Chapter Eight #2
She was walking it alone. Of course she was.
Ponytail down now, jacket on—she had worn a coat, the stupid relief I felt about that—earbuds in, recorder probably still running, walking through a half-empty lot at eleven at night reviewing her own notes out loud like the building doesn't lock and the world is safe, and forty yards back, unhurried, a man in khakis was walking the same direction she was with no car in front of him to walk toward.
I came up on her from the side so she'd see me before she heard me.
She startled anyway, pulled an earbud out, and her face did three things fast—surprise, then a flash of something warm she shoved down hard, then armor, the bright easy nothing sliding into place.
"Lawson." Cool. Wounded under the cool, because I'd spent four days being a wall, because I'd done exactly what I'd promised myself in the shower.
"Come to tell me there's nothing in the parking lot to write about? "
"Keep walking," I said low. "Don't look back. Don't change your face. There's a man behind you. Khakis. He's been on you since the third quarter. He's ops—Mercer, he works for Voss—and he's got pictures of everyone you talked to tonight."
I watched her not look back. God, she was good.
Her whole body wanted to turn and her training won and she kept her eyes forward and her voice came out conversational, pitched for anyone listening, while her hand found my sleeve in the dark where no one could see it and gripped.
"Okay," she said brightly, like I'd said something funny.
"Tell me more, this is fascinating, I love a fun fact. "
"My truck's at the end of this row. You're going to laugh at whatever I say next like I'm walking you to it because I'm a gentleman, and you're going to get in, and I'm going to drive you off this campus, and Mercer's going to write down that the reporter left with a player, and we're both going to find out tomorrow how much that costs.
" I steered her, hand at her back, public, casual, a thing a hundred cameras could catch and only mean one thing.
"I tried to stay away from you. I want it on the record that I tried. "
"Noted." Her voice cracked on the laugh she was performing. Her grip on my sleeve did not loosen. "For what it's worth, you're very bad at it. It's almost endearing."
"I'm aware."
We got to the truck. I opened her door like the gentleman I was pretending to be, and over the top of it, before she climbed in, she finally let the brightness drop for one second and looked at me with the realness underneath, the thing only I seemed to get to see, and she said quietly: "You spent four days being a wall to protect me.
And then the second I was actually in danger, you blew the whole thing up to walk me to your truck in front of God and Dale Mercer.
" Her mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile.
"You don't get to do both, Cade. You don't get to push me away to keep me safe and then keep me safe by pulling me in. Pick a lie and commit."
"I can't," I said. It came out of me before the wall could stop it, raw, the truest thing I'd said all week. "That's the whole problem. I can't pick."
She held my eyes across the top of the door.
Mercer was somewhere back in the dark with his phone and his boredom and his file, and the lights of the emptying stadium were going off in banks behind us, section by section, the church closing for the night, and I had played three hours on a broken back and the only thing that hurt was this.
"Get in," I said. "Please."
She got in.
I drove her off campus with my hands at ten and two and my whole life rearranging in the rearview, where Mercer stood at the mouth of the lot and watched my taillights and didn't write anything down, because he didn't need to. Some things you just remember.
Neither of us said anything for a long time. The heater ticked. The town slid by, all stadium-night quiet, porch lights and closed diners and the occasional clump of fans still in their jerseys, happy, loud, going home to ordinary lives.
"He's going to tell Voss," I said finally.
"I know."
"Voss is going to think it means you're handled. That I'm—working you." The word tasted like rot. "That's the version that protects you, actually. If they think you're a thing I'm managing, they don't think you're a threat. They think you're mine."
"And the version that protects you?"
I didn't answer. There wasn't one where I came out clean.
There was only the version where I'd lied to my coach to cover a kiss, and was now driving the lie around town with her knee six inches from my hand, and the version where, somewhere around the second stoplight, she reached over without a word and laced her fingers through mine on the gearshift, and held on, and I let her, and we drove the rest of the way to her apartment like that, like two people who'd both decided to be stupid in exactly the same direction.
I walked her up. I didn't go in. I want that on the record too, for whatever it's worth, which is nothing, because I stood in her doorway with her keys in my hand and her face turned up to mine and I kissed her again anyway, slow, the careful kind, and told myself it was the last time, and we both knew it for the lie it was.
"Fix your latch," I said, against her mouth, because I didn't have anything braver.
"Fix your coach," she said, and I laughed—out loud, real, the first one in I couldn't tell you how long—and the sound of it surprised us both so much that we just stood there grinning at each other in a doorway like idiots while a man named Dale Mercer drove across town to tell our future how it was going to end.
I should have been terrified.
I drove home with the windows down and my busted back screaming and my hand still warm from hers, and I felt, for the first time in years, like a person instead of a wall.
That was the night I stopped being able to lie to myself about it.
I just had a whole season left of lying to everyone else.
?