by E. M. Moore
Dad and Jacob laugh. “Not surprised,” Jacob says, dusting an imaginary thread off the shoulder of his shirt. “Best school in the state.”
“Hey, didn’t you go there?” I ask, teasingly.
“I’m glad you asked, Tessa,” Jacob says, both hands on the glass table. “I sure did. Some of my best days were in college.”
I smile at that then look over at Kiera. “Did you go to State too?”
She shakes her head. “No, I went to Lockhart.”
My eyebrows rise, but I try to cover it up by nodding. I’ve heard of the school. It’s a private college for super smart people, but that’s not why I’m surprised. I’m surprised because I just assumed they went to the same college.
We drink iced tea, my dad and Jacob telling basketball stories one after the other. Most are funny and make Ryan and I laugh. The whole time though, I keep imagining that Jacob and Keira are Ryan and I in five years. Hopefully we’ll be inspiring high school kids, too, giving someone the motivation they need to take that next step.
Just before we leave, Jacob pulls me aside. He puts his hand on my shoulder in that fatherly way. He’s so tall I have to crane my neck to look at him. “Your dad told me you’re getting shit for playing on the boys’ team. I just want to say keep doing what you’re doing, even when it feels like the whole world is against you. As long as you feel it in your heart, it can’t be wrong. Go out there and do your thing. You’re damn good, girl. Damn good. When you hit the WNBA, I want your autograph.”
My jaw clamps shut. All I can do is nod, while the images in front of me distorts from the tears threatening to pour out. It’s one thing to have my dad say how good I am, but to have Jacob fucking Lansing tell me I have game? It means so much more. It’s coming from an outside source. It’s coming from someone who knows what they’re talking about and doesn’t have to say those things to me because he loves me.
Dad puts his arm around me and walks me out to the car before I make a fool out of myself. I turn, and see that Jacob is saying something to Ryan too, his mom hovering by, smiling proudly.
Today was a good freaking day.
26
Later that night, Dad pulls into my driveway. I’m in the backseat bleary-eyed and sleep deprived. Our plane got delayed coming back, so we were stuck in an uncomfortable airport terminal for hours. On the drive home from the airport, the rain came down hard and lightning streaked across the sky. There’s still a steady downpour as I lean toward the front seat and give my dad a kiss on the cheek when he pulls up to the house. Ryan tangles his fingers in mine briefly before I pull my bag to my side and step out of the SUV. I’m immediately soaked but run to the front door as fast as I can. The rain makes me shiver until I’m finally in my house with the door closed behind me.
“Mom?” I call out. I’ve been texting with her, so I know she’s still up.
She comes out from the living room, blinking heavily. She holds her arms out, and I drop my bag and walk into them. “How was it, Tess? Are you okay?”
I already told her all about meeting Jacob Lansing and the doctor during our delay at the airport, so I know she’s asking about my wrist again. “Doing good,” I tell her. I’ve noticed it’s a little tight from all the moving I’ve been doing from just normal routine things. It’s amazing how much I was coddling it when I had the cast on.
“Good.” She looks up the stairs over her shoulder, then back at me. “So, Sloan Ivy is in your room.”
My eyes practically bug out of my head. “What?” I ask. I never received an answer from the text I sent him earlier. No matter how many times I checked, nothing had come through even though I knew Ryan had been texting a lot, and I was pretty sure I saw Sloan’s name on his screen multiple times.
She nods, her eyes sad. “He’s broken up about something. Is it you?”
Her tone is questioning, but her words are accusatory. The truth is, I’m not really sure. I shrug. “I don’t know.” My shirt clings to me, and droplets fall from the hem straight to the tile in the foyer. “There’s something going on, but he didn’t text me back like I thought he would.”
Mom shakes her head slowly. “I think he walked here, Tessa. I don’t know. He just showed up a couple of hours ago. He was keeping me company down here, but he kept falling asleep, so I sent him to your room.”
My eyebrows rise. “My room? You sent him to my room?” That doesn’t sound like my mom at all. She must really be Team Ivy.
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t make me regret that, Tessa,” she says, her voice taking on a level of adult I’m not sure I’ve heard before.
“I won’t,” I tell her automatically.
“Just go up and make sure the poor boy is okay. I can talk to you about your wrist tomorrow before school.”
She squeezes my shoulder and sends me up, and it feels like she’s sending me on a death-defying stunt for the way my heart reacts. When I get to the top of the stairs, I notice my door is wide open. I get close, close enough to look inside and find Sloan Ivy on his side, sleeping in my bed. I take a second to look him over. His brown hair is messy, splayed out over my pillow in short waves. He’s wearing a plain black shirt and khaki shorts, the shirt sleeve wrapped tightly around muscle.
I move forward, tiptoeing at first, but then I realize I’m going to wake him up anyway. Isn’t that why he’s here? To talk to me? I hate to wake him though. He was so tired the other day. Hell, maybe this is the first time he’s been able to get some sleep since the dinner with his parents. His house gets crazy, especially if his parents are fighting.
I move in behind him. I want to be able to just cuddle against him. If he wakes up, fine. If he doesn’t… The thought is short-lived because as soon as the pressure of my body hits the mattress, Sloan wakes. He blinks heavily, like it’s hard to pry his eyelids open. Then, he stills for a moment when he doesn’t recognize where he is. He quickly jerks around, and when he notices it’s me, he sighs. “Shit.”
“Hey,” I say, smiling.
“Shit,” he says, his eyes widening like he realizes why he’s here. He grabs for my hand. He gawks at my wrist for a second but looks right back up at me. “I didn’t do anything with Nikki, I swear. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s not anything to me. My parents freaking ambushed me at the country club. I was going to tell you all about it, but then you got the news about your cast coming off, and I didn’t want to bother you about it while you were away.”
He’s talking so fast that he trips over his words. I can tell he’s still a little sleepy, but he probably rehearsed everything he was going to say a hundred times before he fell asleep on my bed. I reach down to cup his cheek. His hazel eyes hold an alarming amount of intensity. “I know, Sloan.” I was never worried that he did anything with her or that what she posted on social media was true.
He shakes his head. “I didn’t know she was going to do that. I tried to tell everyone that I wasn’t interested, but—”
“Wait, everyone? What are you saying? What happened at dinner, anyway?”
“I’m saying my parents are fucking idiots. I’m saying they tried to pawn me off on Nikki like we’re going to run off into the sunset together and have little Ivy babies who’ll be born well-bred but fucking miserable as hell like me because that’s apparently all they want.”
I shake my head. “Calm down. You’re not making any sense. Your parents want you to date Nikki? But you don’t like her.”
“They don’t care, Tessa. I told them I was dating you and that just made them freak out even more.” He grimaces. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
I tilt my head to the side. “I know your parents don’t like me, Sloan. That’s not as much of a shock as you think it is.” I still remember his mother’s cold eyes and the way she asked if someone could pick me up from his house after dinner even though Sloan was the one who brought me there.
He frowns at me. “They took my Jeep away. They told me I can have it back when I come to my senses and start dating Nikki.
”
The whole thing sounds so surreal to me. They want to force him into a relationship with someone he doesn’t even like. I get the fact that Nikki and her parents are probably rich and affluent, but that’s utterly ridiculous. This isn’t the 1900’s. “Why do they care?”
He rubs his forehead. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced than they were at school the other day. “I think Nikki likes me. Nikki’s a princess.” He rolls his eyes. “So, her parents try to get her everything she wants. I’m sure my family is getting pressure from hers.”
I situate myself on the bed. “Did you try to talk to her? Maybe just explain to her that you don’t have feelings for her like that.”
“Yeah, many times. I told her I was with you, but none of that seemed to matter to her.” He swallows. “That’s not the worst part.” He searches my face, then trails his fingertips down my cheek. “She has a video of you and I out on the golf course. She told me that if I don’t break up with you, she’s going to release the video.”
I half laugh, half shriek in anger. Then my mouth drops as the full meaning of what he’s just said hits me. “Are you kidding me?”
He shakes his head. “She showed me the video. You can see…enough of what’s going on to know what was going on.”
“At the golf course?” I ask. My eyes plead with his. That was our first time together and now it’s ruined. “She took a video of us? She’s blackmailing you?” What a bitch. And a crazy bitch at that.
He runs both hands through his hair. “This fucking crazy world that my parents are mixed up in... I don’t want to bring you into it. I hate to say it, but this shit happens all the fucking time. I thought I could keep myself out of it as long as I didn’t go into politics. I had no idea this crazy psycho bitch could set her sights on me. Damnit, Tessa. Fucking Ryan is threatening me.” He pulls on the ends of his hair. “But he doesn’t realize there’s literally nothing he can do or say that will make me feel worse than I already do. I already let you down.” He looks up at me, his hazel eyes pleading for forgiveness.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I tell him. “Stop. First of all, if she sends that video to anyone, we’ll get her for child pornography. I don’t turn eighteen for another few weeks. She’s just trying to get to you, to force your hand, Sloan.”
Even though I’m staying calm on the outside, I’m freaking out on the inside. I’m pissed she has that video, but I’m even more pissed that she ruined our first fucking time together by trying to turn it into blackmail. What a bitch! Who does that? If someone didn’t want to be with me, I would never want to force their hand. What’s the point in that? Those feelings aren’t real.
He takes a deep breath, his fingers running up my arm until they finger the damp fabric of my shirt. “Why are you all wet?”
I look down at myself. I’d forgotten about my clothes. I push off the bed and head toward my dresser. “It’s storming outside.”
He looks over his shoulder out the window where the lightning lights up the sky as if on cue. “I must like your bed,” he says quietly. “I usually can’t sleep through storms.”
“Maybe it’s just because you’re exhausted all the time,” I tell him, annoyance slithering into my words. I pull my dresser open and grab a dry shirt. While I’m turned away from him, I pull off my soaked t-shirt and pull on the dry one. After throwing the wet shirt into the laundry, I turn back around. “What you just told me…is that why you looked so tired the other day?”
He nods. “My parents won’t let it go. They’re really trying hard to force my hand.”
I move forward. Disbelief is still clouding my mind, but I know one thing for sure. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ivy. Screw them. This is your life. Within a few months, we’re all going to be in college, and you won’t have to deal with them. Remember that. You’re nothing like your parents. You don’t need the Jeep. You can drive my Mustang around if you want.” I look down at my hand, forgetting that I can now drive. I guess it doesn’t matter though because Ryan’s been taking me back and forth to school anyway. Plus, I’d do that and much more for Sloan if he needed it.
“You’d do that for me?”
I give him a small smile then go back and join him on the bed. “Of course I would.”
He pulls me to him, kissing me on the lips, lingering there like he’s trying to remember this moment. When he pulls away, his eyes look troubled. “What do you want me to do about Nikki? I won’t have her share that video, Tessa. It’s not happening.”
“She’s an idiot if she shares the video. Sloan, she—”
A tap comes on the window behind us. I jump and look over. Ryan’s crouched just outside. Sloan immediately gets up and pushes the window open, letting in a now soaked Ryan. “What the hell, dude?”
I look toward the open door. My mom will freak if she finds out there’s now two boys in my room. I tiptoe toward it and shut it quietly. Hopefully she’s already in her room sleeping. After that, I move into my bathroom and grab a dry towel to throw at Ryan. He and Sloan are staring one another down in the middle of my room.
I must come in mid-conversation because Sloan says, “I didn’t know she was there. Obviously.”
I sigh. “We both didn’t, Ryan,” I say, catching on that they’re talking about Sloan and I having sex on the golf course. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but what’s done is done.
Ryan runs the towel over his hair and arms then drops it over his neck. He pulls out his phone and shows Sloan a picture. I crane my neck to see it. There’s a busted phone on the screen. “It’s taken care of,” Ryan says, his voice terse. “Hayes paid a visit to your friend Nikki. He smashed her phone, then told her to log on to her cloud account and delete the video. As far as we can tell, the video doesn’t exist anymore.”
My eyes close in relief. Thank God. The last thing I need is Rhonda getting ahold of that video. I’m sure she would’ve passed it around to everyone at RHS, which would’ve only perpetuated the whole Baller Skank thing. I know we could’ve gotten Nikki into trouble for sharing it, but that doesn’t mean some damage wouldn’t already have been done.
“Thank fuck,” Sloan says. He eyes the picture of the shattered pieces in relief. When he looks back at me, he looks ashamed. I hate that he feels that way. It’s not his fault. “I’m so sorry, Tessa. I didn’t know any of this was going to happen.”
“I know,” I tell him. I look up at Ryan. His eyes are hard. I can tell he’s pissed at Sloan, but he shouldn’t be. “Everyone knows that.”
“Just fucking deal with her, Ivy,” Ryan snaps. “I don’t want to hear any more about this chick fucking with Tessa. Do you understand?”
Sloan glares at his friend. “I’ll handle it.”
After that, Ryan kisses the side of my head, his lips lingering there. Then he leaves, braving the rain once more after throwing the towel around his neck back into the room. Sloan and I give each other a wary look. “It’s so late,” I tell him. “You should probably stay here.”
Sloan waggles his eyebrows at me.
“Downstairs. On the couch,” I tell him. “I’ll go ask my mom.”
Sloan follows me downstairs and then waits for me in the hallway as I stick my head into my mother’s room. “Mom?” I whisper. I have to say it several times before I get a response. “Can Sloan spend the night on the couch? It’s raining pretty bad out.”
She waits a beat. “Yes. On the couch.”
Sloan steps up behind me. “Thanks, Mrs. Dale.”
She groans something that sounds like good night, so I pull her door closed softly. In the upstairs hall closet, I find an extra blanket and pillow and bring them down for him. He wraps his arms tightly around me. “I’ll never be able to say sorry enough.” He kisses the side of my head. “Good night, Daddy’s Girl. Don’t give up on me.”
“Night, Sloan,” I tell him.
I walk up the stairs, my head pounding, and my eyes like sandpaper before I throw myself into bed. Except, my bed smells diffe
rent. It smells like Sloan.
I pull the pillow to my face and inhale, sighing as I fall to sleep with the smell of him everywhere.
27
While the guys are involved in the last week of Trials with Lux and River, I’m basically carted between school and physical therapy appointments. My wrist is doing so well that it almost feels like it’s back to normal. I still baby it because I can’t get that moment out of my head when Lake deliberately tried to hurt me. The memory is stuck in the recesses of my brain, going round and round like a record player whenever I step out onto the court in my backyard.
Tonight, tryouts start. The nerves in my belly are on in full force. I’m sick with excitement that I actually have my cast off in time to try out, but I’m also just hoping beyond hope that my wrist is healed enough not to fail me. The last thing I want is for Lake to be able to gloat that I didn’t make the team. That he did what was necessary to take me out of contention just like he wanted. Hell, he accomplished his goal last year, why not this year?
Hayes puts his arm around me at lunch while we’re sitting in the noisy cafeteria. I haven’t said much, and I think everyone can tell how nervous I am. He leans toward my ear. “You’re going to do fine.”
Smiling up at him, I whisper, “Easy for you to say. You’re a shoo in.”
The side of his mouth quirks up. “I’ve been putting in a good word for you with Coach.”
I drop my head to the side and narrow my eyes.
“Just kidding,” he says, his lips pulling into an even fuller smile. “You don’t need it. You’re going to show everyone just like you did last year. Coach will have no choice but to let you back on the team because of how good you are.”
Hayes and I have already spoken about what he did for me regarding the Sloan sex video fiasco. The fact that he went to Nikki’s house, a freaking crazy girl, and threatened her for trying to ruin me... Well, I can’t actually put into words what that means to me. From what he told me, she won’t be bothering Sloan or me ever again. I believe him.