Chapter 12
Dustin
Spring training was supposed to feel like a reset.
Fresh drills. Fresh plays. Fresh tape. Fresh shot at proving I was still the guy this team could rely on. Instead, the whole place felt . . . off. Everything felt tense. Fractured. Training and the locker room felt like we were one wrong word away from something blowing up.
And everyone, including the coaches, was pretending not to notice it.
Hadley walked into the weight room on day seven like she belonged there, notebook tucked to her chest, with Mike trailing behind her like a loyal golden retriever, and the room shifted around her. Not in a good way. Not in the way they had been whispering about her either.
The smartass comments about their chances of dating her, or the lower, filthier comments about her ass, or her tits. Comments Dante had already shut down with a cold glare and a disgusted shake of his head.
Noah had smacked someone across the back of the head when he heard them. Coach Merriman had heard him and told him it was harmless fun, saying, “It was just locker room talk,” and to save his energy for the field.
My teammates talked about my sister like that, I’d cut their dicks off, so I liked that Noah was being more physical about shutting that shit down.
But these weren’t those kinds of whispers. This was now a whole new attitude.
Coach Sutherland had stood up in front of us after film and laid down the law. It was a practice she hadn’t been to. She’d barely missed two, and he’d been waiting for it.
The locker room was already muttering about her wandering off and Mike getting his ass ripped by the coach for it. But Sutherland decided to notch it up further.
“Anyone, and I do mean anyone, who speaks to the wannabe reporter on any subject that I have not approved is on the bench indefinitely.”
I exchanged a look with Dante, who was wearing his mask and projecting his ‘this is beneath me’ persona. He did it when he got questions from the media he didn’t want to answer. He looked naturally bored. I schooled my face to match.
Coach Sutherland continued. “I know she’s young and attractive, and you all think she’s sweet.
But she’s worth watching, so don’t be fooled by a pretty smile.
Hadley Peterson is not a friend of this department.
She’s here because Dean Cole put her here.
Not me. Not any of your coaches. Administration sent her, and while we have nothing to hide, we don’t need extra shit added to our training.
” His gaze swept the room. I tried not to shift in my seat when his gaze landed on me.
“We are a team. On the field and off of it, we work and stick together. Alright?”
There were several loud agreements, and Dante, Noah, and I all nodded right along with them.
They had nothing to hide. Yeah, well, people with nothing to hide didn’t make fucking announcements to say that.
The head coach looked over at Whittaker, who looked like he was trying to slip lower in his seat, and the only thing preventing him from doing that was that he was built like a brick shithouse.
“Don’t be fooled into thinking she’s your friend. She’s not. I don’t know what her agenda is, but make no mistake, it’s not what you think.”
Mike nodded rapidly, already on Coach’s shit list for leaving her the other day; he didn’t want to attract any more attention, and that was obvious.
No one questioned Coach Sutherland. I wanted to. I wanted to say, “Well, what could she have done?” but I knew when to keep my mouth shut.
Now my teammates were giving her the side-eye and snorting under their breath. A few guys didn’t even bother pretending — they straight-up stared at her with open hostility.
“Here she is again,” someone muttered as she passed. “Here to ruin someone else’s chance at being in the program?”
I didn’t react, but I watched as she pretended she didn’t hear it.
Shoulders tight, her spine straight, Hadley’s pen tapped against her notebook, steady and deliberate, counting beats to keep from reacting.
The once-friendly stadium had taken on an ugly energy, and she wasn’t immune to it.
Mike looked like he wanted to crawl into the floor.
Coach Sutherland didn’t notice. Or he did and didn’t care. But I heard every word, and I heard them yesterday too, and the day before that.
The more they said, the more she ignored them, and the more I didn’t. Instead of pushing her buttons, they were pushing mine. This was turning into pack-mentality bullshit — the kind where everyone laughs until someone crosses the line.
“Keep your mouth shut and focus on your coverage,” I snapped at one of the defensive backs when he made a wisecrack about her ass while walking out of film.
He blinked like he hadn’t expected me to intervene. “Relax, Slater. She’s bad news.”
“She’s allowed to be here, no matter what was said, so shut the fuck up.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Well, we have a right to be here too.” He looked at his buddy beside him. “Do you know Coach told Whittaker if he didn’t keep her on a leash, he was gone?”
Mike had told his roommate what happened, and he’d blabbed to someone else on the team, and it spread like wildfire. Plus, the fact that our head coach had sown the seed of doubt in their minuscule minds, had now convinced them she was some spy from fuck knows where.
“Use your heads,” I growled. “If she’s here on behalf of anyone else, shooting your mouth off about her ass is only going to end badly . . . for you.”
Because I’m going to punch you. You fucking creep.
This fucking woman was stressing me out. No one else seemed to appreciate that she was fucking difficult. Talking to her was like poking needles into my eyeballs — the very thought of it made me twitch.
I tried to talk to her in the office. Despite everything I said to my friends, I’d given her the warning, and tried to make her see sense. But she twisted things; she said sharp, barbed words with a sweet smile and an evil twinkle in her eye.
She was a menace.
And I couldn’t stop looking at her.
I watched Hadley the rest of the day, as she pretended to be fine. But the cracks were there: the too-quick swallow, the avoidance of eye contact, and the way she kept her distance even from Mike, somehow knowing that by doing so, she was trying not to make his life worse.
And it pissed me off.
It pissed me off seeing them treat her like that.
It pissed me off that she didn’t fight back. And it really pissed me off that I noticed any of it at all.
By the end of practice, the air felt suffocating. I slammed my helmet onto the bench harder than necessary, adrenaline buzzing under my skin. The constant thought that rolled over and over in my head was that she shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be in the crosshairs. She shouldn’t be digging.
She walked past the sideline, flipping through that damn notebook, brows furrowed in concentration, oblivious to or ignoring the glares at her. I saw Dante watching her, and then he looked over at me, both of us knowing we were one spark away from this powder keg blowing up in our faces.
“Peterson!” I called out.
She froze suddenly, as if she’d stepped on a landmine. When she turned, her expression was guarded. Earlier snide comments had bounced off her; this clearly hadn’t.
“What?” she asked, coolly.
“Come here.”
“No.”
Christ.
“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Peterson, now.”
She still hesitated, her eyes darting around, looking to see who was watching, before resting on mine again. “You look like you want to bite me.”
Right. What had I been worried about? Her sassy ass was just fucking fine.
She also wasn’t wrong.
But I simply waited, and after a moment, she walked over — reluctantly, approaching me as she would a feral dog knowing it would turn on her.
“What is your problem?” she asked, already on the defensive.
“You’re my problem,” I shot back before thinking. “You’re walking around stirring shit up without realizing you’re stirring shit up.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I haven’t stirred anything.”
“You missed the whole change in atmosphere, did you?” I snarked at her, noticing that she shifted her weight slightly. “You’re asking questions. Questions some people are noticing aren’t about spring training.”
Her eyes widened with excitement. “Really? Like who?”
For fuck’s sake. “Peterson, stop whatever you’re doing. You’re attracting the wrong kind of attention. Okay?”
She moved a step back, her sniff dismissive. “I’m shadowing a freshman defensive end for an assignment.”
I closed the distance, my voice lower. “You’re lousy at playing innocent. You’ve felt the change; no one’s falling for you batting your lashes anymore.”
That pissed her off. Which was good because I was pissed too.
“Batting my lashes? Fuck you, Slater. Don’t you dare make it sound like I can’t do my job professionally.
” She stepped closer, chin lifting. “If your teammates can’t handle someone taking notes from ten feet away, that sounds like a them problem.
” She shot a glare at Coach Sutherland’s back, not giving a damn who saw her.
“If your teammates can’t handle a little motivation from their coach, then again, I’d say that was a them problem. ”
Fucking hell, was she delusional? Or just really insane?
“You’re not getting it.” My jaw ached with restraint.
“Then explain it.”
“I don’t need to explain anything to you.” I looked her over. “You claim you’re so smart, why don’t you figure it out? Take your head out of your ass, and look around at what’s facing you.”
“They’re hiding something, you know that, right?” she demanded, her temper flaring. “What is it?”
I didn’t answer.
Her mouth tightened. “Nonadmission is still an answer.”
“Stop looking,” I said.
“I can’t.”
“Then it’s going to get ugly.”
Her gaze searched my face. “For who?”
I held her stare. “Does it matter?”
She laughed — humorless and small. “Right. And you confronting me right now is because half your team has suddenly started looking at me like they want me gone.”