Page 151 of The Off-Limits Play

“Yeah. It’s like a big ‘welcome back’ party after the Christmas break.” Charli shrugs.

“Plus, we’re playing a game that afternoon, and we’ll be high off our win. You definitely want to come party with us.” Darian wriggles his eyebrows, and I wrinkle my nose again.

“Come on, Nylah.” Jolie nudges me. “Just say yes.”

“Say yes!” Charli yells from the court, raising her hands and grinning at me.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” They all start chanting and clapping their hands.

In the end, I’m forced to raise my own hands and shout, “Okay! Okay, I’ll come to the dance.”

A chorus of cheers rises around me as Jolie drapes her arm over my shoulder and kisses my cheek.

Okay, so maybe coming here was the right decision, because as much as I’m unsure about going to the winter dance with these guys, I do feel better now than I have since Carson kicked me out of his room.

CHAPTER59

CARSON

It’s been three weeks since I showed up on Coach’s doorstep, and he’s got me working like a dog on learning how to respect myself and those around me. And like a fucking dog, I’m doing everything he says.

I’ve cleaned my room and caught up on all my assignment work. I haven’t drunken one fucking drop of alcohol, although I have formed a new addiction to Coke Zero. It’s not the same, but I can’t go getting wasted again. My knee bobs way more than it used to, and I’ve paced a fucking trench into my bedroom floor. The guys have stopped me from going to Offside a couple times, and Grady even forfeited going home for Christmas so that someone was around to hang with me. My housemates are really good about keeping me in check, which is what I asked them to do. We’ve played a shit ton of cards the last few weeks. Anything to distract me.

The first time Tyrell wouldn’t let me go and get wasted, I got pretty shitty and foul-mouthed with the poor guy. But then Wily sat through theRambotrilogy with me and threw popcorn kernels at my head until I lost it, and we started the Great Popcorn Battle of Football Frat. Even Zoey joined in.

The second time I didn’t think I could get through without ten shots of whiskey, Tyrell and Grady took me out to paintball, and I shot the shit out of those two fuckers. It helped, though.

In fact, in the last few days… I haven’t even thought about reaching for a drink. Huh. Interesting.

I go to daily workouts with Coach every morning. We run three miles, then head to the gym for weight training. He’s been dragging his ass out of bed every day to do this with me, and I’m starting to see what Zander’s talking about. Coach seems to genuinely care about his players.

As agreed, I haven’t tried to contact Nylah once, and it’s fucking killing me.

I miss her.

And working on myself fucking sucks.

But I’m noticing a shift within me, and that part’s not too bad.

I sat my ass on the bench for the first playoff game, which we won. It was fucking triumphant, and I’ve never cheered so hard. That salty feeling that I started the game with definitely eased as I got into watching my team sweat and work and take those hits for us. It was the first time I hadn’t minded the bench so much.

I must be fucking improving if I could end that shit with half a smile and not feel like the entire world’s against me.

Tuesday night is the quarterfinals, and although I’m not starting, I’m really hoping Coach will at least let me play the second half. Surely he’s gonna give me a chance, because I have to get myself into his good books if I have any chance of making this work with Nylah. I don’t want her to carry the stress of having to hide our relationship, and I’m starting to respect Coach enough to not even want to.

The worst part about this whole self-improvement shit is the counseling sessions Coach is making me sit through. He arranged for me to see Kylie every fucking day except Sunday, and because she likes Coach so much, she fit me in around her already busy schedule. The first two sessions, I barely said a peep… until I realized that if I didn’t start talking, it would only take that much longer to get Nylah back.

So, I opened my piehole and spilled everything. I answered her questions, even got down to the dirty details when she wouldn’t let me get away with being vague.

And now I’m back for session number fifteen. It’s the one I’ve been dreading since Christmas Eve, when Kylie told me I had obvious issues with my mother and we really needed to get this figured out.

Glancing down at my mom, who’s dressed in jeans and a winter coat, I clench my jaw and seriously wonder how this is gonna go.

I picked her up from the airport a couple hours ago, and we drove straight here. She’s probably tired and feeling as dubious as I am. We didn’t exactly talk much in the car. She laughed that I hadn’t come to pick her up on my bike, and I couldn’t tell her that said bike is a crumpled mess at the bottom of a cliff and how gutted I am over it.

Instead, I mumbled about Wily letting me borrow his truck and then asked her about real estate. Anything to keep the spotlight off me.

That kept her going for a good forty-five minutes. Sales are going well. She told me stories about funny clients and demanding clients and how she just sold her first real mansion. That’ll be a pretty paycheck.

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