Sworn Enemies - Rebel Hart Page 0,42

could all use the added work on our stamina. We’ve been just scraping by in our games lately. I don’t want to play on a middling team. I don’t want to straddle the fence.” I crossed my arms. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”

No one wanted to answer that question. I knew I was probably asking something unreasonable of my team, but if Quinn could do it, and I could do it—albeit slower—I wanted a team that could do it. “That’s what I thought. Line up.”

More than one swear word was thrown my way, and even Tyler was looking at me like he was going to intervene when all of their attention diverted to something else.

“That’s the Widow’s captain, right?” someone whispered.

“Fuck, she’s hot. A chick that hot, and she’s into football. That’s a win-win,” someone else replied.

I looked over, and Quinn was standing in the opening to the pathway back toward the locker rooms. Ordinarily, people couldn’t just walk inside, but the security at the stadium was lazy. Not only was it a semi-pro stadium, but it was a semi-pro stadium in Montpelier, Idaho. The risk of a crazed fan wandering in was low.

“I’m gonna ask her out,” Patrick said finally, and for some reason, a fiery rage burned up inside of me. I glared over at him, and he stopped in his tracks. We stared each other down, and finally, he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t realize you’d already staked a claim.”

The concept gave me a chill, but I ignored it in favor of blowing on the whistle around my neck. The entire team grumbled and started to shittily jog the suicides. Patrick was the last off the line, so I blew my whistle again, and he charged off. Once everyone was off running drills, I started over toward Quinn. She was wearing a gray, zip-up hoodie, the zipper of which was struggling to stay where Quinn had left it half-zipped down due to the size of her chest. Under her hoodie was a black t-shirt with her jersey number on it, and she was also wearing a pair of hip-hugging jeans and athletic sneakers. Her brown hair was hanging down in waves over her head, and her eyes were shimmering in the sunlight. There was a muted throb in my chest as I got closer that I wanted to rip out and throw away. We’d done little else besides argue and scrap. Why was my body suddenly reacting to seeing her?

I stopped about ten feet away and crossed my arms. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to apologize to you,” she replied. “I didn’t know about all that shit you went through your senior year. That sucks.”

The brief warmth I felt shoved aside so that anger could step through. “You came here to pity me?”

Quinn recoiled. “What? No.”

“I know that you don’t know much about me, so take this as a free lesson. I don’t accept pity. It’s my least favorite thing. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve ever had, and I’ll continue working hard. I had to battle against four older brothers coming up, and I refused to be babied or looked down upon. So, if you came here to just make me feel shittier about that stuff, you can get out and not come back.”

“Hey,” Quinn snapped. “Don’t scream at me because of the shit you’ve been through. I didn’t do it.”

I opened my mouth to respond and then stopped. No one had ever given it to me like that before.

“I didn’t come here to pity you, I know what that feels like. No one ever took me seriously coming up because I was a girl who wanted to play football. If anything, I’ll treat you harsher now because I know what you’re fighting for. No special treatment.” She rolled her eyes. “I suppose it shouldn’t shock me that this is how you’d react. You’re an ass after all.”

I imagined Daniel nicely trying to tell me that people’s entire worlds don’t revolve around me, and suddenly, it all locked into place. I immediately assumed that Quinn’s whole thought process was based on me, but it was much more about comparing her own experiences.

“Your team needs work, but you’re good, Zeke. I guess I just thought you’d like to hear that from someone who knows what it feels like to be looked down upon. Bye.”

She turned around, and an unexpected jolt of panic cracked through me. “Wait.”

Quinn turned to face me, and I suddenly found