but more than that, I wanted her love.
But I wasn’t good at showing emotion or saying what I felt. I was good at grunts and throws and snark. That was it.
“Tell me why you’re here,” I demanded.
She was breathing heavily, fighting the desire I knew she had for me. It was shooting sparks at me from her honeyed eyes.
“My dad needs you,” she forced herself to say. She didn’t want to, you could tell. It was so not in her to cave, to succumb. She hated it. She didn’t want to have to ask for anything. She wanted to demand it and have it given to her.
“Your dad,” I said, trying with every fiber in my body not to touch her. My hands were on either side of her head, my wide stance surrounding her body, and that was as close as I could get while we talked.
“There’s a good chance the board will let him go if he loses you,” she said, and I heard the wobble in her voice. The emotion. The sadness for her dad.
It took me more seconds than it should have to process all her words and what they meant. Doubt, first, because Coach Crandall was known for his dogged approach and eeking out the best from players who shouldn’t have any talent. Then, anger came next, because it meant she’d told him I was declaring.
“You told him?” It was the anger that curled from my lips instead of the love I’d wanted to state just minutes before.
She looked down in guilt. Then her eyes met mine, defiant again. “He was taunting me about you. About us.”
“No way he knew about us,” I all but snarled.
“He did. I guess your pals Kelly and Murray told him.”
“Hell no, they didn’t.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“Maleena, I can guarantee whatever they told him, it was still all guesswork until you confirmed it for him.”
She had the graciousness to blush, because she realized it was probably true. Her dad had tricked her into confirming something he might have suspected.
“So, you just threw back at him that I was leaving as a way of, what…getting even for him knowing about us?”
My anger was burning out, being replaced with sadness. It had to have hurt him. Disappointed him. He’d been the best coach I’d ever had. Matching my talent with his drive for perfection.
I stepped back. Conflicted. The range of emotions that had run through me in the course of a couple of minutes were more than I was equipped to handle.
“He wanted me to come talk to you. To ask you to stay one more year,” she said.
My eyes flew to her face, shock filling me. “He wanted you to have sex with me so I’d stay?”
For three years, we’d kept our relationship a secret because she’d insisted if he knew, he’d pretty much kill me on the field. Now, she was saying he’d basically sent her here to win me back. I shook my head. No. No fucking way. He wouldn’t pimp out his daughter. That wasn’t Coach.
“No. God. He’s not an asshole like—” She stopped herself before she could complete the sentence. Not an asshole like me.
My heart twisted and turned in my chest. Gripped so tight it felt like it was turned to ash. I backed away farther. Her words icier than any cold shower I could have taken. Her words burning like frostbite at all my extremities and slowly tearing their way into my chest until nothing was left but a frozen muscle.
Maleena
MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY
“Well I, I wanna kiss you baby
While we're standin' underneath the mistletoe.”
Performed by Christina Aguilera w/ Dr. John
Written by Moore / Baxter
Ty backed away from me with a look on his face that was equal parts disgust and hurt. I’d hurt him. In a way I didn’t think Ty was capable of being hurt. And yet, I should have known. He’d told me once, when we’d been tucked up in his bed after a night of passion, after a day of no clothes and Froot Loops because it was all he’d had in his apartment. He’d told me his biggest fear about being a successful football player was someone using him for his fame and fortune. That someone would have sex with him just to achieve something. Their own fame. Maybe someone crying rape. Or somehow forcing a paternity test for a baby he hadn’t fathered. Ruining his career with charges he’d never shake even if they were false.
At the time, I’d