Offside (21 page)

“Since when do you kick ass for a chick?” he asked as he slammed another ball toward the goal.

I jumped and tapped the ball with my fingers, sending it far left of target, but landed on my left side in the process. I winced and pulled myself up to my hands and knees.

“Sorry, dude,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I said as I tried to control my breathing. “It’s really not bad…just when I hit it in a certain spot, you know?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. “No one’s ever broken my ribs.”

“Rib,” I corrected him. “Only one.”

“Whatever.” He looked at me for a minute as he dusted off the ball and tossed it back to the ground. I positioned myself just right of the center of the goal and crouched—watching the tension in his legs and hips…calculating which way he would move…which way he would kick.

“Okay, boys—let’s scrimmage!” Coach Wagner’s voice called out from the sidelines. Everyone started lining up in the center, and I looked over to the stands to see Nicole walking up and standing near the fence by the bleachers.

“It was an interesting little display this morning,” Jeremy said quietly as we approached the rest of the team. “Want to explain that one?”

“Clint’s an ass who needed to be smacked down,” I replied with a shrug.

“Over a girl?

“Fuck you.”

Jeremy just chuckled in response.

We lined up, and I ended up on the skins team. I jogged over to the fence, toward Nicole, and pulled my practice jersey over my head.

“Why don’t you hold on to this for me,” I said with a wink as I tossed my shirt in her direction. Nicole rolled her eyes.

“It smells godawful,” she remarked.

I smirked as I stretched my arms behind my back and then leaned to each side in turn.

“Your rib okay?” she asked suddenly as her eyes moved to my taped-up side.

“It’s all right,” I answered. I raised an eyebrow. “You worried about me?”

“You wish,” she snarked right back at me, but her tone was teasing.

I glanced at the other girls lined up on the bleachers, looking over me and the other guys on the team. They huddled together, whispering and giggling.

“You could join the other groupies,” I said to Nicole as I nodded my head toward the crowd.

“That’s okay,” she said. “The high school soap opera news of the day was not completely in my favor, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your overzealous behavior may have kept the guys at bay,” she said, “but the girls are a whole other story. Or are you planning on beating them up, too?”

“Do any of them need it?”

“For goodness’ sake, Thomas…”

“Just kidding,” I said with a smile and a half-grin.

“They all want you,” she said quietly, “and by default, none of them want anything to do with me now.”

“I told you I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you,” I reminded her. “I meant that. If any of them bother you, you let me know. It won’t happen again.”

Nicole looked into my eyes for a moment and seemed as though she was going to say something before the coach’s voice interrupted us.

“Malone! Would you mind getting into position?”

I ignored the coach and leaned against the fence a little harder.

“We’ll be done in about a half hour,” I said. “We can talk about it then, okay?”

“I guess,” she said. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to the group of girls, who were now watching us intently.

She turned toward me again with a defeated look on her face. I reached out and touched her cheek with the back of my knuckles—just skimming her skin quickly from her cheekbone to her chin and leaving a tiny, muddy mark on her face.

“Soon,” I said softly, and then I turned and jogged back to the goal.

Shakespeare might have wondered, “For why should others' false adulterate eyes give salutation to my sportive blood?” Somehow, she had to eventually understand that what I did was for her and her alone, and that I didn’t care what anyone else said about it.

Now, how do I convince Rumple of that?

CHAPTER 11

RELEGATED

The scrimmage had to be cut short because of a fight.

Not on the field—in the stands.

I had the ball in my hands and was just about to kick it downfield when I heard the yelling. I glanced up and saw Rumple and some of the other girls up on the bleachers, screaming at each other. I threw the ball out of bounds, ran up, and jumped over the fence, ignoring the coach’s words to get back on the field. I had to scale two rows of bleachers before I could reach Rumple.

She had gone all “lioness” on Crystal Lloyd.

Meow.

“Maybe he just prefers someone who isn’t quite so skanky!” Nicole was yelling as I got there. She had her fingers curled into claws, and her jaw was clenched. I was pretty sure there was a little sparkle of a tear in the corner of her eye, too. I didn’t know what to think of that.

“One reason and one reason only,” Crystal was saying as her head bobbed around on her neck. She jutted her chin out at Nicole and put her hands on her hips. “Is it still sore, or were you already used to it?”

“You little bitch!” Nicole suddenly screeched, and she started scrambling over the bench to get to where Crystal was sitting with Lisa and Heather.

Thankfully, I got to her first and wrapped my arm around her middle, effectively capturing her and pulling her back against my chest.

“Let me go!” she screamed. Claws out, she grabbed at my arm around her waist. I wound my other arm across her arms and chest, holding her tighter and keeping her from being able to use her arms effectively. I took a step backwards and over one of the benches, pulling her with me. “Dammit, Thomas! Let go of me right now!”

“Not just yet, kitten,” I told her.

“Is that about the right position?” Crystal yelled.

“Fucking bitch!” Nicole screamed back. “Jealous little skank!”

“Whoa there,” I said as I tried to calm her down a bit. I wasn’t the least bit successful, and she continued to struggle against me. I had to get her away from the other girls before she actually hurt me.

“Oh, she definitely let him,” I heard Crystal saying to the other girls.

“It does explain a bit, huh?” Lisa said with a giggle.

“Innocent little act of hers didn’t last long, did it?” Heather nodded in agreement.

Wasn’t she bitching at me yesterday for talking smack about Nicole?

“Klosav!” I yelled out. Mika jogged over and reached us just as I got Nicole out of the stands and back down on solid ground. She kept struggling and trying to punch my arm, but I held tight. “Go shut your girl up. Get Jeremy and Clint, too.”

“No problem.”

He’d been hanging all over Heather since she asked him to the dance, so I figured he could do a little something to help out. The rest of the team was just standing around watching and trying to figure out what they were supposed to do next. Coach Wagner was trying to get them to pull it together, but everyone was focused on what was going on in the stands.

“Dump her ass if she won’t play nice!” I called back up to Mika as I kept pulling my kicking, screaming kitten backwards away from the field. I didn’t wait for his answer because it was right about then that Nicole managed to land a kick to my shin, which nearly took me down.

That shit
hurt
!

“Holy shit, Nicole!”

“I told you to let me go!” she yelled with another snarl.

“We’ll figure that out later,” I told her. I placed her feet on the ground just long enough to get a better grip on her, spun her around, and tossed her over my shoulder. It made it a lot easier to hold her legs, which really were pretty damn strong.

I carried her across the field, into the parking lot, and to my car despite all her protests. Dropping her ass down into the passenger seat, I blocked her way so she couldn’t get back out. Eventually, she stopped screaming at me and started to calm down.

“You want to tell me what that was all about?”

“Just what I said before!” Nicole snapped.

“What did she say to you?”

“It doesn’t matter!” She pulled her legs up to her chest and covered her face with her arms. Her shoulders rose and fell as she took deep breaths. I was pretty sure she was trying to stop herself from crying.

“Obviously it does,” I replied. I crouched in front of her and touched the edge of her knee with my finger. She pushed my hand away.

“Take me home!” she finally yelled.

“I will,” I said, “but my keys are in my soccer bag, which is back at the field, so you’re going to have to wait a minute. Will you stay right here for two minutes while I go get my shit?”

Rumple huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, lioness turning back into a kitten. She still had her claws out, but at least she wasn’t screaming for blood anymore.

Meow.

I took my own deep breath. Her display was kind of turning me on, and I was pretty sure that was a bad idea right at that moment. I stood and placed my hands on the roof, leaning in close to her. She looked up at me, and I could see the tears in her eyes.

“I’ll take care of it,” I promised. “Let me take care of it, okay?”

“I’m not coming back to your practices.” She was adamant.

“I’m going to fix that, too,” I said. “I should have thought of it before, but that will be fixed before tomorrow. You’ll have someone else to sit with who won’t give you shit, and those bitches aren’t going to bother you again.”

“Are you going to play another round of locker stuffing?”

“No, I have other ideas, though.”

“Like what?”

“I’ll tell you on the way home,” I told her, “as long as you tell me what Crystal said to get you so fired up.”

Nicole promised to stay in the car while I went back to the field to grab my soccer bag and my practice jersey from the ground. I looked up in the stands and was glad to see exactly whom I wanted to talk to at the moment. But first, a quick call.

“Hey, Malone.”

“Everything you can find on Harry Lloyd in the next five minutes. Call me back.”

“Will do.”

I hung up and stared at my phone for a minute as I collected myself. I tapped the app store, found a set of ringtones that sounded like meowing kittens, and set my phone to use them. I tested it out, snickered to myself, and then took a few leaping steps up into the bleachers.

The scrimmage was obviously over, and everyone was either milling around the field with Gatorade bottles in their hands or had moved off to the bleachers. Mika and Jeremy had Heather and Lisa off to one side, and Crystal was standing near them with her hands on her hips. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I wasn’t looking for them right now anyway.

“Hey, Ben!”

He looked over at me with his eyes narrowed a little. Ben was a midfielder, and though there was nothing flashy about him, he was a decent player. He was a quiet guy with a quiet, shy girlfriend. She was in the bleachers with him, silently reading a book while he rehydrated.

“Hey, Thomas,” he said with his usual, soft tone.

“I need a favor.”

Just like Shakespeare wrote in
The Merchant of Venice
, I was going to have all of this fixed “in the twinkling of an eye.” I’d promised Rumple everything was going to work out, and I intended to keep that promise. I just needed a little assistance from my teammates. I hoped this would get Nicole to trust me—this
was
my school, after all, and I was in charge. I only needed to secure some backup.

“Ben, you and Maria are about to get some steady company.”

My phone rang on my way back to the parking lot, making little kitten sounds that were realistic enough people were looking at my soccer bag like it had a litter in it. I snickered again, dropped my soccer bag to the ground, and fished the phone out.

“What do you have on Lloyd?”

“A couple things. One, he’s trying to get a school loan.”