Page 154 of Out of Bounds

"How? Are you going to be late to practice again?"

Adam rolled his eyes, and I knew he wanted to say some shit to me, but King still laughed, dodging away from Adam when he tried to hit him in the gut. This was exactly what it was like before I got the captain badge. All three of us taunting each other, riling each other up like no other teammates could. And when the photographers gestured for us to get closer, I had no problem with it.

"You haven’t told Kassie everything," Adam warned me.

"Nothing could get me now." I held out my hands and caught a football when Miles chucked it to me. It was just a prop for the cameras, it weighed about half as much as a real one. "Do your worst, Adam. I’d like to see it."

King’s laughter stopped and he gave me a long look of disbelief.

"What? I’ve told her plenty of the weird shit I do," I argued. "She’s rolled with it every time."

"That’s a lot of confidence, dude." Adam snickered. "You’ve done some weird shit over this girl."

"Does she know about the off-limits tag?" King said slowly, with a pointed look my way.

Adam stopped him, grabbing King by the collar of his shirt. “Hold the hell up. We can’t tell her about that. Don’t be stupid, King, use your head. When we go to bars, how do we get drinks?”

“Kassie cuts right through the crowd,” King acknowledged.

“Exactly. Everyone dives out of the way. I’m not giving that up. I’m not going back to waiting an hour for a warm beer. If Kassie finds out, there goes the good service.”

The photographers zeroed in again and the three of us were quiet while they snapped a few more shots. The moment they walked away though, King snapped his fingers.

"The locker."

I glanced back. "The locker?"

Adam grinned. "Holy shit. King, you fucking genius. The locker."

They had me. It was another one of the items on an endless list of weird shit I’d done about Kassie and it wasn’t like I didn’t see the lockerevery daybut it’d completely slipped my mind on something that Kassie didn’t need to find out about. My eyes flashed between Adam and King and both of them looked back at each other, eyebrows raised.

"Do we need the big Marrs banner?" Cleo asked, walking around the field. "The one that stretches out?"

No one answered her but Adam chose the time to strike. "You know, Kassie’s a big artist, Ryan!" He raised his voice. "You should see if she wants to help you out with the collage in your locker!"

Fuck.

One look towards the football girlfriends and any thought I had that Kassie missed the comment, vanished. My girlfriend perked up, curious.Shit. When the photographers pushed Adam and I together, I smacked him on the back of the head, open-palmed.

"Ow—shit—"

King thought he could laugh too. The photographer had us pose again and I passed over the football to King in the best way I could—hitting him in the stomach with it. He wheezed.

"It’s your own fault, cocky asshole," Adam snickered, shoving me to the side.

King gaped. "That was too low. You almost got my nuts."

"Whatabouthis locker?"

All three of us stumbled back to position and somehow, Kassie had crossed over to us without me even realizing it. She crossed her arms over her chest, waiting. I didn’t have any time to come up with a good coverup.

“Uh…it’s uh…” I tried to think of something. Anything. “See…”

No reasonable answer came to mind. I shot a look at King and Adam but they found it a convenient time to look away, Adam grinning like an idiot, and King whistling for some goddamn reason, as if that didn’t make me lookmoreguilty.

"Nothing about my locker," I told her.

"Uh-huh. Okay. So what’s up with the locker?"

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