Score (Skin in the Game Book 1) (16 page)

I found myself laughing maniacally. And suddenly, it was too warm.

My breath puffed out in front of me again, clouding my vision as gravity pulled my eyes closed. All I could think about was how tired I was.

So very tired…

“
A
nd now
… welcome to the field, your own Panthers!”

I made my way down the long alley toward the center of the stadium with the rest of my teammates. The cheering was deafening. Usually, it was those cheers that pumped me up, elevated me, got my head into the game.

But instead, my temples throbbed with the sound.

The rest of the guys grunted and chest-bumped each other, doing their best to psych themselves up and get the adrenaline pumping. But even though I was dressed like them, and on the same field as them, my head was someplace else completely.

And that was the last thing I needed today, of all days.

We made our way to the sidelines as the cheerleaders revved the crowd up into a frenzy. The marching band was playing our theme song,
Eye of the Tiger
, which usually got me into the fighting spirit. I’d never seen the stadium that packed. So many people, I couldn’t have scanned for Bee if I wanted to.

I told myself I didn’t want to.

But that was a lie. I still tried.

“Hey, Samsky, nice to have you back.” Andrews ran up to me for a fist-bump, which I returned half-heartedly. “You forget what to do?”

“Nah, I’m good,” I answered, but I could tell he didn’t buy it.

Fuck. Concentrate. Breathe.

Andrews pulled me in so that our helmets collided. “Take it easy. I won’t push you if you’re not feeling it.”

I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t take it easy. I ran a quick eye over the crowd and everyone I saw—even the little kids with their giant, foam “Panthers #1” hands— looked like they could be scouts.

“Nah. Seriously. I’m ready. Push me.”

He nodded and clapped me on the back. “Okay. You got it.”

Something sour had settled in the back of my throat. I’d only had a couple beers last night before Renee had shown up at the bar and drove me out of there with her stalking. Since then, I had been drinking water, but I still couldn’t seem to get that bitter taste out. It probably didn’t help that I’d had almost no sleep. I’d spent most of the wee hours tossing and turning, thinking about texting Bee, but I’d lost my phone somewhere along the line.

So yeah. Last night? Worst mental fucking of my life.

Maybe I’d deserved Bee’s tongue-lashing. I probably had deserved it. After all, she’d wanted to go to the dinner alone and I’d forced myself into a situation she was obviously uncomfortable with. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she got all embarrassed over her family and took everything bad that happened out on me. I’d done the same to her not a few weeks before and what had she done? She’d stuck it out. Stood by me. And then gave me her virginity. What had I done when she’d been shitty to me for a few minutes? Dropped her ass off home and burned rubber in her driveway on the way out.

Very mature.

The bitter taste increased tenfold and I swallowed hard.

One game,
I reminded myself.
Work your ass off for the next couple of hours, and then you can high-tail it to the Kappa house and make things right.

Someone slapped my ass. Coach Beal. “The knee doing good?”

I tried to put some gusto into my nod, but all I managed was a puppet-like bob of the head.

He studied me. “You look nervous.”

“Nope. Not me,” I hopped up and down and tilted my head from side to side to loosen my limbs and get the nerves under control. For once, it wasn’t the knee that was bothering me. But I couldn’t tell him that my PT had done wonders on my knee while doing a number on my head.

“It’s all good. Just need to get my ass on the field and make some plays.”

He pointed into the stands at a couple of men in blazers.
Those
were the scouts. I nodded, ready to get out on the field and
do this
, when I spotted a familiar girl with dark hair climbing up to the bleachers.

Flora. Bee’s roommate.

I scanned the area around her. A bunch of Kappa sisters, but…Shit. No Bee.

She really
had
meant it when she’d said she might not come.

Someone rapped their knuckles on my helmet. “Hello? Earth to Samsky?”

Coach. I blinked, surprised to see him still there.

“Did you hear me?” he said.

“Uh…” I’d heard his voice in the background, but nope. No clue what he’d said. Just a bunch of sounds. They hadn’t fully come together into words with meaning. But Coach wouldn’t stand for that, so I lied, hoping it was nothing important. “Yeah, Coach. Got it.”

He let me go to talk to Andrews, so the second I was free, I raced to the bleachers, took a flying leap, and jumped onto the first slat of fence separating the field from the seating area. Hanging there, I whistled to get Flora’s attention, knowing if I spent my whole game looking into the bleachers, it would only make things worse. “Hey. You see Bee? Is she coming?”

Flora stood up and stepped down the stairs toward me. “Well, hello to you, too, Cal. I thought she was already here. I just got back from my parents’. I figured she got up early to help you practice or something.”

I shook my head. “Nope.”
If only.
I shot a glance at the field and noted that Coach was busy so I leaned in closer to Flora.
“Can I borrow your phone quick?” I didn’t need Bee to come. I just needed to tell her that I loved her and that as soon as I was done, we needed to talk.

Flora reached into her purse but then smacked her head. “Oh. Calling her won’t do any good.” She pulled out two phones and handed one to me. “
This
is her phone. I thought she must’ve left in such a hurry, she forgot it. I was going to give it back to her when I saw her here.” She shrugged. “But I haven’t seen her.”

I took the phone, cocking my head as I stared down at it, a strange sensation coursing through me. “She wasn’t home and she left her phone?”

Flora nodded. “Yeah. Totally weird for her.”

I pressed a button and the screen lit up. It was open to her text message window. On the top of the screen, it said my name. I scanned the messages that popped up first and suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.

There were two I had no recollection of.

Meet me outside? Want to talk.

And a reply from Bee.

Be right there.

I checked the time stamp on those messages. No wonder they didn’t look familiar. They were from last night,
after
I’d lost my phone.

Which meant someone had taken my phone and convinced her to meet them outside in the dark.

“Oh, shit.” I showed it to a confused-looking Flora as dread closed over me like a black cloud. “I didn’t send this message.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What? Then who did?”

At that moment, my mind was just blank. I just stood there, numbly, looking at the phone, trying to figure out who the hell would do that to Bee. Did she even have any enemies? Hell no, Bee was sweet. She didn’t make enemies. In fact, she liked to deflect confrontation as much as possible. Like that time in the pizza place, with Renee? She’d shrunk away from her tongue-lashing, doing everything she could not to provoke her.

My blood suddenly went cold.

Renee
.

Slowly, the pieces clicked together, leaving me with a really improbable, fucked-up answer.

I pulled up Bee’s phone and jabbed in my number.
Please let me be wrong about this.

“Hello?”

“Renee,” I snarled into the receiver, reeling in shock in spite of knowing the truth in my gut before she answered.

Her voice sounded sugary. Too sweet to belong to someone who could have hurt Bee. But I’d also thought she’d never hurt me, and she had. She had a vicious, vindictive side that clearly went deeper than I’d ever imagined.

A pause. “Oh, Cal! I knew you’d come around.”

“Where’s Bee?”

She sighed loudly over the phone, and just as she did, the loudspeaker crackled and they began to announce the names of the players. I heard the feedback over the phone, louder than in my other ear.

Renee was here. In the stadium.

“Who?” she asked innocently.

Heart thumping, I jumped back from the fence and scanned the crowd for her blonde hair. I saw her higher in the bleachers, underneath the loudspeaker, surrounded by a clan of her sisters.

Ending the call, I tackled the bleachers two at a time, swerving around fans to try to get to her. She smiled as I pushed through her sisters and stopped in front of her.

“Oh, hi, Cal!” she said brightly.

“Where. Is. Bee?” I barked at her, snatching my phone from her hand.

Her eyes went shiny with tears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t lie to me, Renee. You can tell me or you can tell the cops. Where the fuck is she?” It took all my strength not to grab her and shake the answer out of her.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she whispered, leaning into me. “It’s not important. We can be together now.”

It doesn’t matter?

Holy shit. What had she done? I refused to imagine the possibilities. I was the reason Renee even knew who Bee was.

Whatever happened, this was my fault.

She reached for my hand, but the rage bubbled over. I grabbed her by the throat and pinned her back just as the loudspeaker blared my name.
Cal Samskevitch, starting wide receiver!
Renee’s eyes widened to the size of golf balls. Several of her sisters gasped around me and started to swat at my back.

“Tell. Me,” I ordered, undeterred.

She gasped out, “Bedford Commons.”

I loosened my grip and stepped back. Bedford Commons was a dining hall. What the hell would she be doing there? A firestorm of emotions warred within me as I stared her down. “Wait. What?”

“The walk-in. She was just confusing things, Cal. I got her out of the way for just a while so you would see that we need to be together.”

The walk-in. She’d fucking put Bee in a
cooler?
How long had she been there? All the emotions—the guilt, the confusion, the anger—all fell away, leaving just an overwhelming sense of urgency. I needed to get there, fast.

I turned to race away when she called after me, “Don’t go, Cal. I need you!”

I was so focused on getting to Bee and making sure she was all right that I didn’t see the campus security officers heading up the bleachers. Two of them grabbed me when I reached the aisle. My heart flew into my throat.

“What’s going on here?” one asked as I fought against him. “Someone reported you rough-housing. Did you strike that woman?”

“No. I had to…no. I didn’t hit her, but I’ve got to go. It’s an emergency.” I managed to shake myself free, but their hands snaked around me again. I fisted my hands, getting ready to come to blows when I realized they were reaching for their weapons. “Let me the fuck go,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “That woman locked my girlfriend in a cooler and I’ve got to get to her now before it’s too late.”

If it wasn’t already.

Flora appeared beside me, face white with panic. She had only caught the tail end, but she clearly believed me as she wriggled between me and the officers. “He’s telling the truth. She didn’t come home last night. Let him go!” She turned to me and shoved me hard. “Go, go!”

I remember what happened after that in flashes. Me tearing away from security, racing down the bleachers, leaving a whole slew of stunned faces in my wake. Coach Beal calling after me, wondering what the fuck was going on. Me, hopping the fence, rushing for the exit, testing that knee to the limits of its ability.

I’d taken to not eating at Bedford Commons in the last year, partly because it was so out of the way from all my classes, but mostly because I knew Renee worked there. It was a mile away from the stadium, clear across campus, and tucked behind the Arts Building, but I’d never run faster in all my life.

I repeated her name with every single footfall on the pavement:
Bee, Bee, Bee.

I got there at about the same time the campus security car did. The guard fumbled with the key at the entrance as I watched the precious seconds tick away, hoping like I’d never hoped before that Bee was still okay.

When the guard found the right key and clicked open the lock, I pushed him aside, threw open the door, and raced through the darkened cafeteria to the kitchen. I yanked on the latch to the walk-in and pulled on the door.

I saw her instantly, slumped face down on her knees as if praying, on the floor of the cooler. Her skin was an unnatural bluish color. Her hair was splayed out around her head, and sticky with blood. Her wrists and ankles had been bound with rope.

At that moment, everything in my world came crashing down.

I strode in and dropped to the ground. Then I gathered Bee in my arms and pulled her into the warmth of the kitchen, saying her name over and over again. Her face looked peaceful, but I knew from the blood crusted on her face and cheeks and the abrasions on her wrists that nothing about her ordeal had been easy. All I could think about was how scared she must’ve been, alone in the cold, for hours.

“Please, god,” I whispered.

Somewhere far away, sirens screeched through the air. I put two of my fingers at the side of her neck, searching her ice-cold skin for some sign of life.

“Come on, Bee,” I murmured. “Please be all right.”

Prayers answered. I felt it, very weak, almost nothing at all. A small, slow, but steady thud.

“Good girl.” I kissed her forehead. I pulled off my jersey and wrapped the inadequate material around her, then ran my hands over the unearthly pale skin of her legs to try to warm them. It didn’t feel like Bee anymore. Not like the Bee I knew, warm and inviting and so fucking sweet. But she had to be in there, somewhere.

She had to be all right.

Or I’d never forgive myself.