Chapter Six #2
“What the actual hell!” Marcee exclaimed. She rolled off him, slapping her palms into the grass and yanking out tufts of it as she shoved upward.
First, he messed with her game. Then he got upset when she reacted and stood up for herself? Absolutely fucking not.
“Have you lost your mind?” Remy sputtered. Byron ran over, helping him to his feet. “We’re on the same team, Pemberton.”
She’d never felt so wild or out of control on the field.
This was her sanctuary—the place she could always count on bringing her back to herself.
After Eli’s accident, it was the only place that still made sense.
What kept her going through everything. In one afternoon, Remy had upended all of that.
“No, we aren’t,” she replied as she stalked off the field. “And we never will be.”
She was still as bristly as a dusty cactus by the time dinner rolled around. Team Coach lost to Team Trainer by one goal not long after her debacle with Remy.
Marcee wished she could say it was the only thing weighing on her.
As she was getting ready for dinner, angry girl music turned up full blast, she got an incoming call from Headmaster Wilkes.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered, dropping the flatiron. There was no reason why Wilkes should be calling her while they were still at camp.
“Hello?” she answered, voice bright. Don’t freak out. It could be anything. Maybe she was getting a raise!
“Miss Ackerman, it’s Headmaster Wilkes.”
Marcee could recognize an ass-chewing a mile away. She dropped into the plastic-back chair, adjusting her bathrobe.
“Headmaster Wilkes. How can I help you?”
There was a squeaking noise from the other end, like an old office chair leaning back too far. “Unfortunately, a video link was sent to me a short while ago from a concerned school board member. Imagine my surprise when I clicked it open and it was a video of you.”
She’d never sent a dirty picture in her life, let alone made a sex tape, yet her heart still thumped erratically at the mere mention of a video.
“Is that so?” she asked. “A video of what? I’m not aware of anything out there aside from some college sports reels.”
“This is new, Miss Ackerman. I’ll send you the link, but to keep this brief, it’s a video of an altercation between you and Remington Lockley on the soccer field today.”
Sweet baby Jesus.
“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, Miss Ackerman, this is behavior unbefitting of a faculty member at Pemberton Preparatory Academy.
” His sigh whistled through the speaker, dramatic and drawn out.
“I understand being in the moment, being competitive. Believe it or not, I was a young man once. But this is a high school summer camp, Miss Ackerman, with impressionable young women who need role models to look up to.”
Her stomach lurched. “Headmaster—”
“This is strike one, Marcee. Strike two and you’ll be placed on probation, where I think you’ll find the regulations to be quite chafing for one as free-spirited as yourself.” There was a pause. “Strike three and you’ll be released from your contract.”
School hadn’t even started, and she already had one strike against her. The worst part was she deserved it. She’d completely lost control on the field that afternoon. There was nothing admirable or professional about her behavior.
“I understand, Headmaster, and I promise this won’t happen again.”
Another sigh. “See that it doesn’t. I’ll expect a full report about camp upon your return.”
“Yes, sir.”
Marcee was a simmering pot of emotions by the time she walked with Nicole and the team to the cafeteria for the banquet. Anger, disappointment, regret, fear—all her guys had shown up in full force. And to top it all off, her personal favorite: guilt.
“What does this mean for me?” Nicole asked after they took their seats. Her bright pink lipstick was smeared as she chewed her bottom lip.
Marcee reached across and squeezed her hand. “He didn’t say, but I swear, Nic, I won’t jeopardize this for us. Today never should’ve happened, and I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll be better.”
Nicole nodded, eyes downcast on the silverware laid out on the table.
Marcee could practically see the wheels turning in her head, playing out every scenario.
If possible, she felt even worse. She not only let herself down, but Nicole and the girls.
It was like she was seventeen again, ruining her life and screwing up all her relationships.
As their plates were served, the director droned on about the state of women’s athletics in the country and how, more than ever, they needed to encourage girls to stay involved.
Marcee took a sip of her iced tea with extra lemon, eyes scanning the table across from theirs.
Remy was seated next to Neal at the end, a bland look of polite interest softening his face.
Before she could turn away, they locked eyes.
It was like holding on to the edges of a rowboat in a stormy, churning ocean.
She had never felt more undone. The memory of his body beneath her was everywhere: chafing as her thighs pressed together, scratching over her breasts with the fabric of her bra, and pressing against the most intimate parts of her.
Why did he do this to her? Why did she let him?
The enamel on her teeth thinned infinitesimally as they ground together. Slowly, so she knew he was paying attention, she raised the glass to her lips, hand curled around it so only her middle finger stood erect against the side. Fuck you, Remy.
“Any time,” he mouthed back, causing her to nearly choke on her tea. Say what? There was no way after what happened on the field that afternoon that he could be serious.
“Not sure what’s going on, but if you stare any harder, you’re going to burn a hole in the tablecloth.” Nicole’s voice was hushed as she leaned toward Marcee, her usual nose stud replaced with a tiny gold hoop.
Marcee angled her body away from Remy, heart thundering at his implication, and tried to focus on the awards ceremony, especially since several of her players were recipients.
Her girls worked hard that week and it had paid off.
Harper got the award for most improved player, while two girls on her defensive line received certificates for outstanding players.
When the director finally sat, they dug into their sirloin steaks with gusto, passing steak sauce back and forth, spilling the pepper shaker, and generally having a pleasant meal.
No one mentioned the incident, thank God, and after two glasses of sweet tea—a beverage that had taken her years in the South to enjoy—she was buzzing from the sugar.
Between that and the confrontation on the field and her interludes with Remy, Marcee couldn’t sit still any longer.
She needed open space and air—a nighttime breeze to brush away the remnants of the day.
“I’m going for a walk. Can you get the girls back to the dorm?” She sucked up the last few drops of tea, her straw rattling the leftover ice.
Nicole nodded. “Restless legs?”
“You know me too well.”
“I know sweet tea isn’t good for you. I should’ve stopped you after the first glass.”
Marcee pushed her chair back and stood. “Please. I’m grown. I do what I want when I want.”
As she skirted between their table and the next, Nicole called out, “Oh, we know. Tell that to your brain when you’re wide awake at midnight.”
There was a rare cool breeze in the air as she picked a random path and walked away from the cafeteria, breathing in the sweet night. The clamor of voices and silverware faded the further away she ventured until only the soundtrack of crickets and frogs accompanied her beneath the streetlamps.
When she rounded the corner of a brick wall, a familiar wooden beam above her, Marcee realized her subconscious was not dealing at random after all. A figure pushed away from the opposite wall, and she flinched, hand flying to her chest and reaching for a whistle that wasn’t there.
“Overdressed for a midnight run, aren’t you?”
She recognized his voice before he stepped into the sliver of light from the nearest lamp.
“Damn it, Remington!” Her heart was racing, which she was sure had nothing to do with the sugar or the fact that the last time she was this close to him, they almost came to blows.
He stepped closer, face unreadable. “Remington, is it? Only my grandmother calls me that, usually when I’ve done something untoward.”
She snorted, looking him up and down. “Who the hell says untoward?”
“Me,” he replied with a shrug. “Should I dumb myself down for you? You’d like it if that’s all I was, wouldn’t you—a no-brain, all-muscle Casanova. Easier to hate on someone you can’t respect, huh?”
The breeze picked up, brushing the hair off her shoulders and leaving her neck and chest exposed. His eyes dipped dangerously low.
“You are making the mistake of believing I think of you at all,” she said flippantly. “Hating someone requires time and effort. You, Remington Lockley, are barely a blip on my radar, let alone minutes of my life.”
Feeling ballsy, she started to walk away, brushing past him as she left.
His arm darted out, blocking her path. “I think we both know that’s not true.”
Heat from his skin sank through the thin fabric of her sundress across her lower abdomen, the weight of it unexpected and not entirely unpleasant. Goosebumps trailed down her arms, intensified by the increasing breeze. It was such a thin line between lust and hate.
He was a dream up close in fitted black slacks and a merlot-colored polo—the soft kind that repelled sweat.
It was tapered to his upper body, squeezing the curves of his biceps in a way that made her want to hold on to them for dear life, stretched across his chest, rising and falling a bit quicker than it was before.
There had to be a storm coming. The air was charged and crackling, and it felt like those few precious seconds at the highest peak of a roller coaster, suspended and waiting for the free fall.