Chapter 16 Dare
DARE
I always thought he'd be mine in some secret, silent way. Watching him give that away broke something I didn’t know was holding me together.
Practice had become a kind of purgatory lately. The one place where I could pretend I was too busy to feel anything. Drills. Laps. Header practice. The rhythmic whistle of Coach barking orders. My body moving on autopilot, lungs burning in all the right ways.
It kept me just distracted enough. Because the second I stopped—when I hit the showers, when I walked to class, when I lay down at night—the noise came rushing in. Unfiltered. Untamed. All of it, the guilt, the anger, and the memories.
Him.
So I threw myself harder into it today. More aggressive. More clipped passes. More fake smiles slapped across my face when my teammates called me “savage” or “relentless” as a compliment. It wasn’t.
I wasn’t playing for the win. I was playing to bleed.
The field was half-mud from yesterday’s rain, and the sky hung heavy with clouds that hadn’t made up their minds.
My cleats slid with every pivot, and Coach had been barking plays nonstop since kickoff.
I was everywhere—midfield, backline, back up again—killing myself to prove something I couldn’t name.
Halfway through a scrimmage, I felt that buzz under my skin, the unmistakable energy that says you’re being watched. My foot nearly missed the ball on the next pass.
I scanned the field, assuming Coach was glaring at me again, but his attention was on someone else. Someone standing at the edge of the chain-link fence.
My breath froze in my lungs.
Tru.
He stood there, an apparition pulled straight out of the past, wearing jeans and that goddamn pink shirt with the sleeves pushed up.
His hands were shoved in his pockets, head tilted slightly to one side like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to be there.
He had that shit in his hair again. He’d stood in front of our bathroom mirror and sculpted it with purpose.
The late afternoon sun hit him at a weird angle. Too bright. Too beautiful. Tru was something I couldn’t touch. And for the briefest second, my chest lit up with hope that had dared to spark inside it.
Maybe… maybe he came to see me. Maybe he missed me.
My heart curled tight as a fist in my chest.
And then the taught wire fucking snapped. Andre Vargas, my teammate, jogged toward the fence, his shirt slung over one shoulder as if he thought he was hot shit. He stopped right next to Tru, said something just for him, and grinned.
Tru smiled back.
And the match inside me was snuffed out.
They talked too easily, like there was history there. Maybe they’d kissed. Maybe worse. Maybe he’d told Vargas the things he used to tell me. Laughed at his jokes. Touched his arm. Stared up at him with those trusting blue eyes, seeing the most interesting person in the world—and it wasn’t me.
I wanted to scream. What the fuck is this?
“Yo, Carter!” someone shouted. “Focus!”
Too late. The ball flew past me. A turnover. Coach’s whistle screamed from the sideline. I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop staring.
What the fuck was happening?
That rage, that boiling undercurrent of something I didn’t want to name, curled hot inside me. Because for a second, I’d let myself believe the lie. That maybe he’d come for me. That maybe, I wasn’t the only one still haunted.
But I was.
And he’d moved on. With him, of all people. I wouldn’t trust him with a fucking goldfish, let alone Tru.
I forced myself to look away, focus on the scrimmage, on the ball, but it was like trying to ignore a migraine. You could pretend all you wanted, but it still pulsed behind your eyes, waiting to knock you flat the second you dropped your guard.
Vargas was still talking to him, leaning in too close, hands moving too much. Showboating, like he always did. Tru was smiling, nodding, tucking his hair behind one ear as Vargas leaned in close. Their body language told a story I didn’t want to read.
And that was it. I fucking lost it.
No. Hell no.
I sprinted after the next pass like the ball was Vargas’s head. Slammed into one of my teammates mid-play. We both went down, but I bounced back up like nothing happened.
“You good?” he asked, rubbing his shoulder.
“Fine.” I wasn’t.
I played like I had something to prove, as if I could sweat it out, run it off, crush the storm building in my chest with each sprint down the field. But it didn’t work. Every time I glanced up, they were still there.
Still talking. Still smiling.
Vargas leaned a shoulder against the fence, casual as shit, owning the space beside him—owning Tru. And Tru didn’t flinch. Didn’t step away. Didn’t even glance at the field to pretend he might be here for someone else.
He didn’t look at me. Not once.
A whistle blew. I barely registered Coach yelling for us to reset. My skin felt too tight. My jaw throbbed from grinding my teeth. Vargas jogged across the field to rejoin the team.
“Yo,” someone shouted. “You good, Carter?”
“Yeah. Shut up.”
Another drill started. I kept running. Kept struggling to breathe right. My cleats tore into the field, trying to dig a hole deep enough to bury this feeling in.
A cleat scraped my ankle from behind, and I turned, snarling. “Watch it.”
Vargas jogged past, smug, loose-shouldered, and full of that easy charm that made people forget how fake he was. He gave me a little smirk as he passed. Then—he winked.
Motherfucker. My chest splintered open, and rage poured in.
He knew. The bastard knew what he was doing. That wink wasn’t friendly. It wasn’t a taunt. It was a claim.
And Tru had let him.
I slammed into the next player who came near me, barely missing a yellow. Coach screamed something across the field, but it didn’t land. Not with the blood roaring in my ears and the image of Vargas brushing Tru’s arm, Tru tipping his head, laughing.
There was a point—right there, in that moment—where I could feel something breaking.
Some thin thread I’d been using to hold myself together.
It snapped with an almost audible crack, a bone giving way beneath pressure.
And I knew if Vargas came near me again, winked at me again, touched him again—I’d bury him six feet under this damn soccer field.
By the time Coach called it, I was soaked in sweat, and my vision was narrowed to a single, red-tinged point of fury. My teammates clapped each other on the back. Someone tossed me a water bottle. I let it hit the ground.
I wiped my face with my jersey and turned toward the fence again. But he was gone.
The locker room smelled like wet turf and perspiration, the familiar cocktail of post-practice testosterone and cheap deodorant. Someone was blasting music from their phone, and it grated on my already-fried nerves.
I yanked open my locker and peeled off my jersey.
“Hey, Carter.” Vargas’s voice rang out from across the room, smug and sunny, like he hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes outside charming the only person I’d ever really let in. “You planning to run through me next time, or was that just foreplay?”
A couple of the guys laughed. I didn’t.
“Maybe keep your head up next time,” I muttered, shoving my cleats into the bottom of my locker.
“Maybe stop playing like you’ve got something to prove,” Vargas shot back.
I turned and met his eyes. “Maybe stop hanging out with kids who still have a bedtime.”
He grinned, towel slung over his shoulder, not even phased. “Tru’s not a kid. He’s the same age as us. You should know, isn’t he your brother or something?”
And just like that, my blood boiled.
“What the hell do you even talk about?” I said, louder than I meant to. “Art? Eyeliner? Favorite fonts?”
“Dude.” Matt, two lockers down, side-eyed me. “Chill.”
Vargas’s expression didn’t falter. That smirk of his just got sharper. “We talk about real shit. Stuff you probably wouldn’t get.”
“Oh, I get it,” I sneered. “I get exactly what you’re after.”
He stepped closer, voice dangerously low. “You really wanna go there?”
I stared at him, jaw tight, fists clenched. I didn’t want to fight him. Not really. I wanted to wipe that look off his face. The one that said he knew something I didn’t. The one that said he mattered.
That he mattered to Tru.
I could feel eyes on us. My teammates were curious, waiting for a show. I backed down, bit my tongue, and sat down hard on the bench like it was my choice and I was too cool to care.
Vargas scoffed and turned away, whistling as he unzipped his gym bag because he’d already won something I didn’t even know how to fight for.
I bent over, lacing my sneakers with shaking fingers, and whispered, fuck you into the metal of my locker.
Because I couldn’t say it to Tru.
Because I wouldn’t say it to myself.
Headlights flashed across my bedroom walls just after eleven.
I was sprawled on my bed, damp from the shower, earbuds in, pretending the bass line vibrating through my skull could drown out the rest of my thoughts. Too bad it couldn’t.
I sat up and moved to the window without thinking.
Tru.
The light from the dashboard barely illuminated his face, just enough for me to catch the smirk on Vargas’s face, one arm draped casually over the steering wheel like a playboy. Tru’s Playboy.
I couldn’t hear a damn word they spoke, but I didn’t need to. Vargas leaned across the seat, and Tru didn’t move. Then Vargas grabbed him, fisted the front of his shirt, and hauled him into a kiss.
No.
My hand hit the window glass. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was a full-body press, desperate and greedy. Vargas climbed across the console like he couldn’t get enough, and Tru didn’t fight it. Not at first.
My vision tunneled. Heat pounded behind my eyes. I couldn’t look away.
Had he done this before? Had he let someone do that to him before? Had he wanted it?
The same mouth that used to whisper my name in the dark. The same hands that used to cling to me during scary movies, trembling with trust.
My hands curled into fists at my sides. This was a joke. A cruel one. A fucking humiliation parade, and I was the one tied to the float. Because it wasn't just him. It was me. They didn’t even know it, but they were mocking me, flaunting that shit in my face.
Every kiss Vargas pressed to his mouth, every way Tru let him, was a spotlight on my weakness. On all the shit I couldn’t say, couldn’t touch, couldn’t want. And now some loser from my team was doing the very thing I hated myself for even thinking about.
I backed away from the window, breath shallow, just before I heard a slam.
I rushed back just in time to see Tru shove the car door closed with all his weight. He yelled something, his voice sharp, even from this distance. Vargas was red-faced, saying something back, but Tru turned away, middle finger raised over his shoulder like a weapon.
His precious pink shirt was wrinkled, and his perfectly coiffed hair tousled.
The front porch light spilled gold over his skin, making him look soft and flushed.
Tru stood there for a second, breathing hard.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve like it had been tainted.
Then he kicked the front step, hard enough to limp, and disappeared inside.
Vargas peeled out of the driveway with a shriek of tires.
I collapsed on the edge of my bed, rage simmering thick and raw in my chest. Tru’s out there in tight jeans, fitted shirts, and polished nails, letting guys crawl all over him in our driveway.
Acting like it’s nothing. Pretending I don’t even live here.
Like I’m not standing at the window, watching every second, knowing it meant something.
I dropped the curtain and turned away, but that image of his body pinned, lips claimed, shirt fisted in another guy’s hand was seared into me like a brand.
And the worst part?
I didn’t know who I was more furious at.
Him.
Or myself.