Page 56 of Honeysuckle
I looked around at the crowded room and cursed myself for not wearing a T-shirt beneath my dress shirt.
“There’s a bathroom,” Dean said quietly, “off the showers, to your left.”
I looked up at him, his eyes burning my skin with concern and care.
“Cool. Thanks for the tip,” I muttered. I didn’t need him looking out for me. I didn’t need him to be worrying about changing in front of all the guys. The scars I carried weren’t his problem.
“Whatever, Logan.” He turned back to his locker and shuffled into his uniform. Once he was dressed, he wandered away and left me where I stood, still staring at my own, paralyzed with fear. He flipped his hat over his head and climbed up on the bench in the middle of the locker room.
“Hornets!” He whistled, and the majority settled down immediately. “We’ve worked hard to get ourselves to this point, and it shows. You're more of a team than you were two weeks ago, and we can only get better as the season progresses.”
With everyone's eyes on Dean, it gave me a split second to strip from my dress shirt. I unbuttoned it as he talked, and his eyes flickered to me with a small smirk of accomplishment that infuriated me.
He had won again.
“Today won’t be easy, even for a pre-season game. We’re going out there to win against the odds and despite the expectations. Remember what Arlo always says, ‘don’t play for anyone but yourself and the man next to you’. I’m not buying you a keg though, I’m broke…” He curled into a ball to protect himself as clothing flew at him in an uproar of boos and yelling. “Ow! Who threw a fucking shoe?!” He burst into laughter and chucked it back from where it came.
“Two steps at a time, Hornets.”
The entire room tapped their two fingers to their hearts.
Cult.
I finished buttoning up my jersey and quickly slid into my pants as the room went back to its typical chaos. I could feel Silas’s eyes on me from the main door where he stood talking to Coach, but his attention was on me.
It drove me nuts how much of myself I could see in him at that moment. The same hardened jaw, both dusted with a dark scruff. If his hair were longer, it would be wavy and messy, just like mine, but he kept it short and pushed back off his face.
I had spent all my life staring at the scowl in the mirror; I knew it intimately and it pissed me off that Silas did too. When he excused himself to come over to me, I grabbed my shoes and turned my back to him, using the locker to tie them up tight.
My toes wiggled freely in the cleats; it was either Ella or Dean that had noticed I was wearing a size too small at camp and I felt ashamed.
“Are you ready for today?” Silas asked me over my shoulder.
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to fuck off.” I turned my head to look at him and glared.
“Josh,” Silas started, but I cut him off.
“Just leave me the hell alone, Silas.”
“You need to know something—”
The room erupted in the sound of cheers and cleats as the guys started to flood from the locker room and into the hallway. I shrugged and backed away from Silas, not giving a damn what he had to say in that moment. I joined the team, keeping my distance and waiting in the tunnel for the announcement.
The Harbor stadium had always been twice as loud as Lorette. We only had a thousand or so more seats to fill, but the fans in Harbor were insane. More insane then they had the right to be over a college baseball team. The entire stadium was vibrating as the announcer fought over the volume of the screaming crowd.
One by one, the starting lineup was announced, with me being the last of the starters to be welcomed onto the field. As predicted, and honestly warranted, the crowd swelled and the sound of hatred rolled down from the stands onto the diamond.
“Go home, Logan”, they chanted—a pulsing, hateful chorus of voices as I made my way to the middle of the lineup, sandwiched between Dean and Cael.
“They could have at least come up with something clever,” I growled, and Cael started to laugh to my right.
“You have two first names as a name, give them a week,” Cael said in their defense, and to ease the tension between my shoulders.
The sound of screamed insults was only silenced by the announcer introducing the game’s opening host.
“Please welcome your most generous sponsor and Hornets alum, Charles Shore.”
My heart felt like it was clawing out of my chest at the sight of him. Why had no one warned me that he was going to be here today? As far as I knew, he had been all but cut out of the family’s dealings with the baseball team.
