Page 35 of Chasing Football Dreams

Chapter Seventeen

Ientered the house surrounded in darkness, dropping my bags at the front door when I found the outlines of Duncan’s form seated at the bottom of the stairs. Shoulders hunched over with his hands interlaced behind the base of his neck. It was wrong of me to have said those cruel words to him.

I moved cautiously over to him, not sure if he wanted to be near me.

It was selfish of me to run away like that and not let him know where I was. I felt like a childish and spoiled brat for how I reacted to Monique’s remarks. She was jealous that I was loved by the man she let slip through her fingers. Nothing about this was Duncan’s fault. He couldn’t control Monique’s feelings or tell her to bully me.

After my feelings and emotions finally agreed again, I sent him a text telling him that I was fine and that I would sleep at the dorm but he asked me to rather meet him at his house. Coach Shane had no issue dropping me off since he didn’t want me to walk after he was also included in the suspicion that someone was after me.

“Duncan,” My voice came out hoarser than planned.

His head raised, his eyebrows pinching together as if he thought he had misheard but the moment his honeycomb eyes locked with my pale blue eyes, he instantly shot to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, feeling like I didn't deserve him.

His arms snaked around my shoulders as they embraced me against his chest and held me tightly against him. “I shouldn’t have run,” I mumbled, nestling my head against his shoulder.

He shook his head. “No, baby. I should have been honest with her from the start, instead of avoiding her,”

“That’s just it,” I pulled out his arms, my hands resting on his chest. “It’s the past. It shouldn’t bother me. It’s not like I stole you from her or had you cheating on her,”

“My actions say otherwise, love,” He traced my chin with his thumb. “I could never give her a chance because you were tugging at my heart every moment, we were near each other and sorry to tell you this, but I am the bastard in this story,”

He caught my eyes and I saw the remorse in his gaze. “I should have clamped down on the thrill of lust and should have tried harder to approach you. Monique is doing all of this because I was the coward,”

“You couldn’t have known she would become this obsessed,”

He shrugged. “I don’t want you to take my guilt and make it right,”

“I also don’t want you to pay for her mistakes for the rest of your life or else we will fall apart and neither of us wants to end things when it just came together,”

“How can you still be such a saint even when the world cracked open and pulled you in, suffocating you with unfair manipulations?” He seemed engrossed in caressing my face.

I shrugged. “Maybe because I don’t want to become what they did to me,”

“Baby, why didn’t you tell me that she was bullying you?”

I smiled at him, touching his face and seeing the evidence of my doings on his cheeks. “Because you would have wanted to do something about it,”

“Damn straight. I warned her once,”

I placed my hand over his mouth to stop him from talking nonsense. “Truth be told. You made it worse when you decided to stand up for me. You made me seem weak in her eyes. She will continue to take her hatred out on me if you continue to step in for me. I can handle her and her bitchiness. Today was just a different day with everything that was going on in my life and I made the mistake of letting her get to me,”

He stared at me—eyes unblinking except for the high raised eyebrow emphasizing that he would like to get in a word. I removed my hand, sheepishly smiling at him.

“I knew something was bothering you this morning but I am trying to find out why you wouldn’t tell me,”

I shrugged. “It feels like I am whining,”

“You have the right to whine, Zoey. With everything that happened to you, you have the right to talk about it,”

I shifted my eyes away from his gaze. I felt the repercussions of keeping the truth away from him. Having my suppressed memories suddenly released into my brain made it difficult to process everything.

But you can’t keep them to yourself.

I hated that my subconscious expressed more empathy than I ever did. But it was right. For Duncan to know what was going on, I had to let him in and trust him. I can’t always keep everything from him, it would only push him away from me.

“My memories came to light,”

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