Page 2 of Foul Line

He shakes his head.

“But I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He turns toward me then, his lips a thin line, his gorgeous blue eyes zeroing in on me. “Camp,” he says. His eyes are troubled, a swirling myriad of blue. “I don’t think Lake’s done with you. You should be careful.”

The mention of that fucker’s name makes me want to slam my fist into the stone pillar at my back. He ruinedeverythingfor me.

I take a deep breath instead. It’s easy for me to say he ruined everything for me, but I also know that the rest of the Ballers need to take responsibility for their actions too. But fucking Lake. I was—and am—still willing to gleefully ignore him for the rest of my life. He didn’t need to intercede. He didn’t need to pull an ultimatum on his friends like that. “I’m not scared of Lake O’Brien,” I tell Hayes through clenched teeth.

He nods like he expected me to say as much. “River’s going to be there, too. Lake and River together are…”

I swallow, remembering their hands on me, holding me down. Sure, it wasn’t as if they were about to sexually assault me or anything, but they held me against my will. They overpowered me, never reacting to my struggle against them.

Lake and River together are evil.

Hayes doesn’t even need to finish his sentence. I get it. I knew this was coming ever since my father sent me the camp list a couple of weeks after the state playoffs. I don’t know how I even forgot that Landon Meyer, the other shooting guard that’s been coming to camp with us the last several years, graduated. River is his replacement.

“Well, I’m not scared of River either.” I’ve never seen the kid play, but he can’t be better than Lake, and I’m going to make it my mission to make sure everyone at camp knows who the top shooting guard is. By the time we leave, I’ll be back on top, hopefully with the backing of the rest of the Ballers, one way or another.

“I just want you to watch out for yourself.”

His words spike goosebumps over my arms. I rub at them absentmindedly, watching Hayes’s profile. That’s why he’s here, isn’t it? He’s protecting me. He has to be.

2

Just as Hayes said, he’s not there when I drive away from the house a little while later. His bike is gone, and I don’t see any sign of him on my trek down the mountain. It’s such a crazy road to bike up and down that I wish I could tell him he didn’t have to. If he is checking on me like I suspect, it’s nice but unnecessary. I’m not glass. I won’t break. If I were, I’d already have broken by now.

By the time I get down into the town, my stomach is twisted into knots that make me queasy. I haven’t had very good luck in Ryan’s house. First, finding out that my dad was fucking his mother. Then, it was getting my heart crushed, splintered into tiny pieces. Hopefully this time, there aren’t any more secrets or asshole boys named Lake around. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold back my nut kick reflex around the asshole if he is there. I’ve only been dreaming about it for months.

When I pull up to the house, I take a deep breath and just stare at the unassuming house. Dad’s huge SUV is in the driveway just outside the closed one-door garage. Somewhere inside those walls sits Ryan Linc. I wonder if he’s been thinking about this moment for as long as I have or if he even thinks about me at all. After all, he did warn me. He told me if my involvement with the Ballers messed with basketball, it’d be over. He kept true to that promise, although I disagree with him. It wasn’t messing with basketball; it was messing with Lake.

I sigh. “This fucking sucks,” but I shove the door open and get out anyway. I plaster a smile on my face and walk right up to the door without hesitating. If I’m going to live my new motto, there’s no room for second guessing.

After I knock, it only takes a minute for someone to open the door. My smile turns genuine when I see it’s my dad, halfway relieved that it isn’t Ryan standing framed in the doorway. This means I get to steel myself a few moments longer before I see the guy who’s completely turned my life upside down several times. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the hot sting of my cheeks when he told everyone at camp that he didn’t like me, that it was all just a show. That transforms into the shower water dripping off me when he rushed into the girls’ locker room, his fists bleeding because he’d punched Chase. The shivers chasing up and down my arm as he made his declaration that he’d been lying before, that I was theirs and only theirs now. My body turns to ice when I remember the look in his eyes after he told me to get out of his house. He’d sided with Lake.

“Tess!” my dad says. He’s got a happy smile on his face as he pushes the screen door open. “You’re here.”

He steps back, and I move forward. He pulls me into a hug right there in the doorway, then keeps his hand around my back as he leads me right into the living room. This is not the same living room that I ran away from a few months ago. The carpet is new. There’s a fresh coat of muted paint on the walls and a huge sectional now taking up the living room with a large—also new—TV as the centerpiece of the room.

My mind fixates on all this in moments, but then I hear Ryan’s mom as she comes out from the kitchen. “Tessa, it’s so nice to see you.”

It kills me that she’s pretty. She’s not prettier than my own mother, but she’s good looking in a different way. I can see Ryan in her features, but her face is much less angular than his. Hers is soft while he got all the hard planes. “Thank you for inviting me. It’s nice to see you, too.”

She leans down to hug me. Again, I don’t hesitate. Her grip is strong and supportive. It feels like she wants to hug me, and I’ll try. If this is going to be my dad’s new partner, I will try, but right now, it’s not about that. This is about me pretending I’m fine. No, I’m not wearing something slutty like Dawn suggested, but I’m on top of the world. At least, that’s the vibe I’m going to give off in front of everyone. Success is the best revenge and all that.

“It looks really nice in here, Mrs. Linc,” I tell her. I have to practically bite my tongue off in order to keep from saying something about my dad probably paying for all this, but regardless, I sound genuine.

“Thank you. We did a little refreshing.” She looks around the room, a smile on her face, but then her hands smooth down the apron she has on. “I just have a few little things to get done. Take a seat. Enjoy yourself. Make yourself at home.”

I wince. This willneverbe my home. I don’t care if my dad moves in here permanently with Ryan’s mom and Ryan ends up being my stepbrother, this will never be anything but the place where my dad lives. Instead of saying all that, I screw my face back into a smile. “Thank you.”

Dad heads over to the couch, which is probably exactly where he was when I knocked on the door. Track and field is playing on the TV, so I sit down opposite him and watch. Despite the fact that we’re not at our house, this feels familiar. Dad and I watching TV, discussing fitness levels and training regimens. Dad whistles. “Tess, have you seen this guy run yet? He is fast.” He draws the word out, his stare fixated on the TV.

I glance that way, watch as a runner stretches out his calves before settling into the blocks. He’s a sprinter. The commentator basically reiterates everything my dad just said. “Olympic hopeful?” I ask.

“You bet. They’re comparing him to Usain Bolt.”

I make my own noise of appreciation. “Good for him.”

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