Page 94 of Saving the Halfback

I wrapped my arm around his stomach and leaned more into him. “I’m okay,” I promised him.

“Would you tell me if you weren’t?” he asked.

No. There was no point in doing that. “How did you know where I was?”

“We were looking for you when a picture was shared with everyone,” Nolan said.

I knew what the picture would be of. “Can I see it?”

Lachlan shook his head and looked out the window. Chase did the same. Ethan refused to meet my stare, but Nolan held out his phone. He always gave me what I asked for, no matter what. I didn’t deserve it.

I took the phone from him, seeing what the wet tips had been on my skin—marker. I stood, practically naked in my bra and thong, with black marker all over my stomach and arms. The words that keep getting thrown at me, by Ed, within my own mind, by students at school, were now written on my skin.Whore, slut, fake, fat…

“We were at the field, the football field,” I whispered. I raised Nolan’s shirt and looked down at my stomach with the light from his phone. Sure enough, the ugly words branded my skin, though some of them were smudged from the mud. At least the ink wasn’t permanent. I pulled the shirt back down and looked at the picture one more time. “This was sent to everyone?”

“Most of the people at the party saw it,” Chase said.

I handed him his phone back. “You can barely tell it’s me. Right? With the hood…you can barely tell it’s me.”

“It should be reported. Did you see anyone? Hear anyone?” Lachlan asked.

Yes. Emma…Hadley…but I shook my head. No one heard my cries in the past, nothing was made out of anything, so why should it matter? Why should I matter? “It all happened so quickly. I heard a guy’s voice, but I didn’t recognize it.” I shivered, remembering how he had grabbed me.

The truck became quiet, and I slowly drifted off into a light sleep, woken only when Lachlan moved to say we were here. He got out of the truck and turned around, moving as if to carry me, but I stopped him. “I’ll walk.” He nodded but kept his hands on me at all times, almost as if he was afraid I would disappear again.

32

Bailey

Ethan was the one who led the way to the side entrance, also known as the staff entrance. Nolan took up my other side as he and Lachlan walked up the stairs with me. We had three flights to climb, but I didn’t care. It all felt surreal to me, especially now, in the brightness of the lights.

The echo in the stairs brought me out of my thoughts. “Just like old times?” Chase had said to Ethan.

“If it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t catch me dead in this shithole.”

Chase sighed. “That’s what I get for helping the homeless.”

“Rather homeless than a puppet for Daddy. Sure it wasn’t him pulling the strings to harm her? He always hated all of us.” There was a commotion behind us, and I stopped walking to look down the stairs. Chase and Ethan were fighting; it was escalating from words to shoving. When Chase attempted to get a punch in, I flinched.

“Look around, you self-absorbed fucks,” Lachlan shouted. “Is this really the time?”

They stopped, chests heaving. Ethan had Chase by the shirt, and Chase had his hand around Ethan’s neck. As they looked upat me, I said nothing, did nothing, just turned around and kept walking.

Along the way down the hall, I could still hear the party in full swing downstairs. Chase’s room was almost the exact same as I had remembered it, from the large bed, to the couch and bathroom. The large flat-screen TV was new, though.

Everyone shuffled in.

“I’ll run you a bath,” Chase offered.

I sank down onto the couch, leaning forward and holding my head in my hands.

Lachlan knelt in front of me. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were gone sooner,” he said, resting his chin on my knees.

I ran my fingers through his soft blond hair. “Even if you had known I was gone, there’s no way you would’ve known where I was.”

Chase yelled from the bathroom. “Well, then, leave if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Nolan shook his head. “Do we need to permanently separate those two?”

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