“I don’t tolerate violence on my team, Silas. No matter how good you are. As of now, you’re suspended. One week of practice, and the first two games of the season.”
Impact.
But it’s not just my stomach that’s fallen. It’s everything. My head. My heart. If it weren’t for the chair, I know I’d have fallen to my knees, too.
“Don’t you step back on my field until you’ve got your head screwed on tight. Because I’ve got to tell you, Silas . . . two games is a minimum. If I still think you’re not good for this team, I’ll cut you out like a cancer. It will hurt me to do it because I know what you’ve got in you. I know you can hack it, but I’m not willing to bet this team on you getting your act together. I’ve got too many other kids’ dreams in my hands. So you better shape up and bet on yourself and prove to me that you’re better than what I saw today.”
He scoots his chair back, and I know the conversation is over, but I can’t get up. My legs won’t work. I can’t piece together words.
If my present self is the top layer of skin and my past is the layer below that, football is every vital thing inside me that makes my body work. Muscles. Arteries. Veins. Organs.
I only work when I play football. Without it, I really am the trash I’m afraid of being.
Coach doesn’t make me leave. He turns the lights back off and lets me sit in his office alone, and when I listen for the silence I don’t hear music anymore.
I just hear what Williams said over and over again.
I’m sure you’ll be heading Abrams’s way before long.
And all I can think is . . . maybe he’s right.
Chapter 10
Dylan
I’ve put it off as long as I can.
Friday was my day of lapses in judgment. Saturday, I started cleanup. I started with apologizing to Javier about screwing up the protest. He was mad that I’d acted without talking to him. He’s the leader of our group, and everything is supposed to go through him. He understood that I just got wrapped up in the moment, in the desperation to do something.
One apology down.
Then there is my father, whose persona is that of a man who never makes snap decisions. He does woodworking as a hobby, something I always thought was odd for a man with enough money to furnish a small country. But he’s fond of saying that building things with his hands is no different from building a business. You plan, you design, you measure twice, and cut once.
Well, Friday I didn’t measure twice. I’m not even sure I measured once.
I got lucky, though. Dad was called out of town on business, and since there were no major, lasting repercussions from my arrest on Friday, Mom convinced him that we could talk when he got back.
That’s tonight. And since I’m not really sure how he will react (or if I’m still able to be grounded as a junior in college), that means today is the last day that I can go to Silas’s and pay him back for bailing us out.
Something else I’ve been avoiding. Because he’s the one thing I still haven’t sorted out in my head. Every time I think about him, my mind goes right back to that bathroom, and the heat that sweeps through me burns away any coherent thought.
At first, I think no one is home because the driveway is empty, but then I see the familiar rusty tail end of Silas’s truck parked across the street. I shake off the memories of what it felt like to be in his truck, his arm brushing against my leg, the thrum of excitement from being completely out of my element. A girl could get addicted to something like that.
In fact, there are quite a few things about Silas Moore that I could get addicted to.
I’m wearing a silky button-down shirt with no sleeves and a complicated bow tied at the neck. I’ve got my hair back in a long braid again, and a high-waisted skirt that goes almost to my knees and does a much better job of covering my legs than those shorts I’d worn Friday. I made a conscious effort to dress for the way I need to behave today.
Appropriately.
I ring the doorbell, and then try not to think about the fact that I’m sweating through this stupid silky shirt and the strappy heels on my feet are monstrously uncomfortable, and I’m dying a slow, torturous death in the thong I wore to prevent panty lines.
Dressing appropriately sucks.
I wait a minute. No one answers, and I’m beginning to fear that I’ll have to do this all over again later tonight or tomorrow after I talk to Dad, provided I’m still free to do what I want.
I ring the doorbell again, and then raise my hand to knock for good measure, but before my knuckles meet the wood, the door is ripped backward and I hear a gruff, “What?”
I hear his question, but my brain is a little stuck on the fact that Silas is wearing only a towel around his waist and is dripping water all over the floor. I open my mouth to say something, anything, but then I get distracted watching a bead of water slope down over one pectoral muscle. He has a massive geometric tattoo that starts on his shoulder and continues onto his chest. I watch that same bead of water cut through the black lines of his tattoo and escape into the valley down the middle of his abdomen.
Then it falls below the line of his towel, and I’m just standing there, staring at the one part of his body that’s covered, and if there was an ounce of supernatural ability in me, that towel might have accidentally fallen to the ground.
But alas, I am not supernatural. Though his abs might be.
I’m still staring at his crotch when he asks, “You need something?”
“Oh!” I snap my head up, a blush exploding across my face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to keep . . .” That’s probably one sentence I’m better off not finishing. “I didn’t mean to.”
He lifts an eyebrow, and for the first time, I really look at his face. I expected the bruise on his jaw to be healing by now, turning ugly shades of green and yellow, but instead it looks even darker than it did Friday night, and bigger maybe. But that’s not what really troubles me. It’s his eyes.
They remind me of what my eyes looked like after Henry and I broke up, like I’d just found out that life was a game, and I’d been playing on the wrong board for years.
Not sad, per se. Lost.
“You okay?”
He raises his eyebrow again, grips the door with one hand, and resituates his towel with the other.
I don’t glance down at the towel. Or his magnificently sculpted chest. Because that would be awkward. I absolutely don’t . . . won’t do that.
Aw crap, I’m awkward. For several seconds. Several long seconds.