Chapter 16
Caleb
The Carolina recruiter is back in the press box. I can feel him up there the whole first period, a weight on the back of my neck I can't shrug off.
I'm playing clean, I tell myself over and over.
Eight weeks of clean, that's the deal, and I've got it nailed to the inside of my skull. Finish the season without an incident, and my brother and sisters never have to worry about the heat or hot water being off ever again. Simple. All I have to do is be a different player than the one I’ve been at three other colleges.
Plot twist.
My father decided to show up, and he’s behind the glass too, except he's not watching the puck.
He's watching me, the way you watch and wait for a train wreck.
That's the thing nobody warns you about building a bad reputation.
People don't tune in to find out whether you changed. They tune in to be proven right.
It’s like he wants his pound of flesh, because I haven’t spoken a word to the man since he walked out on Ma and the rest of us. How did he think that shit would go? That we’d still throw a ball around and go for ice cream?
Then number fifty-two on the other side decides I'm his project for the night.
First, it's a slash behind the play the ref doesn't catch. Then a crosscheck into the boards a full second after the whistle. Then, gliding past our bench, easy, grinning, he hands me the one that's machined to work.
“Heard you're a charity case, Adams. Heard somebody paid your coach five bands to bring your ass here. Bet you don't make the playoffs before you snap. Idiots like you always snap.”
“Fuck you.”
Here's the problem. I’ve played against this kid before.
He knows the player who used to bash people’s teeth in for fun.
That player already has him by the collar.
That player is fantasizing about how good it would feel to see the blood dripping from his face.
I’ve been able to keep that player at bay during my time here at VCU, particularly because I have a girl now who has never seen that guy, and I don’t want her to.
This fucker is trying me tonight, but it's bigger than my career this time.
That's the part that fifty-two doesn't know.
Two weeks ago, Jasmine made a decision in my favor.
She broke the one rule that keeps her safe.
She put her own name on a lie because she decided I was worth it.
If I drop the gloves tonight, in front of the scout, father, and her father, I don't just torch my future– I prove Coach right about exactly the kind of distraction I am.
So when the red comes up behind my eyes, this time it has her face in it. Reminding me of my additional “why”. I’m just not sure it’s enough tonight. This dude has always been my Achilles heel.
I'm over the boards at the next whistle before I have technically decided to be. That’s how it’s always worked with me.
The hands move, and the deciding shows up late.
Bass slides in between us like he can smell it coming off my jersey.
Number Fifty-two backs off, grinning. He got his hooks in, and he knows it.
There's a period and a half left to play, which is a long time to skate around a building holding your shit together.
I come off for the next change with my pulse still in my teeth, and that's when I find her.
My girl…Jasmine.
Mine.
She’s at the bench, where she's been all night. And while normally, she’s a good little VCU staff member with her clipboard, ear buds, and an impartial face…tonight, she's looking dead at me.
And while two hundred people watch the puck at the far end, she lifts one hand off the clipboard, just enough, and takes a paper clip between two fingers, and bends it. Out, and back. Slow. The private little signal that's only ever meant one thing between us.
Pull your shit together.
So I do.
The red, angry heat drains out of me. My hands quit a fight that hasn't happened yet.
I drop onto the bench and breathe, and I do not go over the boards, and I do not put fifty-two through the glass, and I do not set my whole life on fire over one mouthy kid trying to get in my head and sabotage my fucking greatness.
I just breathe and watch her bend a piece of metal until I'm a person again.
“You good?” Neo asks.
“Yeah, I’m good, Cap.”
We win. I play the cleanest, meanest, smartest two periods of my life, every shift of it under control, and the man from Carolina types something on his phone, and the only thing I do to fifty-two all night is skate rings around him until he's the one who looks like the headcase.
When the horn goes, my dad gives me a nod through the glass I've been chasing since I got here.
Approval. It should feel like everything.
In the hall outside the room, Coach catches my shoulder and says, “Good job tonight, Adams. You killed it tonight.”
The recruiter from Carolina shakes my hand and tells me, “You looked good out there. Keep doing exactly that, and you’ll fit in just fine with us.”
Everything I moved to Nevada for is lined up and smiling at me at once. So I go looking for the one person I actually want approval from. When I find her in the tunnel after, her face is all wrong.
“What is it, baby? We won!”
“My father saw.”
The hallway drops about ten degrees.
“I just talked to him. What do you mean he saw? Saw what?”
“You, finding me at the bench,” she tells me in a nervous tone I’ve never heard from her before. “He was watching you all night because the scout was watching you. So he caught the exact second you found me, and what it did to you, and he caught you come back down because of me.”
“I thought I was your assignment.”
“He didn't see a compliance officer settle a player.” She drags her sleeves over her knuckles. “He saw something else. I watched it cross his face.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He said, ‘I didn't know you had Adams’ ear.’” She looks at me, and there's real fear in it now. “And then he looked at me like he'd just caught me drinking alcohol for the first time. My father doesn't ask questions out loud, Caleb. He goes quiet, and he starts watching. He just started watching.”
I want to tell her it's fine. Coach was fine with me five minutes ago. But I can't tell her that, because she knows her father better than I do. I’m out here playing checkers, and that man is playing chess.
“Okay,” I say instead. “Then we get smaller. No stairwell. No long check-in meetings. We only meet at my apartment.”
“I bent a paper clip at a hockey game, and it nearly undid us,” she laments.
“No, I was looking for you. I needed you to bring me down. I can’t do that again. I’ve got to figure that shit out myself.”
“We have to be really careful.” She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, then drops them. “You’re so close to your dream.”
“Hey.” I step in close, the exact thing we can't do anymore, and I do it because she's shaking.
“Listen to me. You're the only reason there's still a dream to chase.
Whatever your dad thinks he caught, thinking it isn't proving it.” I tip her chin up with one knuckle.
“He's about to find out how careful we both can really be.”
That one lands. A little of the fear comes off her shoulders.
“Give me something concrete,” she says. “A real step, or I spiral.”
“Hmm, how about I get a fake girlfriend for the next few weeks to throw him off the scent? I know a puck bunny who’d be up for it.”
Her eyes harden. “That's not a plan.”
A smile forms inside my chest. A jealous Jasmine is a sexy Jasmine.
“But that’s not such a bad idea,” she starts. “Maybe I date–”
I immediately walk her back against the wall of the tunnel. I don’t care who might see.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea, Dixon. You’ve never seen me take apart another guy’s face, but once upon a time, it was one of my favorite things to do.”
She almost laughs.
“I’m not fucking kidding,” I tell her, my lips on her mouth now. If I could, I would fuck her senseless in this tunnel to prove my point. “You’re mine and only mine.”
“I understand that,” she says as if she’s calming a wild beast. “And I need you and your dick to back up now before you actually blow this whole thing to hell.”
“Fine.” I back up and look around. Luckily, almost everyone has probably gone on to the Ice House to celebrate.
“The win looked good on you,” she says, low, the last soft thing before the wall goes up. “The clean kind. Keep it up. I like it.”
“You're the reason it was clean.”
“Go to the Ice House and celebrate. I’ll find you later at your place.”
“You’d better, because I’m going to teach you how to ride me tonight. You’re going to love it.”
Then she's gone, back into the noise, and I stand in the tunnel contemplating everything that went down. We crossed a line that we don't get to uncross. Not the kissing. Not any of her rules.
We got seen.
I hope I didn’t fuck all of this up.