They Wouldn’t Dare

Chapter 17

Rissa, Hart, and Nat made everything very clear. But my brain translated their detailed explanations to something far simpler: get the ball across that white line. A white line that was at least fifty yards away. A white line guarded by seven soon-to-be pro football and softball players.

I glanced over at Haven on the sidelines just in time to see her hold up a pink, glittery sign that read, Go Yara! I laughed as she waved it back and forth with a grin on her face. When she had time to make it and sneak it into the van, I had no idea.

“Got your own fan club already.” David was on my side of the field.

After our team’s strategy meeting and break, we’d split up to our designated places. The yellow team took longer to discuss. Their captain, Weston, kept his team in a tight circle, and his gaze continued to flicker to his friends and me as he spoke.

“He knows our plan,” Hart had murmured in disappointment.

“Doesn’t mean it won’t work.” Rissa had nudged him in the side. “Don’t pout; it’ll make them think they already won. We’re going to make them work hard for this.”

We’d waited fifteen minutes before Rissa got impatient enough to start shouting teasing taunts about them being afraid of our team. That seemed to nudge them right along with hopes she'd eat her words.

“So do you,” I said, and glanced over at the group of students on the sidelines who seemed like Haven, friends of friends of athletes. They couldn’t keep their eyes off him.

“I can’t believe he convinced you to run.

” David moved closer, a couple of feet between us.

He’d found a headband. It was yellow with an embroidered flower.

Its whimsy suggested it wasn’t his. This hinted that someone, once more, liked him enough to lend him favors, and he was comfortable enough to ask.

I could have gotten him a headband.

The silly desire made me want to crawl under a rock.

What was different after that night in his apartment?

Nothing, really. No amount of interpersonal knowledge should change the fact that David and I were oil and water.

And yet, when we found ourselves close enough to feel each other’s warmth, I finally felt that spark, a buzzing on my fingertips that carried the type of voltage that could wipe out a city grid.

I wanted to touch him: needed to wipe the blade of grass off his shoulder, readjust the headband so it pushed all his hair back, or trace my thumb across his bottom lip.

The feel of him faded a little more from my memory every day, and I was holding on to the replay of our kiss for dear life.

“I wanted to run,” I said, instead of hooking my fingers around his.

“You haven’t run since senior year,” David said.

“I run all the time.”

“Really?”

“Do you have access to an all-seeing eye?” I asked. “Some CCTV cams you log into outside of my apartment building?”

“No, I just know you don’t run anymore.”

I scoffed. “And I’m telling you, I do. How is this factual tidbit of my life an argument? You really believe you’re this much of a know-it-all about me? You just memorized a few facts.”

He scoffed. “Oh, come on. It was more than a few. Admit it, you’re upset I’m actually interested in people. In you.”

In you. My heart was in my throat, and I could barely get words around it. “Why would I be upset if you’re interested?”

“Probably because it’d reveal how jaded you are about me,” he said. “How much you need me to be the bad guy, so you don’t have to deal with anything other than manufactured contempt when you see me.”

I laughed dryly. “Nothing about my contempt is manufactured.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” David chuckled.

“Alright!” Weston called from the middle of the field, where most of our teammates had lined up on a white line. “Everyone ready? First to five? House rules.”

Multiple people cheered, confirming their readiness. I tried to move a few feet away from David, and he followed.

“Back off,” I warned.

“It’s man-to-man,” he explained with an amused smile.

I tried to move again, but he was like gum on a shoe. David closed the distance between us right as Weston stood on the line to say something to our team’s quarterback. As they talked, David grabbed the hem of my shirt, holding me in place.

“Stop cheating, asshole.” I swatted at his hand.

“If you stand too far to the left,” David whispered in my ear. “You’ll get caught between Jacob and Mike. They’re sore losers, so trust me when I say they won’t go easy on you just because this is supposed to be a casual game.”

“Why are you giving me tips?” I was more shocked at how close he had gotten, how incredible his spicy aftershave mixed with his natural scent smelled, and how gentle his voice was in my ear.

Instead of wanting to run, I’m tempted to lean back on my heels because I know my back would meet the solid form of his chest. Who cared about a ball and a touchdown?

I wanted to know how it’d feel to have David’s arm wrapped around my waist again.

Or maybe how his hand felt around my neck. Options. There were so many options.

Was it knowing about you? Was that really all it took?

No, that had been the icing. The cake was how, despite everything, David always talked to me like this when he thought I needed it.

He was soft when he felt I’d slipped and needed some place to land.

I hadn’t noticed this shift before. I focused too much on our disagreements.

But it’d always been like this when I flipped through our memories, going as far back as high school.

David could and would be soft when I needed it.

So you like that about him? Big deal. Doesn’t mean he likes anything about you.

And there it was. The kicker. David didn’t like me. His smiles for me were few and far between. An eye roll was a customary greeting for me. Hell, I had to beg the guy to fake date me.

Yeah, squashing this flicker of a growing crush was of the utmost importance.

“I’m making sure you don’t embarrass yourself.” David’s hold on my shirt loosened but didn’t release. “Or hurt yourself.”

“I could yell foul,” I said. “You know, for touching me.”

His voice was still low and breath tickling my ear. “Go ahead and do it. I dare you.”

It took everything to mask the shiver that ran down my spine. “It’s not your turn.”

“Hurry and come up with something then. It’s been weeks.”

“I enjoy taking my time, thank you very much,” I said.

“Well, so do I, but at a certain point, all this edging becomes a bit trite. Don’t you think?”

He meant nothing more than what we were talking about. There was no depth to his words —David had warned me of that himself plenty of times. And yet. And yet.

I dared to glance over my shoulder at him. He met my gaze, daring me to do something else. Say what I’m sure he could clearly see in my eyes.

“You’re cheating,” I repeated, my voice a whisper, almost drowned out by Rissa calling the play.

David let go of my shirt then and stepped a few paces back. There was a ghost of a smile on his face when he warned one final time, “Keep away from Mike and Jacob.”

“Got it,” I murmured, too overwhelmed and frustrated with the warmth in all my erogenous zones to care about being defiant.

The second Rissa handed the ball off to a red-haired woman who tossed it to me, I was supposed to take off. I had faith that my team would guard me well enough to keep others off my trail. All I really had to worry about was David.

When I caught the ball (by the grace of some divine being), I headed straight for the touchdown line. No gimmicks was what Rissa had told us in our huddle. Apparently, Weston liked flourish. Simplicity was what would trip him and his plan up.

I wasn’t delusional enough to think I could outrun David. That was why I’d done what he told me not to do and gone straight toward the middle. Hart had already warned me about Mike and Jacob, and Rissa already had a plan to neutralize them.

Once I was clear of the fray, I glanced over my shoulder to see a still very upright, hot on my tail, David.

Plan B: The Yara effect. Rissa and Hart’s name, but I enjoyed the ring of it.

I stopped dead in my tracks, and David nearly tripped over his feet, trying not to run into me.

“Hey!” someone on the sidelines yelled. “What are you doing?”

“Run!” another voice said this time, I think it was Haven.

“You still have a little way to go.” David gestured behind me.

“I’m aware.” I tossed the ball from hand to hand. “But come on, you and I both know I can’t outrun you.”

“You’re selling yourself short.”

When I raised a brow, he chuckled.

“Fine, what is this?” David shook his head, confused.

“My team and I made a bet you wouldn’t pull my flag,” I said.

“And why wouldn’t I do that?” David took a tentative step closer, and I took one back, my heart racing just slightly because maybe we were wrong.

I offered a half-shoulder shrug. “The reasons vary.”

“Grab her flag, man!” someone from his team urged.

“Focus, David!”

“Get the ball!”

“Aren’t you two adorable?” That was Rissa’s mocking.

David held his hand up, telling everyone to keep their distance. This was his issue to handle. The heckling didn’t faze him. His gaze never wavered from mine. This undivided attention felt like gold. Fool’s gold, perhaps, but still pretty enough to admire.

“Give me your reason,” David challenged.

“You still think I have cooties,” I teased, taking another step back.

David followed me, not one who was easily distracted. “Hardly.”

“In the four years since we’ve been here,” I said. “You’ve touched me, what, twice? I’m practically radioactive.”

He scoffed. “That’s not why I don’t touch you.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“For the same reason you kissed me like that in Weston’s kitchen.”

My smile faded. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” he promised. “Like I said, you’re one of the smartest people I know.”

“And what if I don’t know?” I didn’t. Not really. Not officially. Not wholeheartedly.

Unofficially, I knew David was far less despicable to be around the older we got.

I knew his defiance was hot, and his refusal to lie down and let me barrel forward without an obstacle was what I wanted in a partner.

I knew the way his hair fell in his face was less annoying and more endearing these days.

And my fingers running through them were, in some weird way, my sworn destiny.

“Yara!” Rissa’s voice snapped me out of my David fog. The next step of the plan came back to me in a blink.

She was lateral to me, with a couple of yards in between us.

“David!” someone yelled. I think it was Weston.

But it was too late. David moved closer, reaching for a flag.

His hand made contact the second after I launched the ball over to Rissa.

She took off as soon as the ball hit her hands.

With her head start, there was no way anyone could catch her, but that didn’t mean they didn’t try.

David couldn’t stop the momentum of his lunge toward me. He did his best to minimize the contact, though. His hands lightly gripped my hips, holding me away from him like he was the danger.

“See what I mean. Cooties,” I teased, even though this swift removal of his hand made my stomach twist. Now, I was considering what was so wrong with me, other than my obviously smart-mouthed, argumentative speaking style.

If I could look past his glum, surely he’d be able to accept how often I ran my mouth.

David laughed under his breath, watching as Rissa passed the touchdown line and did a celebratory dance.

“Fine,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re radioactive.”

“Maybe you should get over it.”

“I’m going to have to, aren’t I?” He started backing away toward his team to regroup.

“Yeah?”

“Tonight especially,” he said. “I am your boyfriend. Kind of need not to have an aversion to touching my girlfriend.”

My forehead wrinkled. “Tonight?”

He stopped backing away. Our teams were arguing in the background. Someone was complaining about a flag, Hart was defending the house rules, and Weston looked like an exhausted dad who just wanted to go home.

“Afterparty,” David said as if this wasn’t news to me. “We’re going. We need practice being a couple. And I figured if we could convince my friends, we have a decent shot at convincing your family.”

I tilted my head to the side when I realized this was what they’d meant by “David’s Yara.”

“Wait… did you tell your friends we’re dating?” I whispered to him. “Like actually dating?”

He shrugged. “Figured if we could trick the people who know me best, we had a pretty good shot of tricking the people who know you best.”

I laughed a little. “Whoa… you do know Hart invited me here, right?”

“Sure,” David said, unbothered.

“Sure?” I scoffed. “So you’re okay with one of your closest friends asking your supposed girlfriend out?”

“I don’t mind the competition, and neither does Hart,” David said. “We hashed it out. I told him we were new and if he wanted a chance and you were willing to give it, who was I to stand in the way?”

My lips parted, but nothing but an exhale came out.

“What do you say?” He asked, moving on from the tar pit I was still stuck in. “Trial run?”

“I think… I’d appreciate that.”

“I’m sure you will.” He turned to go back to his team.

With him gone, I finally had a moment to catch my breath, relax my shoulders, and stop thinking so hard about what was going on with my hormones.

“Alright!” Rissa cheered as she came in for a double high-five. Nathaniel was right next to her and offered me a fist pump.

“Execution was flawless,” he said in his calm, nature documentary narrator voice.

“Brilliant,” Hart agreed, coming into focus and offering me a wide smile.

“Thanks.” I tried to smile back and not look so taken apart.

“It’ll only work once,” Rissa said. “But that’s more than enough. Weston’s going to try and use that pretty head to be creative.”

“Well, that’s his specialty,” Nat warned.

“Yeah, but now, while he’s running through millions of possibilities—” Rissa squeezed his shoulder. “——we can sit back and play it by the book. Gotta shake things up and then return to normal. That always confuses an opponent. Now, come on, guys. Places!”

I hung back with Hart, taking my time before scrambling into position. I needed a few more minutes to recover physically and mentally.

“That was quite a Yara effect,” Hart teased. He was a little less smiley but not an ounce less friendly.

I look up at him, chest tight with words I’d eventually have to say.

“Rissa’s right,” he said with a half-shrug as if accepting something. “You and David look nice together.”

It’s a simple release from our maybe, could-be, almost romantic relationship.

I smiled, grateful for the ease of this transition. “Not really.”

“You just don’t see it yet.”

And that’s where he was wrong.