Chapter 11 Ali
Ali
It wasn’t until I heard the door bang shut behind him that I finally stumbled forward. Falling onto my hands and knees, I retched, over and over, sobbing until there was nothing left in my stomach.
“Help. I need…help. Please… Help me. Help. I don’t want this. I don’t want it. I don’t want it. I don’t—”
“Ali!”
Gasping, I clutched at the towel, still thankfully tucked around me. Through a blur of tears, I looked up to find Evan standing there. His face was ashen, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“E-Evan,” I rasped, then sobbed harder. “Please, help me.”
His long body folded as he crouched down beside me on the tile floor, his knees landing in a puddle of my stomach acid and the few bites of lunch I’d been able to force down.
“What the fuck just happened?” he demanded, his tone holding a sharpness I wasn’t accustomed to hearing from him.
“I was worried about you. Kyla and Mercedes left a while ago. No one was coming out of the locker room, and I thought you skipped again. But I had this sick feeling in my gut and came to look for you.”
He was rambling, his words too close together for my brain to fully understand what he was saying. All I could do was look at him, still crying, still shaking so hard my teeth chattered.
“Then I heard Coach.” His face morphed, turning the sweet boy I’d grown up with into someone I didn’t recognize. “I don’t even know what I just heard, Ali. What the fuck? What the actual fuck?”
“D-did he see you?” I glanced at the door, afraid Gaviria might come back. Another wave of nausea hit me, the taste of fear and bile gagging me. If he saw Evan, I didn’t know what would happen.
PCC. Eight dead. Fight club.
Random details from the article I’d found the day before flashed through my head. If any of it was true, if my teacher was a cartel member, he could hurt Evan.
My fault.
“No, he didn’t fucking see me!” Evan whisper-shouted, that sharpness growing colder, contradicting the fury in his eyes.
“Tell me what the hell is going on with you and him. Is he why you’ve been acting weird?
The skipping, the crazy mood swings, falling behind in your classes.
You’ve been all over the place, turning into an entirely different person for more than a month.
Maybe longer. Fuck, I don’t know when it started happening.
I was busy with basketball and only started paying attention a couple of weeks ago. ”
I let him rant, giving myself a moment to catch my breath, wishing I had some mouthwash to rinse the taste away, or a bottle of water to ease the burn in my throat and chest. Evan was so laid-back ninety-nine percent of the time that he rarely got pissed.
Even when people heckled him from the stands during his games, he stayed calm, laughing it off and letting everything slide off his back.
His anger was white-hot, causing a shudder to quake through me. I knew he was upset at his coach, that his rage wasn’t directed toward me. Maybe. But at that moment, it felt like it was aimed right at me.
My fault. I didn’t say no. I didn’t say stop. I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t seek help. It was all my fault.
And then I remembered why I hadn’t done anything…
“You can’t tell Sixx!” Suddenly, I was screaming. “He can’t know. Promise me. Swear on…on basketball! Swear it, Evan.”
His pale face turned red as his fury doubled. “Are you stupid?”
I flinched at the venom in his tone.
“That’s what you have to say after what I just heard? Don’t tell Sixx. Why the fuck not, Ali? You don’t want me to spill the beans on you sneaking around with a freaking teacher? You’ve been cheating on him.”
“Now who’s being stupid?” I cried. “You think I’m cheating? Oh my god! Are you for real? No. Just no!”
“Then explain it to me!”
Something detonated in my chest. He wanted me to explain it. Because he thought I was cheating on my boyfriend. Did he not know me?
For the longest time, he stared down at me, his jaw clenching, his eyes blazing, not even a flicker of a sign of the sweet boy I usually saw when he looked at me.
Blowing out a harsh breath, he finally shook his head.
“Do you even realize how this looks? I thought you were hooking up with Coach. It would explain so much shit I’ve shrugged off lately. ”
Flinching again, I released his leg, wrapping my arms around myself as my shivering got worse. Had I led Gaviria on? Evan almost thought that I had, that I would screw my teacher.
No, not almost. He did. It was there in his voice.
The condemnation, the judgment. His revulsion.
He wasn’t simply worried about me at first. Maybe he hadn’t been worried at all.
Evan thinks I was screwing my teacher. My friend didn’t seem to know me at all, yet at the same time, it made me wonder if I’d truly done anything to make Gaviria think I was into him.
But Evan could go fuck himself. I knew I’d messed up in a lot of colossal ways, but I’d never once done something that would disrespect my relationship with Sixx.
From the moment we could talk, Sixx and I told each other everything. Sixx would only keep a secret from me if it put me in danger. And I was protecting Sixx, the same way he always protected me.
Because when he found out about everything I’d been going through, he would hunt Gaviria. He’d fight him, maybe try to kill him.
Eight dead. Fight club. PCC. Eight dead. Eight. Eight. Eight. Oh god, please don’t let Sixx become the ninth victim.
Another heave made my stomach cramp. There was nothing left to come up, not even stomach acid.
Tears and snot mixed with spit, smearing across my face.
I tried to curl into a smaller ball, to hide from the disaster I’d created, the fear of more unknowns stacking up on top of the pressure already weighing me down.
I was protecting Sixx.
Our future.
Evan didn’t understand that. He couldn’t see that loving someone so unconditionally meant you would willingly destroy everything to keep them safe. Even if that meant destroying yourself in the process.