Page 83 of Hate the Game
The thought of Savannah being cut off in her career,again, made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her suffering in any way. I’d already done more than enough of that for a lifetime. No matter how I felt about her, she believed we’d lied and pretended to get her to like us. I couldn’t even imagine the shit she was telling herself. Did she think differently about our time in the shower? It killed me to think that she might’ve believed I’d only joined her in the shower that night as some ploy to protect my career. Maybe we’d started out wanting to protect ourselves but getting to know Savannah changes things.
I let my head thump against the wall behind me and sighed. “Think they’ll sort out their shit?”
Jax blew out a sharp breath. “If they don’t, we’ll figure something else out.”
Ryder’s sudden and sharp inhale had Jax and I jerking to attention. He was staring down the hall and when we followed his gaze we saw Savannah.
She stood far enough away from us that she would’ve had plenty of time to run away if she wanted to. She didn’t run, though. She stood perfectly still, staring at us with wide eyes. Why was she there? Was it to see us? Coach? Had she found the emails we’d sent from her account?
It fucking gutted me that I could see the pain in her eyes and the way she immediately crossed her arms over her stomach, trying to hide the strip of skin her shirt exposed. She was sobeautiful it hurt but there she was, trying to hide her body from us.
I balled my hands into fists and hid them behind my back to keep from grabbing or scaring her. I took a shaky step towards her and opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I didn’t have words. I just wanted to hold her and show her how sorry I was for hurting her.
She tipped her chin a little higher and walked towards us. She was doing her best to look unbothered but I’d watched her smile enough to know when she wasn’t happy. She stopped in front of us and took a deep breath. “I need to see Coach.”
***Savannah***
Oh, my poor, stupid heart. It jumped at my chest wall in a pathetic attempt to get to the three men standing in front of me. It ached and demanded I offer it up on a silver platter. It had zero sense of self-preservation.
I swallowed down the urge to anxiety vomit again and did my best to appear okay. I knew it wasn’t working by the way they all stared at me like I’d crack open and bleed out all over their shoes at any moment. I announced that I needed to see Coach Carrington and felt a sense of accomplishment when my voice only shook a little bit.
I hadn’t expected them to be waiting outside of his office. I’d held my breath on the stairs on the way up to his office, hoping I wouldn’t run into any of them coming or going from the weight room or wherever. Once I’d reached the administrative floor I thought I was safe. The joke was on me.
“Why do you need to see him?” Jax watched me with his head tilted to the side, studying me so closely that my skin itched.
I hugged myself tighter and leaned against the wall opposite them. It felt awkward and stilted in a way it’d never felt before,not even in the beginning. It was painful to know that everything was exposed and we were all just standing there with the elephant in the room threatening to crush us. Or at least me.
“I need to talk to him about Marla.” My body felt the weight of the last week settling over me all at once and it suddenly felt like the hardest chore to remain standing. I sighed. “Y’all know about the article. She’s pushing to keep the article mean. I thought… I thought if I could talk to Coach Carrington and tell him why I thought Marla was doing all of this he’d talk to her and get her to calm down… It’s probably a stupid idea.”
“It’s not a stupid idea.” Ryder straightened and rolled his shoulders. “We need to talk, Savannah.”
I couldn’t look at him. “It’s fine. Cass told me. You don’t need to explain anything. I started the game. It’s not y’all’s fault that I turned out to be really bad at it.”
“It’s true.” When I glanced up again he was standing right in front of me, a wall of muscle. “We were angry when we found out and we were stupid. It stopped being about that almost right away, Savannah.”
“I… I just need to talk to Coach. I don’t think I’m ready to hear this yet.”
“Too bad.” Jax gripped my chin and forced me to look up at him. “I’m not going to watch you stand here and not do everything I can to stop your pain. It was real for me, for all of us. That’s what you need to hear first. We started out as assholes but you surprised all of us. We care about you. We should’ve done things differently. We should’ve laid it all out as soon as we felt something for you.”
I frowned and shook my head, dislodging his hand. “I don’t believe you.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t believe that you care about us.” Cole shifted closer, his entire body tense. “Maybe you were just playing us the whole time.”
“That’s not true!” I lowered my voice and tried to contain my anger. “Itisn’t. It’s not true. I never meant to take anything this far. I fought it. Do you think it was easy to choose the three of you when I knew what was on the line? I did, though. Of course, I care about you. I messed up and crossed so many lines because I couldn’t help caring for y’all. If anything, I played myself.”
“I’m sorry, Savannah.” Jax slid his hand down my throat and stroked his thumb over my raging pulse. “That’s the second thing you need to hear. I’m sorry that what we did hurt you. We should’ve-”
The sound of arguing came from Coach Carrington’s office and the guys seemed to ignore it. Jax kept talking with just a little hitch in his speech.
“We should’ve sorted things out as soon as we felt anything for you. We messed up but-” He raised his voice as the sounds coming from the office grew louder. “But wedocare about you. We don’t want to lose-”
The sound of things falling over stopped him but Ryder took over, speaking over the sounds. “We don’t want to lose you, Sav.Idon’t want to lose you. I miss you. I-”
A loudthudbroke their concentration and Jax swore before going for the door. “Just need to make sure they’re not killing each other.”
“Who’s in there?” It didn’t sound like Coach Carrington was going to be in the mood to help me. I didn’t know what the hell was happening with the guys but I knew I might as well kiss my future career goodbye. I’d never get the raging coach to get along with Marla. He seemed crankier than ever.
Hand on the door, Jax looked back at me. “Fair warning. We hacked your email to get Marla here to make up with my dad. She’s in there.”
