documents I’d brought from my doctor and thumbed through the pages.
Sam glared at her briefly. “No, we do trust Sissy and we know that she’s a responsible girl. But we also know how anxious you ladies are to get your ass—butts back onto the field, and sometimes you’re willing to risk making your injuries worse.”
“Juuri, söpöläinen?” Rylah asked earnestly. “That’s Finnish and it means, ‘Can we believe in you, Sissy?’ I just hope your doctor isn’t some quack.” She looked at the letter in her hand. “This does say you’re good to go. We’ll be glad to have you back, providing that you can hack it again this year.Voi saatana, which translates as, ‘Do your best in times of adversity.’”
