by Shae Ross
I try to smile at Sasha over the demons of misery that have kidnapped my brain. “Jace and Marcus are with us, too,” I say. “We’ll need a table for six. Better yet, let me go with you, and I’ll see if I can find them.” I move past Preston, and Sasha joins me.
We find Marcus and Jace seated already, and fill in the table. I sit between Preston and Sasha, and dinner progresses at an agonizingly slow pace. Picking at my chicken breast smothered in white sauce, I talk to everyone at the table except him. The only saving grace is that the other couples are so into each other, I doubt they notice.
I lean back to avoid a server clearing the dinner plates and spot Tyler three tables over, smiling at me like a creeper. I scratch my forehead with my middle finger, discretely flipping him off, and reach for my water glass. I gasp as I almost knock it over, drawing Preston’s attention.
He stops his conversation with Marcus, touches the back of my chair and leans to my ear. “Are you all right? Do you want to get some air?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, standing up and tossing my napkin on the chair. I cross the banquet room and return to the terrace, moving to the shadowed end.
He lets out a big breath and speaks. “Look, all I’m saying is you should have told me what happened…”
My mouth opens and then snaps shut. “Really? I should have told you what happened? Why Preston? Why should I have told you?”
“It makes me feel like shit, Priscilla. He basically attacked you and you didn’t even bother to tell me—I deserve to know when someone is threatening you.”
“And do I deserve to know when someone is threatening you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I say, stepping closer, “do I deserve to know when someone or something is threatening you? Would you tell me?”
He’s staring at me, and I can see it in his eyes. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. His jaw tightens, and his mouth flattens into a hard line, determined to shut me out. He moves to lean against the railing, crossing his arms over his chest. “What are we talking about here, Peep?”
“You tell me.” I cross my arms, trying to keep calm. “You tell me what I deserve to know.”
His gaze softens at the slight quiver in my voice. “Look, you’re obviously upset. Let’s just get through the night. Dinner’s almost over. We can leave soon and talk more,” he says, running a frustrated hand through his hair. This is his way of blowing me off—I just gave him the chance to come clean, and he’s dismissed it. I nod my head, but there’s really nothing more to talk about. He steps toward me, and I turn and head back to the banquet room.
I see Sam and Syd and veer off to chat with them as Preston returns to our table. Sasha is crossing the room, and when she stops to ask me if I know where the restrooms are, I volunteer to go with her—I might as well chew up some more time.
We spend a few minutes in the bathroom touching up our makeup and chatting. I like Sasha. She’s sweet, and she seems like she has her act together. It would be fun to hang out with her more if she and Carson started to date seriously. Then I remind myself, it’s not likely going to matter, after I tell Preston… I choke on the thought, my whole body revolting. I blink it away, telling myself not to think about it.
We’re three steps out of the bathroom when I see Preston cross in front of the hallway. He’s coming from the terrace, his gaze focused on the banquet room, and the tension is visible in his stalking pace. Seconds later, Carson steps into view with Amelia beside him. My entire body stiffens. It’s obvious they were together. Carson’s head is dipped low, and his hands are in his pockets. Amelia is trying to explain something to him.
I close my eyes, not wanting to see what my brain knows. Preston was out there asking her what she said to me—I’m sure he wanted to know if she spilled all the shit he won’t tell me himself. Coward. I swallow, feeling the anger boiling in my stomach. I’ve stopped, and Sasha is watching me. “Is everything okay?” she asks.
In the same moment, Carson looks up, spotting us. He nods to Sasha as we walk forward, and he introduces her to Amelia. Then he pauses, looking at me. “Priscilla, I think you know Amelia.” His tone sounds as uncomfortable as he looks. Amelia raises her chin, reaching for a lofty look as her eyes flick over me like we’re the last two contestants on an episode of The Bachelor.
“Nice to meet you, Sasha,” she says, and turns on her heel and leaves.
Carson’s expression looks sympathetic as he opens his mouth to say something to me, but I cut him off. I’m out of here. I make up a lame excuse as I turn.
“Will you tell Preston I’m not feeling well?”
“Priscilla, wait…didn’t you drive together?” he asks, but I pretend like I don’t hear and dive toward the stairs. All I want to do is get away from this whole scene. I retrieve my coat from the coat check and head out the door, shoving my arms into the sleeves, and because Preston’s coat was layered over mine on the hanger, it smells like him. The slightly spicy scent settles around my shoulders as the cold air stings my face with reality. I just walked out on him. My dress flutters against my shins, and I shiver as I walk fast.
“How’s it going?” I throw the casual greeting to the three valets who are staring blankly, undoubtedly wondering where the hell I’m going. “Just going to have a smoke,” I lie.
I think there’s a building down the road, and I’m going to walk to it and sit there for awhile—I’ll call Jace once I’ve calmed down, and hitch a ride with them.
My heels scuff the cement as I hike to the street. I look right and left—nothing. Just shadowy road. Ahead of me I spot a group of picnic tables. I cross and plop down, feeling the cold metal under my calves.
“You’re Preston’s girl.” A deep voice vibrates behind me. I gasp and practically fall off the bench, swinging my neck around. The silhouette of a huge African American guy shifts in the dark, two tables over.
“Holy fuck!” I gasp. He’s a player. I’ve seen him before but I can’t remember his name. He’s got to be the biggest guy on the team.
He lets out a deep chuckle. “Well, you’re half right. It’s Holy Moses.”
“Huh?”
“My name’s Moses—teammates call me Holy Moses.”
I press my hand to my forehead and stare. “Well, holy fuck, Holy Moses, you scared the holy shit out of me.”
“Sorry.” He stands, adjusting the waistline of his pants with one hand. “I couldn’t tell if you saw me or not—I thought you had.” He scratches his head. “Then again, don’t know what made me think a beautiful blonde would be running toward me. Didn’t know why else you’d be coming this way alone, though.”
He tucks his hands in his pockets, staring down with warm chocolate eyes. It only takes me a second to know he’s a decent guy. He sits across from me, extending his legs and folding his hands over his stomach. His head tilts, and he stares at the night sky.
I follow his gaze, dropping my head back and looking up at the stars scattered across the sheet of dark blue.
“You having a bad night, too?” I ask
He scrunches his nose then drags a huge hand over his entire face.
“Yeah, I’m having a bad life.” Something inside of me stops, as if I can feel the ache of his words, dull and persistent, like a problem that’s been with him a long time.
He nods skyward. “Helps to look at the sky. Makes me realize there’s always someone out there that’s got more troubles than me.”
My phone pings a text message. I pull it from my purse and see Preston’s name with the message: Where R U? I set the phone on the table without responding.
“Does your man know you’re out here?”
“Nope.” The single word floats up and hangs in the air. Silence passes for a moment, and I watch him from the corner of my eye. I wonder what his story is—I want to reach out to him in some way, but I don’t want to butt in. “I’m Priscilla,” I say, realizing I haven’t introduced myself, and my phone pings.
It�
��s Preston again. Tell me where you are, Peep. I bite the inside of my lip and let out a breath.
“You play soccer?” he asks, punching something into his phone.
“Yeah, but I’m not playing much these days.” I wait for his reaction, wondering if he knows. It seems like they all know, but the easy expression on his face remains. His chin drops to his shoulder.
“Well, I’m sorry about all that, Priscilla. And I’m glad to say I didn’t have anything to do with that bar fight. Preston’s a good man, a really good man. He’s been there for me. If it weren’t for him and Carson…” He shakes his head and scrunches his nose again, before laying his head back and returning his gaze northward.
A quiet minute passes before he turns back to me. “I’ve seen you play,” he says, and that shocks me. We don’t get many football players sitting on our sidelines.
“You’re good,” he says.
“Yeah,” I respond in a defeated voice. I look down at my pump, one heel scuffed with hardened mud. It makes me think about how much I miss the feel of my cleats…running on the field…kicking the ball…the sound of it against the side of my foot. My eyes burn. God, I miss that. A tear escapes, tracing a slow line of sadness over my skin. I twist my heel into the grass to dislodge a clod of dirt. “I used to be good.”
“Ain’t much sense in thinking about used-to-bes—they’ll only disappoint you. Here-and-nows are the only things you can count on.” Headlights beam and pan over us as a truck turns, rolling slowly. It stops beside the curb.
The door opens and Preston steps out. I let out a small sigh and look at Moses.
“You turned me in?” I ask.
His big hands move down his thighs, and he grips his knees. “Yup. And if I’m ever lucky enough to have a girlfriend who looks like you, I hope I have a friend who’ll know when to step in. Whatever he’s done, it’s just a used-to-be, and your here-and-now”—he nods to Preston—“don’t deserve to be thinking about you lying in a ditch somewhere.”
I know he’s right. Detroit has cleaned up its act in the last ten years, but walking alone at night in any big city isn’t a good idea. I let out a breath and stand up, taking a few steps over the stiff grass, then turn back to him with a soft smile. “I’m glad you were in the park to be my here-and-now, Holy Moses.” He smiles at my use of his nickname, pointing a finger at me.
My heels wobble over the uneven terrain, and apprehension grows in my stomach as I cross to Preston. I keep my head down as he walks me to the passenger door, but I see the hard set of his features clearly as he cuts through the headlights, and it steals my breath. He’s madder than I’ve ever seen him, including when he jumped Tyler earlier. He signals to Moses, and the truck sinks a fraction as he sits, clips his seat belt buckle, and pulls out.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Preston
I’m trying to calm down, but I want to explode. After Carson and Sasha told me Priscilla left, I started looking for her. I kept telling myself she wouldn’t have just taken off, growing more frantic with each tick of the clock. It occurred to me to check the coatroom. Sure enough. Gone. I haven’t been able to catch my breath since.
When I asked the valet guys if they’d seen my runaway blonde, they told me she went for a smoke. What the fuck, Priscilla—walking on Belle Isle at night? The DYC is at the end of the Island, and it’s fairly deserted, which is even more horrifying. Then I got Moses’s text.
I draw a slow breath and stretch my clenched fingers on the steering wheel, trying to loosen my shoulder muscles. God, I want to crush her to my chest and throttle her at the same time. Somehow in the span of the last hour, we’ve come undone. I have no idea what’s going on in her mind, and I’m sure she has no idea how pissed I am.
I take a deep breath and accelerate into the two-lane road. “I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking,” I say. She snaps a glare my way, but I’m not finished. I point my finger at her. “I don’t care how mad you are at me, don’t ever do that again. I couldn’t find Tyler, either, and now that I know he’s been harassing you—I won’t even tell you the thoughts running through my mind. If I take you somewhere, do not take off on me and leave me twisting in the wind thinking something happened to you. Are we clear on that?”
Her shoulders scrunch, and her arms cross tight over her chest. She shuts her eyes, squeezing until the corners wrinkle, and my chest swells with the sting of my voice barking at her. At first I think she’s trying to block me out, but I see one small tremble at the corner of her mouth, and then she lays her head back and nods. My fingers itch to touch her, but I feel like somehow it will make it worse for both of us. Bracing an elbow on the door, I let out a breath and slant a hand over my mouth to shut myself up.
The stress of the upcoming hearing is weighing on us. It’s weighing on the football players, too, and that’s carrying over to Peep—first the confrontation with Tyler, then the melt down with Amelia. Fucking Amelia.
Part of Amelia’s problem is that she has no boundaries. She injects herself where she has no business being. I’ve let that go on too long. Amelia has hung around me these last few years, and I’ve not given her anything back, other than friendship. But I never realized she thought she was entitled to some future part in my life—until tonight.
The same could be said of her role with the team. She’s a volunteer, not even a student trainer, and she doesn’t get anything back from the team—no money, no course credit, nothing—yet she still hangs around. I’ve always thought her presence was harmless. I’ve overheard her misrepresent her role with the team when she’s talking to outsiders, too. That should have caused me to stop and think. It never really mattered because I’ve never had anyone that I really cared for the way I do Priscilla.
If things go the way I think they will at that hearing, it won’t stop there. They’ll focus on me, then they’ll focus on the fight. If they read the appeal I wrote and the attached police report, they really have all the evidence they need to know something’s not right.
We drive the rest of the way to her apartment in silence. The tension between us burrows a knot between my shoulder blades. She crosses the parking lot three steps ahead of me, her heels striking with a rushed rhythm. She opens the door, tosses her purse at the sofa, and keeps walking. I’m following her, watching her coat slide off her arms and land in a heap in the middle of the hallway. I swipe it up, enter the bedroom behind her, and close the door.
She’s pinching the hem of her dress, tugging it past her hips, and raising it over her shoulders in fast jerky movements. My eyes move achingly over her body as she arches. She’s wearing a plum colored bra with matching lace panties, which I’m sure she chose in anticipation of us spending the night together. My cock pulses as the memory of what it feels like to be between her legs. A moment later, a jolt of sinking regret courses through me.
She spins her dress above her head, and flicks it at me with a rigid expression. I shift my jaw and catch it with one hand. I’m guessing it’s gonna be a long time before I see her in a dress again.
Peeling black nylons from her long, sexy legs, she kicks, freeing the smooth tan skin. She reaches back, unhooks her bra, and throws that at me, too. God, this is torture. I can remember the taste of her skin, the feel of her tight nipples under my fingers, grazing my chest.
I hook a finger through the strap of her bra, pull it off my shoulder, and lay it over the chair. “Priscilla…” A drawer opens, and she grabs a pair of boxer shorts, sliding a finger under the dark lace thong.
“Turn,” she demands.
Fuck. I raise a hand to my forehead and turn, listening to the faint sound of fabric rustling over skin. She bumps my shoulder as she cuts past me, pulling a tank top over her head.
I move toward her, but she holds out a halting hand, and I stop, letting out a breath. My fingers find the knot of my tie, and I work to loosen it. Pulling it off and folding it in my hands, I toss it on her desk.
“I know Amelia cornered you. Whatever she tol
d you, I’m sure it’s some warped version…”
“Well, she started by saying something like, ‘wow, he really hasn’t told you anything.’ I’m sure she wanted to gloat that she’s in on whatever it is that’s going on—whatever it is that you want to shut me out of, yet Amelia seems to know. Then she told me that I was just your short-term ‘gone girl,’ and eventually you’d come back to her because you always do and because you had to. What the fuck does that mean?”
Her words ignite a pang of self-disgust in my gut. I rub my forehead and stand up. Goddamn, Amelia—she just loves to throw the one thing I’m most ashamed of up in my face.
“Am I wrong to feel badly that Amelia knows what’s going on with you and I don’t?”
“No.” I shake my head and turn toward her. “But you’re wrong to think that’s a threat to us. Amelia likes to distort the truth…”
“So which part is distorted and which part is the truth?” she snaps.
“I am not going to play Twenty Questions with you. I told you if it came to keeping you safe or losing you…” I shake my head, stopping to think about my words. She’s forcing my hand here.
“What threatens us, Preston, is you stiff-arming me. It’s like I’m sitting on the bench, confined to the sidelines of your life. If you’ve been keeping it from me because you’re trying to protect me…” Her lips move but the rhythm of her voice has died, as if her mind is stuttering, searching for the right words. She looks down and draws a deep breath, and when her eyes return to mine, a fresh hurt has taken hold. “You say it like you’re protecting me, but I think you’re protecting yourself.”
My pulse beats in my neck, and the huddle of guilt in my brain starts to reorganize as I think about that accusation. “From day one, I have focused on getting you back on that soccer field, and I’ve told you, I’m going to fix this. Isn’t that the most important thing?”
Her eyes take on a pleading look, and I want so badly to touch her. “When I first asked for your help it was the most important thing, but it’s not anymore. The most important thing is that we trust each other. I don’t want to be that girl—that bat-shit crazy, green-eyed idiot who follows you around, rabid with anxiety, but that’s what I’ve become.”