All Lined Up

Chapter 23 Carson

I taste blood from a busted lip. Nausea rolls in my stomach. Every part of me aches . . . inside and out.

Because we lost.

I know we all went into this expecting it, but . . . I still hoped. And now all that hope sits rock hard in my stomach, rotting and gnawing at me, asking, What if?

What if Levi had been here? Would we still have lost?

I sit at my cubby, a towel over my head, while sweat drips down from my forehead and stings my eyes. I hear a pair of pads crash into the wall, and guess that it’s Silas, but I don’t know for sure.

“Listen up.” It’s Coach’s voice, and even though I want to stay huddled beneath my towel so I don’t have to see my teammates’ faces, I know I can’t. I push the towel back around my neck, but stay leaning on my knees. Coach is silent for too long, and when I glance up, I realize he’s been waiting for my eyes. I sit up a little straighter.

“I’ve been here before,” he says. “Which is how I know that none of you are in the mood to listen, but you need to. So put aside what you’re feeling for just a few minutes, and hear me out. No one was expecting you to win this game.” I wince. We’d all been thinking it, but it was worse hearing it out loud. “No one was expecting you to come out and rush two hundred yards and pass two hundred and fifty, which for those of you paying attention is the most this team has had in any one game in over two years. It also happens to be more yards than your competitor put up tonight. That scoreboard might have had us losing by three tonight, but one look at the stats proves that you fought harder, played stronger, worked better than you ever have before. No one was expecting you to give that team a fight, but I promise you that people will sit up and pay attention now.”

He pauses and moves toward the wall where he lays a hand against the painted wildcat, beside which it reads, “Bleed Rusk Red.”

“You know, a few weeks ago, I stayed at the office late. And when I went to leave, I didn’t expect to see a player sitting in the film room, still hard at work hours after practice had let out. I asked why he hadn’t gone home for the night, and do you remember what you said, Carson?”

I know what night he’s talking about—the night he fought with Dallas—but all I can remember is thinking about her, wanting to go to her.

“You told me that there are no easy days. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Today was not an easy day. This week was not an easy week. But every single one of you fought through it. I’ve coached and played against every kind of team, and I’m telling you now, this team will be the kind that takes no easy days. This team will be the kind that fights every last second for every last yard until we see that win on the board. And for days like today, when we lose, I promise it will be the hardest damn win that other team has ever had. That’s the kind of team we will be. It’s the kind of team we are as of tonight. And I tell you, I’m damn proud to be your coach.”

No one is slumping or frowning anymore. Everyone looks deadly serious, like we’d go out and play another game right now if we could.

“No easy days?” Coach says.

And together we repeat, “No easy days.”

He tells us to hit the showers, and before we do, I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s Silas, and he nods at me once before walking away. Torres does the same, followed by Brookes. I lose track, but it must be at least twenty players who throw me a nod before they strip and head to the showers.

As I stand to do the same, I see Coach is still standing at the edge of the room. His eyes meet mine, and I get one final nod before he turns and disappears in the direction of his office.

DALLAS IS WAITING at my apartment like she promised when I pull up later that night. She slips off the hood of her car, where she was lying staring up at the sky, and comes over to me.

She kisses me. Firm and sweet, and I notice she’s wearing a Rusk Wildcats shirt. I grin.

“Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Yeah, well, only for you. I might have something else you’ve been wanting to see, too.”

That definitely piques my interest, and I raise my brows.

She laughs, and the sound is so light and perfect that I could listen to it all day long. “Not that. Well, at least not right now anyway.”

Dear God.

She takes my hand, and leads me over to a basketball court that sits between my apartment building and the one next to it.

“Tonight, I got to see you play. So I figure it’s only fair you get to see me dance.”

She’s uncharacteristically shy, and I’m beginning to realize just how much I like every version of her—from daredevil to demure.

“That sounds . . . perfect.”

“Now, there’s still a part or two that I’m not as solid on as I’d like to be, but I think you’ll get the idea.” She hands me her phone with a song pulled up. “Press play when I tell you?”

I nod.

She has on these weird black sneakers with no sole in the arch that I guess are some kind of dance shoe. She pulls off the red Rusk T-shirt, leaving her in a tight gray tank top and black stretchy pants. She walks to the center of the court and takes a deep breath. She nods her head at me, and I press play.

The music starts soft, and with her hand stretched straight up, she spins a few times, her movements smooth and graceful. She lands, feet apart, her head tipped back, and she is stunning. Then the music changes, picks up, and her body lurches backward like she’s taken a punch to the stomach. She reaches out, running forward, and she leaps into the air. Somehow, she manages to look like she’s straining to fly while some imaginary thing holds her back.

She lands, crumpling, and the emotion in her face and body is so strong, so raw that I have to resist the urge to go to her. But then she lifts herself up. The entire dance oscillates that way between soft and hard. Her body spins and moves beautifully, and then it turns to hard angles, bent limbs, desperate jumps. At one point she throws herself down on the ground, rolls a few times until she lands on her back, and then she arches up, supported by her shoulders and her toes, and I swear it looks like she’s just had her soul ripped out. The music seems to bleed out of her, matching perfectly with her movements. On and on the song goes, and she beats herself down and down. But as the song comes to a close, she gets up one final time. Her legs shake, then straighten, and she lifts her head up to the sky, and even just standing there, her body tells a story.

The song ends, and I stand staring at her, absolutely dumbfounded.

“Well?”

I blink, light-headed, and I don’t know if I remembered to breathe at all the entire time she was dancing.

“You are incredible.”

She smiles and dips her head, and I know she’s doing that thing she does where she’s trying to look smaller, look less, so that people will pass on. But there’s no fucking way I’m letting this go.

“I’m serious, Dallas. That was . . . You did that? You came up with it all?”

She nods. “The night that Dad and I had a fight, and I found out you were on the football team.”

Now it’s my turn to feel like something’s been ripped out of me. There was so much pain in that piece. I hate that I had any hand in it.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“What?” She crosses to me. “What could you possibly have to be sorry about?”

“I made you feel that . . . that ache.”

She smiles. “Only because I was stubborn enough to think I couldn’t have you.”

“You have me. Completely.”

She lifts up on her toes and kisses me, and she’s the sweetest damn thing I’ve ever tasted.

She says, “You were so good tonight.” I exhale, dropping my shoulders. “Stop that. You were. It’s all anyone is talking about. You did everything you were supposed to do. Our defense just wasn’t as strong as theirs.”

She shivers, and I grab her Rusk T-shirt off the ground. “Let’s get you inside.”

I hand her T-shirt back to her, but she doesn’t put it on. So I wrap my arm around her shoulder to keep her warm until we get to my place.

I lay my keys on the table just inside the door, and we both slip off our shoes. I stretch my neck back and forth, knowing I’m going to be sore tomorrow. I take a step toward the couch, but she grabs my hand.

“You’re tired.”

I nod. And step toward the couch again for just that reason, but she pulls me straight ahead instead, back toward the bedroom. My heart rolls over in my chest, and my blood pumps a little faster, and I am suddenly not as tired as I thought.

She’s stayed the night twice since this started, but both times we fell asleep on the couch after a movie. We never talked about whether or not she was going to stay, it just happened.

The door to my bedroom is open just a crack and she pushes it a little farther with two fingers. It’s dark, but she makes no move to turn on the light. The light from the hallway is enough to cast a glow on the bed, and she steps up beside it.

“I’m not ready to have sex,” she says quickly. “I mean . . . I want to, but I also don’t, so for now, can we just sleep together in the normal sense?”

I work to keep my expression clear of any disappointment. I want her to be ready, but I also can’t deny that seeing her beside my bed makes my whole body buzz with want.

“Of course. I’ll take you in my bed however I can have you.”

I can see the blush burn across her cheeks even in the dim light. She places a hand on my shoulder and says, “Sit down.”

I do as she asks, and she steps between my open knees. She fingers the sleeve of my T-shirt and adds, “Take this off?”

I reach back and grab the fabric behind my neck, pulling it over my head. I feel the light touch of her fingers helping to pull it off the rest of the way. Instead of letting my hands drop, I rest them on her hips and pull her a little closer.

Her fingers are warm on my bare shoulders, and she sighs at the contact. She moves both hands to my right shoulder, and starts working the tight muscles. I groan and drop my head down, resting my forehead against her stomach. She kneads at my shoulder, skating down to my biceps on occasion, her fingers strong and sure. I close my eyes, and try to keep from getting too worked up. I try for about a minute before I give up and let my hands slide down from her hips to her thighs. Her breathing picks up as I run my palms up and down, curling my fingers around the backs of her legs.

I don’t push any further than that, though, letting her stay in control. And she’s completely in control when she pushes me back on my unmade bed and straddles my hips. She runs her hands up my abdomen, first soft and then harder, pushing on my muscles there like she did at my shoulder. I let her explore my chest while every ounce of blood in my body heads south. She leans down and presses a kiss on my sternum. She hovers there, her hot breath making all my muscles tense. She drags her mouth from the center of my chest to where my heart beats wildly beneath my skin. Her tongue peeks out tentatively as she does, and I fist my hands in my sheets to keep from grabbing her and flipping us over.

She looks up at me, her pupils deep and black. “Not sex. But maybe we could . . . Maybe we could do other things?”

I growl and roll her beneath me, pressing my hips down into hers. She moans, and with her stretchy pants and my gym shorts, I can feel the heat of her through the thin material.

“Other things sound pretty damn perfect.”