Page 9 of Past Tents

Hitting the ground, I skidded a few feet, thanks to all my momentum. I felt a dozen pairs of eyes on me and heard a chorus of gasps. Every tiny kernel of dirt from the sandy track attacked at once, and I felt the sting on my forearms and shins.

Willing myself to stop skidding, I could do nothing except wait for gravity to do its best to swallow me. I felt the mortification set in before I’d even stopped moving, and a part of me wanted to keep on sliding, farther and farther away from all the peering eyes.

Someone shouted my name—probably Clay, but in my kerfuffle, I was in no state to discern pitch and tone.

I may have kicked myself in the head with my heavy shoes. I definitely had a gallon of gritty dirt jammed down the front of my workout tights, which were not nearly tight enough to prevent it. On the plus side, the exploding pain briefly drowned out my mortification. But only briefly.

When I finally came to a stop, I was flat on my stomach. Dust from the track swirled in the air around me, my ego waved a big white flag, and everything went silent.

CHAPTER

FOUR

CLAY

“I’m fine. Really.”

Ally was not fine, as evidenced by the fact that her words came out like, “Fie. Rull,” as she tried to form them around a tissue held against her lip, which hadn’t stopped bleeding.

I’d looked down at her prone body in horror after she finally came to rest in a heap on the track. Her black workout pants were covered in brown dust, her knee bent to one side, the other leg bent so her foot stuck up in the air. One of her brand-new white tennis shoes had a dangling shoelace which was probably the culprit for her fall.

“Alexandra!” I’d dashed over as soon as she hit the ground, mostly to shield her from what I knew would be embarrassment. No adult wanted to eat dirt in front of a bunch of teenagers, let alone the ones she had to teach the next morning.

Between us, we did our best to downplay her fall and get the kids moving off to start a drill. But that didn’t mean I took her fall lightly. As soon as I’d handed off the practice to the teamcaptain, I helped Ally to a sitting position. Fearing the worst, I bent down to check her for scrapes.

Track dirt was no friend to bare skin, and I’d gotten my share of road rash over the years, mostly from falling off my mountain bike. Other than the fat lip, she didn’t look like she’d taken a blow to the face, but she had abrasions up and down her arms. Those would hurt like hell in the morning.

I’d been about to ask who I could call to drive her to a doctor’s office when she shooed me away and said I was being silly. Then she wobbled to standing, like a drunken sailor on stormy seas.

A drop of blood from her lip hit the track, and she dabbed her lip with a finger. “Jussa Sue.” Somehow, I translated that as her needing a tissue, and I grabbed a few from my workout bag, along with the first aid kit we brought to meets. Cracking one of the ice packs, I got the cold flowing into the bag and handed it to her.

She winced when the cold hit her lip. And then she started walking away.

“I’m fine,” she insisted again.

“Hold on. Let’s get some bandages.” I gestured in the direction of the main school building because there was nowhere near enough gauze in my little kit.

“I don’t need. It. I’m fiiine,” she enunciated.

She was sonotfine that she actually thought she could walk away from the track, get into her car, and drive home. There was no way I could let that happen without bandaging her up and making sure she hadn’t done damage someplace where I couldn’t see it.

“Stop. Saying. That.” I may have sounded like a bossy jerk, but after she protested for the tenth time, I could see she wasn’t listening to my kinder words. Words like, “Come on, let me help you.” And, “Let’s just check out these scrapes.”

Finally, my words sunk in enough to earn me a glare. That was better. I’d take a glare from her over stubborn insistence that I mind my own business. There was no way in hell I planned to do that, not when she was listing to one side as she walked with a streak of blood dripping down her chin and a dazed look in her eyes.

“We should run concussion protocols,” I said as we took slow steps around the track toward the school nurse’s office.

“I don’t need that.”

I huffed my disapproval at her. “You can protest all you want, but if you don’t get checked out here, I’ll drive you to the hospital instead.”

“Geez, you’re annoying when you’re being re-thponsible,” she griped. She shook her head, but I saw the tiniest hint of a smile in her scowl. Along with some dirt from the track.

Loretta was out with the stomach bug, and the school didn’t have a backup nurse—budget cuts did away with that—but we did have someone trained in first aid who could pop in and out of the nurse’s office when needed. Unfortunately, that person was limping along next to me.

Slowing my pace a bit, I watched her stride ahead of me and checked out her gait. No, I was not checking out her ass.

Yes, I was also doing that. The tight yoga pants made my hands flicker with the urge to wrap them around her ass and squeeze the perfect, round cheeks.

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