I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.(No, no, no.)
I tilted my chin up to the ceiling and took a few deep breaths. Immediately, my brain went toit shouldn’t be this hard. But that was a cop-out. And I didn’t want to do that anymore.
My entire body ached like I’d been worked over with steel bats. Personal growth was fucking exhausting. But maybe this was the kind of fulfillment Analise meant. The kind separate from Remi.
It took hours for sleep to find me, but when it did, I imagined the edge of a sidewalk curving around the base of a mountain, and knew that the first few steps would probably be the hardest.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Archer
There were too many fucking people around for step one.
I stood outside the door to the training fields and watched the commotion with glass separating me and my teammates. Watched their faces as they talked and laughed, as they ran sprints and did conditioning in groups of two and three and four, coaches milling around with clipboards and tablets in hand.
This was the important stuff before the whistle blew.
It wasn’t where the world watched, but it was where we put the work in to make us strong. Fast. Capable of inhuman bouts of athleticism. It wasn’t hard to draw the comparisons between days like this and what I’d talked about with Analise.
We put in the work, day in and day out, for months before the fans filled the stadium, because if we didn’t, we’d come up short when it mattered most.
With Remi, I’d tried to skip all those steps. The thought of taking time and space to feel things out felt like a punishment, felt like rejection, but what she was talking about was effort. Not when it was easy or sexy or fun. But putting in the time, dissecting what worked, strengthening what didn’t.
I’d done that with my body in the weight room until I could trust it to do the things I asked it to and push myself past the limits of what was considered normal. I’d done it with my mind, watching hours and hours and hours of film, memorizing plays until random words came together in X’s and O’s that I could visualize perfectly. I’d done it after my injury, pushing through pain and discomfort to reset my own capabilities.
I needed to do it with her.
But first, I needed to do it in other places too. For me.
And it started here.
Coach King stood on the sidelines, his arms crossed over his chest, watching everything with a stern expression on his face. I hadn’t seen him in a few days, and I sucked in a deep breath as I walked in his direction.
He lifted his chin as I approached, and as soon as I came close enough, his gaze sharpened when he clocked the bruise spreading across my cheekbone and underneath my eye.
I stood by his side and watched the other players, exhaling slowly when neither of us spoke right away. Some teammates glanced in our direction, mainly the veteran players who were still trying to decide if I was someone they could trust under center once the season began.
“You gonna tell me what happened, or should I guess?”
“Not sure you’d be able to guess this one, Coach.”
He nodded, finally cutting his gaze to the side to study my profile. “You probably don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not really.” I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “But I’m going to, all the same. I think you’ll want to know in case I get arrested again.”
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered. “What happened, Evans?”
I exhaled heavily and turned to face him head-on. “I got into an argument with my father over something to do with my sister. It got physical, and he punched me.”
Coach’s face went slack with shock, and he blinked a few times. “Okay.”
“I didn’t punch him back, but I did shove him up against a wall. And I’d do it again, given the chance, because he’s threatening to send her away, and I will not let him do that.” My throat tightened aroundall this honesty, but I didn’t let it stem the words either. “I lied about something big to protect her, and he found out about it.”
His eyes were hard as steel. “Lied about what?”
I licked my lips and stared down at the field.
Could I do this?