“Just stay out of my way.”
I turn and head for McClain when the dick opens his mouth again. “It’s you that’s in my way. But not for long. Not how you’re playing. I’m sure you’ll be heading Abrams’s way before long.”
I’m almost to the door, but those last words tug me back and his too white smile is all the extra motivation I need. I drop my helmet and ram him into the wall. He clips me on the healing bruise on my jaw, and my teeth rattle. But I hit him with a perfect uppercut, and blood starts pouring out of his mouth. He shoves me back and we both go tumbling to the ground. We struggle for control, rolling a few times, and just when I’ve got the upper hand and am about to lay into him, multiple sets of hands grip and pull me back.
I struggle for a couple of seconds, but there are at least three people holding me back. And now that I get a good look at the guy lying on the floor, blood all down the front of his shirt, I don’t really feel the need to get back at him.
In fact, I don’t feel much of anything except my stomach dropping to the ground.
Then the coaches are there. Gallt and Oz are down by Keyon, and Coach Cole slides into my vision. I’ve never seen him so livid. His face is purpling, and his eyes have that psycho look to them, like he might flay me alive. I brace for him to yell but he doesn’t.
Instead, in this quiet, intense, f**king terrifying voice, he says, “My office. Right now.”
I open my mouth to say something. An apology, maybe.
“Now, Moore.”
My teammates let me go, and I turn to face them. There’s McClain, Brookes, and Carter. I wouldn’t have expected Carter to jump in. He’s usually one of the instigators, but I give them all a nod that will have to do for a thanks.
I shouldn’t have let that dude get to me. I don’t know why he did. It’s not like I can’t handle a little talking shit. When I was a freshman, I was the biggest ass**le of them all. I head through the locker room, where everyone is silent and still, paused in the middle of getting undressed for their showers. They stare as I walk through the room and toward the lounge area that opens up into the offices.
For the second time today I enter Coach Cole’s office, but this time I’m alone. The room is dark, and I don’t turn on the lights. I just take a seat and bury my head in my hands, and I listen to the silence. I listen to it like it’s going to tell me the answer, going to explain why I can’t keep my head on straight. After a little while it starts to sound like music. The muffled sounds from the locker room, the ticking of coach’s clock, the low whirring sound of his computer. There’s a hell of a lot of noise to be found in the silence, almost as much as there is in my head.
The door opens, and I keep my head down. I hear Coach pause by the door, and I know he’s looking at me. I think for a second that maybe he’ll leave the lights off. That he’ll let me get away with not looking at him during this. But then the moment passes, and he flips on the light.
He crosses the room and slams my helmet down onto the middle of his desk. He stands behind his chair and grips the back until his knuckles turn white.
“You better have a damn good explanation for what I just saw out there, Moore.”
I sit up straight in my chair and face him head-on. I owe him that much.
“I don’t, sir. I’m sorry.”
Coach presses his lips together like he wants to yell and curse, but is trying to stay calm. He runs a hand roughly through his hair.
“Damn it, Moore. McClain filled me in. Told me what Williams said. He’s a freshman. You know how this game goes. You’ve been there. You have thicker skin than this.”
I nod because I do. I did, anyway.
“You’ve got to give something here, son. Help me understand.”
How was I supposed to help him understand when I barely had my own head wrapped around it? All I knew was that something about Levi getting arrested had me all f**ked-up. And Mom showing up had spun that tiny problem into a hurricane. There was my old life . . . living in the mobile home of whoever Mom was dating at the time, or in that rickety shack she left my brother Sean and me in when she split for good, always surrounded by people, never a moment of privacy, never having anything that was mine. There were my drunk uncles and cousins. People throwing punches over who did or didn’t get groceries. My barely there granny who couldn’t read or write, so I had to sign my own permission slips for football and school. There was Sean arrested for breaking into houses, leaving me alone with those people who thought of me as another brat running underfoot. That neighborhood was all about strength, about who was big and bad enough to fend everyone else off. I hated that neighborhood, hated what it did to my brother, but it was better than what came after. When Gram died, and my piece-of-shit uncle sold the house, and I had to beg people for a place to stay so I didn’t get trucked off with some relative and torn away from my team. I f**king hated begging.
I’d let myself forget about all of that. Let myself believe it was behind me because my life here was so much better. I was part of a team. I had my own bed, my own room even. I had friends who had no idea what kind of life I’d had, and they just assumed I’d grown up like them.
Maybe I started believing it, too.
Then Levi got arrested and it was like my two worlds collided, and I could see that old life waiting just a layer below this new one, and I can’t explain how that makes me feel.
There’s just this word that keeps popping into my head.
Inevitable.
It’s inevitable that I’ll end up back there. I forgot to keep running, and now it’s all caught up to me. That shit is in my blood, and there’s no rinsing it out or diluting it with scholarships and classes and all the other shit I’ve been kidding myself with. I don’t know how to be anything else but who I am, and who I am will never be good enough to make it in this place with these people.
I can’t explain that to Coach because not saying it out loud is the only thing keeping it from being completely real. And if that’s gone, I won’t be able to hold it together.
Coach finally has enough of my silence and sits down at his desk. He’s back to that scary quiet that isn’t the calm before the storm . . . it’s the storm that destroys you because you think it’s not a threat. “We’ve got enough battles to fight outside this locker room. I don’t need someone starting trouble inside the team, too.”
My stomach starts falling, and I wait for it to hit my feet, to drop through the floor. But it just keeps falling.