Page 120 of Hide and Keep

“How’d it happen?” someone asks.

“Either my leg wasn’t tucked tight enough, or she wasn’t in the right position, I don’t know, but my foot…”

I pull my gaze from Eighmey back over to Ever. She’s already staring directly at me in that same dead-eyed way as she finishes, saying, “It clipped her.”

This was her fault? She made a mistake? She promised she wouldn’t. She fucking promised.

Everyone begins rushing off the stage. Before we can get separated, I grab Ever, tucking her into my side. Her body’s rigid as hell, her heartbeat anything but. I can feel it pounding beneath my touch.

While everybody rushes to Eighmey’s side in the tent, Ever breaks away from me to retrieve her bag. I grab it from her just before she can get the strap over her shoulder.

She walks out without a word to me or her team. Are they mad at her for fucking up? It was just an unlucky accident.

Wrestling is practiced as a team but it’s very much an individual sport. You win or fail on your own. It’s both good and bad in that way.

“How’s your foot?” I ask as we weave our way through parked cars. She’s not limping at all. Or wincing.

“Like you fucking care,” she mutters.

“Actually I do.” Did she forget who the fuck I am?

“Really?”

She rounds on me so fast I almost run into her.

I return her glare with my own. I don’t know why we’re glaring, but if she’s got one directed at me, I got my own at the ready.

“You care?”

“Yeah.” If she’s in pain, I’m the one who’s gotta carry her. If she’s injured, I’m the one who’s taking her ass to the doctor. If she’s at the doctor, then I’m the one standing guard, making sure that motherfucker isn’t doing anything sus like that gyno she told me about because obviously her dad’s a fucking weirdo who puts too much thought into who can and can’t be in his daughter’s pussy. His ancient friend’s allowed to “inspect” it, but Ever’s not allowed to fuck around with guys her own age?

Make that shit make sense because I’m fucking struggling to.

It took everything in me not to go back into that house yesterday when I heard Arthur raise his voice at Ever. I don’t know what he said but I know how he said it and that was enough to see red. I had to lock myself inside my car and grip the steering wheel to keep from going in and bashing my boss’s head in. For Ever. Because everything I do now is to protecther.

“You care you made me ruin my last performance?”

“How the fuck did I make you ruin it? I was just watching from the—”

“Not then. Before. When you were getting a cheer lesson from Eighmey.”

I replay the last thirty minutes. The look on Ever’s face when she found out who told me what a basket was, her last-minute modification to the routine that changed Eighmey’s position in it.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“You saw what I did. You and everyone else. You all saw what I did!” she screams in my face, her voice about as reckless as that last basket.

My glare melts into a puddle of disbelief.

“You did that shit on purpose? You kicked a girl, your own fucking teammate, in the face, on purpose?”

“I warned her.”

“You warned her not to take up your bodyguard’s time. Not—”

“Exactly.Mybodyguard.Mine.”

I take it back. She’s not a bird. She’s more of a…bat.

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