chair between her and the others. It’s how she wraps her arms around her body and keeps her hair loose, using it to shield her face.
It’s in the way that, when she sits in front of me in Dr. Ross’s class, she tries to make herself disappear. That wall I broke down is firmly back in place, but this time even more fragile than before. I thought when I punched her that night, when I heard her scream, it was the worst thing I’d ever seen or heard.
I was wrong.
This? The silence?
It’s so much fucking worse.
I want her to fight back. Kick me in the balls. Shove that knife in my heart and end me.
“Fuck,” Michael Watts says, looking at his phone. “Coach added an extra scrimmage tonight.”
Peter Norton groans. “My arms are still sore from yesterday.”
The guys start bitching, but the screech of a chair dragging on the cafeteria floor, and then a figure dropping into the empty seat next to Sugar, draws my attention to the Devils' lunch table. Carlton eases himself in the chair and gives Sugar a small grin.
My first response is what the fuck? My second is to sit back and watch Sugar pull out her blade and castrate him in front of the room. He leans into her and says something way too low to hear. I wait for her to tell him to fuck off.
She doesn’t.
She ducks her head for a moment but then grins at him. She fucking grins. And then she nods her head in approval of whatever it is that asshat is saying. Since when does Carlton say anything worth smiling over?
For the first time in days, something penetrates this shell of gnarled numbness I’ve become, and I barely even think about what I’m doing. I push back my chair, plotting the ways I’m going to make him pay for even looking at my—
“Bass.” A body steps in my path. I peer around them. “Bass!”
I blink and see that it’s Emory standing in front of me. “What?”
“Hey,” he says, giving me a weird look. “We need to talk.”
Impatiently, I try once again to peer past him. “About what?”
“Tonight,” is all he says. “Seven. You know where.”
He gives me a meaningful look, one that suggests he’s aware I was just about to beat down a fellow Devil. He’s never approached me directly like that. Most Devil communication goes through the standard process. The fact that there’s no envelope, and he’s telling me about it plain as day in front of my teammates, means this is not a formal meeting.
Just fucking great.
“I’ve got practice.”
“I don’t care,” he says, turning to walk off. “Be there.”
I watch him go, and then glance back over at the table, catching Sugar looking at me. We hold one another’s gaze for a long beat. My heart pounds in my ears and I wait for her to do something, to show some kind of reaction, but she doesn’t.
She just turns away.
“Is that how you want to do this?” I ask, tearing off my gloves. “Is that really how you want this to go down?” My helmet is next. I throw it across the field. Peter Norton looks around at our teammates, hoping they’ll do something. They won’t, because they’re all a bunch of pussies. I step toward him and shove his chest with both hands. “Are you really going to foul me like that?”
I know I’m overreacting, but it’s like I can’t control it. I need to get out this anger before I blow completely. This isn’t even the first altercation this practice. It’s the third. But lacrosse, being out here on the field, just isn’t hitting the same way it used to. No matter how hard I run or how many of these motherfuckers I tackle, the wild, burning thing in my chest just isn’t going away.
It doesn’t make any sense. This was supposed to be it. I was supposed to come out here and get lost in the game and leave the field feeling… well, if not better, then at least not fucking worse.
“Hey!” Gus Meyers shouts, grabbing me by the shoulder. “Chill the fuck out, Wilcox.”
I look down at his hand and then slowly raise my gaze to his ugly face. Fear flickers in his eyes at the grin I give him, full of teeth, and he drops his hand, taking a step back. Touching me was a stupid fucking move on his part and he knows it.
“Wilcox!” my name echoes across the field through