Crash (24 page)

I glanced over at him, looking purposefully at his jersey tucked into his jeans. Then the place he occupied on the bench. “Kicking ass.”

Sawyer laughed, glancing at the scoreboard. “I can see that. From the looks of it, if he keeps annihilating the rest of the game, he’s going to get about twenty football scholarships tomorrow morning.” Looking up into the stands, he focused on the clump of visor wearing, school color representing scouts. A dozen had turned into two dozen and every last one of them had not taken their eyes off Jude tonight. They were drooling for him, and I was so damn proud of him, I’d made special arrangements for tonight. Much to my dismay, Jude had insisted we take things slow these past few weeks, but with the lingerie I’d picked out and what I had in mind, he’d swear slow off for good.

I forgot Sawyer was there until he cleared his throat. “I’ve missed you, Lucy.”

Damn, I didn’t need this right now. The dance squad was getting ready to hit the field for the halftime show and I was pretty sure Jude had just caught a glimpse of Sawyer beside me. I weaved farther into the cluster of my dance mates.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Sawyer asked, sliding right up beside me again. “What did Ryder tell you to make you turn anti-Sawyer Diamond?”

I’d resisted for three weeks, but I was coming very close to following Jude’s words of advice and kicking him in the balls.

“I’m avoiding you because Jude told me to, because he said you’re not someone I should be hanging around,” I said, feeling no need to explain myself to him, but it felt good to shout a little at him.

“You do everything Ryder tells you to do?”

Okay, now I was seething. Implying I had no backbone and did my boyfriend’s every bidding turned my temper switch to the on position.

Spinning on him, I took a step into him and then another, until he was backed up against the fence. “Listen to me, you arrogant ass,” I said, resting my hands on my hips so I wouldn’t slap him. “I’m avoiding you because I don’t like you. I don’t like the way you look at me, or the way you smile at me, or the way you have this sense of entitlement. I don’t like the way you saunter down the school halls like you own the place, and I really don’t like the way you throw corn kernels at the band table every day. You’re pretentious, and sneaky, and rude,” I said, ready to fire only about a hundred more insults when I heard the buzzer announce the end of the quarter. “And ugly,” I added, knowing this was the one that would sting the most for a guy like Diamond.

“You asked him about Holly yet?” Sawyer said suddenly, pushing off the fence and stepping towards me.

I stepped backwards. “I don’t need to,” I said. “I trust him. Trust, Sawyer. You might want to look that one up in the dictionary and give it a shot one day.”

“And maybe you and your trust should follow him one day to a derelict trailer down in Valley View Park,” he said, ambling back to the bench. “You might find Jude’s the one who needs to look up trust in the dictionary.”

I waited until Sawyer turned before plopping onto the grass. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. And I had to dance lead in a brand new routine in three minutes. I was pissed at myself for letting Sawyer get to me, and I was even more pissed at myself for letting him drop that seed of doubt in my mind again. I could trust Jude. I did trust him.

So why did I feel my heart in my throat? Why did my stomach feel like it was about to explode? Why did I hate the name Holly on principle alone?

 The dance team was making a circle around me, everyone kneeling around me, asking if I needed some water. I shook my head, looking up at where Jude was leading the team off the field. I could trust that man. I was falling in love with that man.

Like he could read my thoughts, he looked over just then, his eyes falling on me, a smile already in position until he took a good look at my face. He stopped abruptly as a wave of players passed him. The smile faded from his face as he jogged across the field towards me.

Not now, not now, I told myself. Halftime when he had twenty of the best coaches in the country here watching him was not the time to bring up Holly. Later, after the game, so I could put the Holly ghost that haunted me to rest.

“Luce,” he said, sliding his helmet off. “Are you all right?” Lifting his hands, he ran them over my face.

No was the honest answer, but yes was the answer I needed to give. Perhaps I needed to review the finer points of trust too.

“I’m fine,” I said, resting my cheek into his hand. “Just a little light headed. I forgot to eat dinner again,” I said, rolling my eyes like I was hopeless.

“Somebody get me some water!” Jude shouted. “And a granola bar or something!” Turning back at me, he kissed me softly. “Dammit, woman, you mean too much to me. Eat, okay?”

I nodded, taking the Styrofoam cup from someone’s hands.

“I’ve got a defensive line that needs a tongue thrashing, so I better get going.” He kissed my cheek and stood up.

“And a couple dozen scouts to impress,” I added, taking another sip.

“That’s already been taken care of,” he said, snapping his helmet back on.

I smiled. “All right, cocky, run along. I’ll wait for you after the game. I’ve got something planned,” I said, lifting my brows.

He stopped, glancing back, his face unreadable. “Hey, Luce, rain check on tonight, okay? I’m sore as all hell already and I’m going to be lucky if I can make it home upright. Tomorrow night?”

That stomach exploding feeling peaked. “Don’t you need a ride?”

“Meyers offered to drive me home,” he said, looking down the field. “That way you won’t have to wait for me and listen to a big baby crying for ice and painkillers.”

I couldn’t talk.

“I gotta go, Luce,” he said, jogging backwards. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” Turning around, he headed for Southpointe’s team tunnel. “Your turn to kick some dance ass on that field, Luce,” he hollered over his shoulder. “Don’t let me down.”

I bent my head over my knees. “You neither.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I was staging a stake out on my own boyfriend. So much for the trust I was so confident I had in him a couple hours ago.

Southpointe, as anticipated, obliterated the top seeded team in the conference, making Southpointe, for the first time in its history, number one. Jude came back from halftime like a twenty-four point lead was inexcusable, widening that gap by another twenty-one. It was like watching a team of Gods play a team of mortals, Jude playing the part of Zeus.

I’d managed to suck it up and dance my ass off during halftime before running to the girls’ locker room and changing so I could blend into the herd of raving fans in the bleachers. I knew he was looking for me, even hurt I wasn’t down on the sidelines cheering him on, but I was in no mood to cheer. Not even in a mood to pretend to cheer and I couldn’t give him any reason to suspect something wasn’t right.

I couldn’t have him checking over his shoulder for his girlfriend, identifying her crouched down and hoodie up behind the wheel of her car. Because then, like the good, trusting girlfriend I wasn’t, I couldn’t tail him to see where he was really headed tonight.

It was nearing the hour mark following the end of the game, when almost all the players’ cars were long gone, when he emerged from the locker room. Scottie Meyers wasn’t with him, no other player was; he was alone.

People preach to you about pivotal moments like this one. Moments where you have two options, and one choice. One path to head down with no turning back. Choice numero uno: I could jump out of my car, run and throw myself in his arms, and keep playing the fool. That was appealing on just about every level.

And choice numero deus: I could stay put and follow him to wherever he led me, hopefully getting to the bottom of this whole Holly situation or discovering Sawyer was a lying sack of shit. This choice didn’t appeal to me at all, but it was the one I had to make.

Because I wasn’t one of those girls who could turn a blind eye while their boyfriend skirted around town. Because I wasn’t one of those girls that thought trust was a conditional, open to interpretation thing. Because I was one of those girls that needed to know if my boyfriend was screwing some ex flame behind my back so I could wind up miserable, heartbroken, but, at least, informed. I guess.

Jude skipped the parking lot, weaving through the weeds. Heading south.

As in SouthView Park.

Wherever he was going, he was traveling on foot, so that meant tailing him in the Mazda would be impossible. He’d probably get a little suspicious if a vehicle in my make and model followed a few car lengths behind him at a five mile per hour pace.

So I peeled out of the parking lot, heading for the place that he was most likely headed and the place I most wanted him not to show up.

I didn’t know the exact way to get to the trailer park, it wasn’t a place I’d frequented during my summers spent at the lake, but a few wrong turns followed by a few more right turns and the help of one gas station employee, and I was pulling into   SouthView Trailer Park, where
The View’s Better Down Here,
according to the sign.

It wasn’t a big park, only two rows of trailers running down a quarter mile or so of road. There was no view I could see, unless you counted the rusting walls of your neighbor’s trailer, and there wasn’t a single pot of flowers or one hanging basket to be seen. I noticed because this was the first year we hadn’t had flowers on our front steps. People who were worried about paying their electric bills and putting ramen noodles on the table didn’t buy flowers.

It was an odd thought to have given everything running through my mind, but it stuck with me.

I parked at the end of the park in a spot where the street lamps wouldn’t illuminate my car, hoping he hadn’t beat me here. Hoping he wasn’t going to show up at all because if he did, if I had to watch him shimmy into some other girl’s trailer late on a Thursday night, I’d know the truth. I’d know everything I’d believed we had was false. I’d question any and all love I’d experience in the future.

Despite knowing better, I held onto one last balloon of hope that I was wrong and Jude wasn’t going to come knocking on Holly’s door after eleven o’clock at night.

I let that balloon float away not even one minute later as I watched a familiar form cut through a couple of trails and lumber down the weed lined driveway in my direction. He passed beneath the street lights, flashing light, then dark, a couple of clear plastic bags hanging from his wrist.

He was almost at the end of the road, the Mazda was only a couple trailer lengths away in the dark, when I realized he wasn’t here to make a trailer visit, he was here for me. He’d caught a glimpse of me weaving around town like a woman on a mission and somehow followed me here and was going to talk some sense into me. I didn’t care about the questions he’d ask or the explanations I’d have to give, because he was here for me. Sawyer could shove his trust nugget up his ass.

I was remembering how to smile as Jude passed the last trailer. I was about to open the door, tackle him to the ground, and kiss the sense out of him when he turned a sharp corner around the last trailer. Leaping up the stairs of the rust can in front of me, he tapped on the door.

My heart broke. It actually broke. An x-ray would have confirmed it.

I couldn’t breathe as I waited in the car for who was behind that door, although by now I already knew.

The door screeched open, illuminating Jude in soft yellow light. I told myself that wasn’t the man I was falling for. And then a girl, right about my age, appeared in the doorway wearing a pretty summer dress and a prettier smile. She kind of looked like me, but her hair hadn’t been burnt off to her shoulders.

She threw her arms around Jude and he did the same, lifting her off her toes.

This was not happening; it was a dream, a nightmare. I’d, somewhere along the stake out, fallen asleep and this was the result of a night spent agonizing that my boyfriend was seeing someone behind my back.

The air in the car started to suffocate me, so I whirred down the window, sucking in mouthfuls of cool air.

“You’re late,” the girl, who I knew in my heart was Holly, said after Jude lowered her down.

“Walking a few miles on foot after playing the late game can make a man late,” he said, leaning back into the stair railing. “I made it though, didn’t I?”

Holly rubbed Jude’s arm, looking up at him like he was the sun, moon, and the stars. I knew that look and, after tonight, I never would have it again.

“You always do,” Holly replied, flashing a coy grin. “How was the game?”

“Good,” Jude answered. “We kicked Valley’s ass.”

“Valley needs to get their ass kicked,” she said, sliding out of her sweater. Both arms were covered in intricate tattoos, from her wrist to her shoulder. It would have made me feel better if she was tipping the ugly scale, but she wasn’t. She was pretty, prettier than me. “I wish I could have come, but that’s a whole lotta drama I’m not ready to deal with yet.”

“Yeah, it’s probably for the best.”

Then a cry cut through the door, disrupting the quiet night. A cry that made the pit in my stomach expand.