Fair Catch (Love and Sports Series) (13 page)

Fury started
to trickle through her body as she worked her way through the list of physical demands yelled out by her devil of a coach. Anger, a lot of anger was rushing through her body now. Margo collapsed next to her and Lexi grabbed her by the arm making sure her friend didn’t get in any trouble.

             
“Come on Margo.” Lexi said in between huffs.

             
Sweat trickled down her back as Lexi felt like she was separated from her body and was watching herself run up and down the court from the rafters. She looked pathetic, useless and pathetic. Never in her life had she despised herself so much. When had she ever let her personal life affect her this much? Screw her dad and his drinking, screw her lack of plans for the future, screw the prick of an officer that gave her a ticket, screw her friends who hadn’t been there for her and screw Jake Taylor.

             
When they finally finished their coach’s previous demand, Lexi put her hands on her knees to catch her breath.

             
“Let’s hear it ladies, what do you have to say.” Still silence.

             
Lexi couldn’t take it anymore. She stepped out on the court and looked at her freshman. She pointed at them. “Tell coach whatever the fuck you did because I don’t want to be running on your sorry asses behalf anymore! Damn!”

             
Silence enveloped her as her bitch of a coach clapped slowly. Lexi looked at her coach with confusion.

             
“Thank you freshman, you were quite the actresses.”

             
“What the hell is going on?” Lexi asked, spinning around to look at everyone.

             
“Looks like you owe your team an apology, Lexi. You see it took, let’s see how many suicides, burpees and down and ups to finally light a fire under your ass.” Her coach got right in her face. “That is what a captain is supposed to do, control her team, not sit back and make errors while she wallows in her own self-pity. I’m just sorry I had to use your teammates as an example to get you going. You ladies are dismissed.” Her coach looked Lexi dead in the eyes and said, “Get your shit together, Knox or you’ll be warming the bench all year.”

             
Her coach turned on her heel and left Lexi in the gym all by herself.

This whole practice was because of Lexi? The
y just ran their asses off because of her? She had never been the one to cause the running and she just put her team through hell because she was letting her personal life get to her.

             
Feeling like pure shit, she leaned against the padded wall and slowly lowered herself to the ground. She pulled her knees into her chest, placed her head on her knees and cried. She let herself cry for a while. She let herself feel again and she let herself have one last pity party.

                                                        ***

              Jake looked all over his locker for his watch but couldn’t find it. Where did he put it? Practice wasn’t too bad today, he knew his coach was taking it a little easy on the guys because the past couple of games they have killed their opponents. Jake appreciated the break but after practice he went up to his coach and asked him to not let up on the guys anymore, they needed to continue to practice the way they had been so they could continue to play the way they were. Their coach agreed but also stated he didn’t want to run the guys ragged which Jake could agree with.

             
The guys were all going to the sports bar after practice but Jake decided to pass up since he was feeling tired and didn’t want to push himself. The last thing he needed was to get sick.

             
He gathered his items and walked out of the locker room. He was about to leave when he remembered he left his watch on the indoor track this morning when he was working out with Mason. Jake walked out onto the track grabbed his watch and was heading for his Jeep when he heard someone crying.

             
He looked around but didn’t see anyone. That was weird, he thought. He continued toward the exit when he heard another sob. He turned around and looked at the closed door to the gym. He heard there was a team in the gym that was getting their asses handed to him so he decided to take a peak to see if there were any stragglers.

             
When he looked around in the gym, he saw Lexi sitting on the floor with her head on her knees, crying. The only reason he knew the person on the floor was her was because she was wearing gym shorts with softball written on them and a massive amount of blonde hair was spilling over the girl’s shoulders.

             
He jogged up to her and knelt down. He startled her when he put his hand on her shoulder, which caused her to frantically wipe away her tears and clear her throat. He hated how she always had to be so tough around him.

             
“Lexi, what’s wrong? Are you ok?”

              Lexi shot straight up from where she was sitting and then toppled over from being unbalanced. Jake caught her in his arms, trying to steady her.

She stared up at him with watery blue eyes that stole his heart. He hated seeing her in pain. He wanted to be able to wipe away all the pain in her face
and make everything better. She struggled to gain her balance but continued to cry so she wasn’t having any success at holding herself up. Instead of helping her back down to the ground, Jake took charge. He escorted her out to his Jeep, buckled her up and drove her to his place. It was a little closer than hers and he didn’t have a key to get into her apartment.

             
He pulled her out of the passenger seat where she was curled up and carried her into his apartment. He placed her on the couch and got some water from his fridge for her.

Seeing Lexi so deflated made him nervous, he always saw her so strong and stubborn
, never like the mess she currently was. He had never seen her so down before and it was crushing him. He sat next to her on the couch and pulled a pillow onto his lap. She rested her head on the pillow and cried.

             
“It’s ok” he said while stroking her head. He had no clue if it actually was ok or what “it” was but he knew whatever happened he was going to help her through it, he wanted to, he needed to.

Ever since he laid eyes on Lexi at the football party he couldn’t get her out of his head.  Now that she was vulnerable and actually letting him take care of her, he wasn’t going to go anywhere, no matter what her problem was.

At that moment, he finally realized what it was like to have someone to care about. Even though Lexi barely gave him the time of day, he cared about her.

             
When Mason first started dating Brooke, Jake thought his friend was a fool. He always wondered why Mason would give up his bachelor life to be with one girl. Now Jake understood. It was about taking care of someone, having someone to lean on, to laugh with and to share life with. Right now, he wanted to take care of Lexi, he wanted to wash her pain away.

             
Her cries settled down into sniffs and then her breathing turned heavy. Jake continued to stroke her hair and realized that she had fallen asleep. He pulled a blanket over her without disturbing the way she was sleeping and made himself comfortable. Thankfully he had his phone with him because he was able to check ESPN for scores and updates while she slept.

             
Soon enough, Jake’s eyes started to get heavy and he drifted off into sleep as well, a very deep sleep.

                                                        ***

A sharp pain radiated through Lexi’s neck, causing her to wake up. She shifted from where she was laying and almost fell off her bed. She caught herself right before she tipped over. Her eyes flew open from the adrenaline rush of almost falling to the ground and that was when she realized she wasn’t in her bed, she was on a coach. Her hand was on something hard. She looked over and saw that her hand was gripping a man’s thigh. She shot up from where she was laying and saw the man whose thigh she was grazing.

Jake.

              Instant mortification took over her body as her whole body burn with heat. He found her at her worst moment and he didn’t run away. Instead he decided to take care of her. No, she told herself, she was not going to get into this with him. Wasn’t the practice they just had a big enough push away from Jake? She lost sight of what was important for her team and she wasn’t going to let it happen again. She couldn’t let Jake get in the middle of things. She couldn’t let him plant himself in her head again.

             
Her coach made it quite clear that Lexi needed to get her head out of her ass and focus on what was important. Lexi was able to succeed her entire college career because she never let a guy interfere with her goals. Jake was a distraction, a handsome distraction, but a distraction she couldn’t afford. This was her last year, she needed to focus on figuring out what she was going to do with her life and she needed to focus on her team. She needed to give them her one hundred percent, not wonder whether or not the hunky quarterback was going to ask her out again.

             
Lexi was able to slip off the couch without waking Jake up. She didn’t see any of her belongings around his apartment, probably because they were still in her locker. She had her workout clothes still on so she decided she would turn her trek back to the events center into a little workout, even though it felt like she pulled every muscle in her legs.

             
She looked at Jake one last time and then slipped out of his apartment. She stretched her back and started to jog over to the events center. The entire time she replayed what happened last night in her head. All she could remember was crying hysterically and Jake carrying her around. Her mouth went dry and her stomach ached. Life wasn’t fair. Finally she found a guy that was caring and sweet, yea he had a bit of a battered past but he had changed, before her eyes and it pained her that she couldn’t do anything about it.

             
Lord knew that she couldn’t handle being there for the team and having her own relationship, something had to give and that was Jake. Not that he wanted to be in a relationship with her, she didn’t know that but it did seem like he cared about her.

             
What was she doing? She cursed herself out and picked up the pace of her run. She reveled in the burn that was traveling the length of her legs from the asinine workout she put her team through.

She was supposed
to be forgetting about Jake and putting him behind her. She wasn’t supposed to be analyzing his feelings for her and if he actually had any. This was never going to work.

             
She arrived at the events center and went to her locker room. Like usual she was the only one there. She pulled out her toothbrush and toothpaste she kept in locker and brushed her teeth at the sink in the bathroom. She hated having morning breath before a workout. She brushed her hair and threw it up into a messy bun, grabbed a towel and headed for the weight room.

             
After waiving good morning to the trainer she started working out on an exercise ball. She hadn’t done much ab work lately and since she was incredibly sore from yesterday’s practice she didn’t even want to attempt to do any squats or lunges.

             
Lexi worked out until she couldn’t feel her abs anymore. It was the only way she knew how to erase her current pain, by causing new pain to focus on, so she did. She spent half on hour on the exercise ball doing all sorts of balancing and weighted ab work. She looked at the clock and realized she needed to get in the shower and get up to class.

             
After an extremely quick shower and brush of her hair, she threw on her spare clothes and headed out of the locker room for class.

             
“Hey.”

             
Lexi stopped in her tracks and turned to find Jake waiting for her. He was leaning against the wall once again but he was wearing sweats and a t-shirt that showed off his amazing muscles. Lexi felt her voice get caught in her throat, so she just smiled at him

             
“So you’re just going to walk out of my apartment without saying anything?”

             
There was hurt in his eyes when he said his words. Lexi felt extremely guilty. She was trying to figure out what was best for her when she left Jake’s apartment, she didn’t even consider what it would be like for Jake. She was an ass.

             
“I’m sorry. I was just, uh, embarrassed.”

             
He walked closer so he was only a couple of inches away from her. “Why?”

             
She looked up into his green eyes and felt the walls she was trying to build this morning crumble to the ground, they were completely non-existent now.

             
“Because Jake. I mean who cries like that? It was embarrassing for you to see me like that.”