Page 118 of The Game Plan

I’m two steps into coming at him again, when his words hit me, and I go ice-cold.

Took the money?

Guys are getting into smaller fights again. Rolondo is now up in Norris’s face, calling him a punk-ass bitch—refs are pluckingthem apart.

Someone is walking me backward, pushing me toward the sidelines as shouts continue. But I’m numb, my ears ringing and allavailable blood rushing to the pit of my stomach.

Took the money?

The ref ejects me and Norris from the game, and the stadium erupts into a chorus of boos.

On the sidelines, my offensive coach is shouting at me that I fucked up while also slapping my shoulder to say it’s okay Inearly tore Norris’s head off. My head coach is bellowing in my ear about being a dumbass. But I’m barely listening.

I find an assistant coordinator. “You got a phone?”

He glances around as if trying to find an escape.

“Give me your fucking phone” Blood trickles in my eye, and a medic is trying to press a cloth to the cut on my forehead. I wave him off, grab the phone that’s offered to me with a shaking hand.

One glance around confirms that everyone’s been keeping something from me. I find out soon enough when the headlines pop up.

Fiona Mackenzie claims her million dollars. There’s a picture of Fi and me, fuzzy and taken from a distance. We’re laughing,my arm slung around her slim shoulders as we stroll through Jackson Square.

And under that, the confirmation that Fi called Bloom this morning, demanding her prize.

Forty-Four

Dex

I don’t go home. I can’t.

Rolondo takes me to his apartment. I head straight to his guest room and into the shower. I hadn’t bothered washing up atthe stadium, just sat on a flimsy chair in front of my spot until the guys came back in and Rolondo hustled me out of there.

Now I stand beneath cold water, letting it pummel me. Images flash through my mind: Fi’s smile. Fi crying. Norris’s ugly grin,blood running down his nose. Fi arching beneath me as I take her. Fi and me laughing in a grainy picture. Fi telling me shewants to go to London.

She asked for the money.

Black rage, thick, hot and choking, surges up my throat. My shout shatters the air as my fist smashes into the tiles. Painexplodes in my hand, but it takes me a moment to stop.

Slumping against the stall, I stare down at my split knuckles, the blood thin and pale as it mixes with the water beatingdown on it. Tentatively, I make a fist. The skin stings, but nothing else.

Stupid. Fucking stupid to risk a busted hand. I ought to be horrified. I’m not. My mind’s on that picture of Fi, a once-beautiful private moment reduced to something ugly and cheap. Does she hate me for giving that chick the opportunity to steal my phone?

Was that why?

It makes no sense. Nothing does. I think of Fi and everything she told me last night.

She wouldn’t do this. There has to be more.

Chest tight, I run my uninjured hand over my wet face, and my fingers tangle in my beard. Again comes the rage, sticky andthick, as if it’s coated my insides like hot tar.

Pushing away from the wall, I wrench off the shower.

When I emerge from my room, Rolondo has stepped out, probably thinking I need to be alone.

He’s right.

The pain in my busted knuckles keeps me focused. For so long, pain was the one real thing in my life. Taste the pain, ignorethe rest.

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