Chapter 24 #2
“Obsessed with each other.”
I swore under my breath. “I just said ‘don’t say it,’ and you go and say it.”
But he wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t right either. It wasn’t obsession. It was . . . danger. Heat. A very specific kind of mental instability.
I saw her for the first time around noon.
She was walking across the quad with Savannah, talking with her hands, and Savvy was listening intently.
Savvy said something that made her laugh, and it punched me in the gut harder than any tackle I’d taken in the last three years.
She looked fine. She looked completely, infuriatingly fine.
I turned away so fast I almost pulled a muscle. Which pissed me off more. She wasn’t hiding behind vending machines.
“Smooth,” Noah muttered. “Epically smooth.”
“Shut up.” I didn’t look back. “They made up?”
“Looks like it. You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if you two had normal human communication skills, this might not feel like watching a slow-motion emotional car crash.”
“I’m not talking to her.” I elbowed him. “I’m not talking to you about this either.”
“If only that were true,” he lamented, “but you are avoiding her. Which is making it worse, and that makes you talk to me about it, and that makes it even worse for me.”
I tried to ignore the tightness in my chest, but it followed me all day — through film review, through weight training, through the humiliating moment when Coach asked if I needed an inhaler because I kept looking at the door like a golden retriever waiting for someone to come home.
Then came the real problem. She was walking across the quad, her head in her backpack, not looking where she was going. When she looked up, she looked at me directly.
And I panicked. I turned away fast. So fast it probably looked like I’d seen a ghost.
Noah’s sigh behind me was biblical, but he followed me back inside the stadium, the one place Hadley wasn’t allowed into.
“Dust,” he said quietly. “This is getting embarrassing.”
“I know.”
“So stop.”
“I can’t.”
He hesitated. “Can we just throw you both in a room and leave you there?”
“I will kill you if you try.”
Noah didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, with a kind of gentle exasperation, “Jesus Christ, you two are exhausting.”
Maybe. Probably. But I wasn’t done avoiding her. Not yet. Because wanting her was one thing. Losing control again? That would ruin me completely.
Noah sighed. “Do we have to hide here for long? I’m hungry.”
“Shut up.”
I saw a glimpse of dark hair and was so desperate to change the subject that I called out to her. “Hey, Briar.”
“Are you joking?” Noah hissed. “You cannot hook up with her to get over Hadley.”
She walked over to us. Slender, dark hair spilling over her shoulders and covering half of her face, paler than a ghost. “This is Briar,” I told Noah, ignoring his whispered warning. “This is my roommate—”
“Noah Matthews. Middle linebacker, third-year transfer, six four, 238, four-point-six for the forty, eighty-nine tackles last season . . .” She trailed off when she saw us both staring at her. She cleared her throat. “I like football.”
Noah blinked. “I don’t think they recorded my time as four-point-six for the forty-yard dash,” he said. “Think it was more like four-point-seven.”
She didn’t look away from him. “They recorded four-point-six.”
This was weird. Was this weird? They were looking at each other, and I swear cartoon love hearts were bursting between them. Ugh. Kill me now.
“A girl who likes stats,” I said with a laugh, and then it hit me like an epiphany.
“Fuck! We’re so stupid,” I said, slapping Noah in the stomach.
“Come on, we need to go.” I looked between them.
“I was going to say, Noah, this is Briar, the social media girl, but . . .” They were still looking at each other. “Briar, have you seen Dante?”
She looked at me, realized she’d zoned out over Matthews, and blushed. “He’s in media.”
“Yes! You’re awesome. Noah, let’s go.” I headed toward the media room, then I went back and got the six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-pound man by the arm and dragged him away from her. “What the fuck, man?” I grouched as we headed back to the main offices.
“She’s fucking gorgeous.” Noah looked over his shoulder. “She knew my stats,” he added, as if he’d just realized that was the more remarkable thing.
“Don’t worry, I think she noticed you noticing.”
“You said she was weird looking,” he accused. Then he seemed to realize we were heading back to the locker room. “What’s happening?”
“I need to talk to Dante, and you . . . you needed me to save you. That was a serious lack of game.”
“Was it bad?” he asked tentatively.
“Bad like daytime TV bad.”
“Shit.” He sniffed. “Why do we need Dante?”
We were back in the locker room, and Dante came in from the media room. “Why do we need me?” he asked, rubbing his face with a towel.
I pulled Noah with me and stepped right into Dante’s space. I might have looked possessed or something because Dante looked ready to defend himself.
“Slater? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I beamed at him. “We’re so fucking dense, Dante. We didn’t use our resources.”
He glanced at Noah, who shrugged. “I’m not sure he’s checked in,” Noah told him quickly.
“Like you just checked out with the social media girl,” I snorted, turning back to Dante. “I know why he’s single, by the way. Zero game. None. Really fucking awkward.”
“Can we focus?” Dante asked me. “What are you talking about?”
“Who do we know who knows everything we need to know about stats and, more importantly, the Lions?”
He frowned. “I . . .”
“‘Dante Spence is number one.’ Ring a bell?”
He looked at me and grinned. “Ava.”
“Ava.” I nodded excitedly. “She’s been a fan of this team for years.
We know she’s watched every game, and she’s told us both our stats so many times that you know she’ll know every play.
I guarantee she’ll know his name and more than we do.
She isn’t at this school, she doesn’t have any other loyalty to anyone here, and she’s all about the Cardinal Saints now. We need to speak to her.”
He lost his smile. “That means we might have to talk to Jett.” He shook his head. “He’s such a dick. There must be someone else.”
“This is a gift, Dante,” I told him firmly. “We accept the gift.” I looked between the two of them. I was getting out of here, putting distance between Hadley and me, which was exactly what I needed. “We’re going to Cardinal.”
They shared a glance, and I glared at them both.
“Don’t fucking fight me on this. We’re going.”