Page 36 of Redemption
“You better not snitch,” Tanner says, taking his hands from behind his back and shoving the cigarette into Hayes’s chest.
Hayes takes it with merely a grunt and a nod, holding it between his fingers as he assesses Tanner again.
“What are you doing here?” Hayes asks, and I wonder if he can see it too—the sadness that seems to settle over Tanner like a well-worn blanket. He tries to hide it behind the teenage glares he keeps throwing Hayes and me, but I’m all too familiar with that sadness—I understand how dangerous it can be.
“Again—that’s none of your business,” Tanner says, pulling himself to his full height so he’s almost eye to eye with Hayes.
Hayes grits his teeth and is about to respond when the door to the school opens behind us. We both turn to see who it is and find the man who looked familiar to me in the board meeting walking toward us.
“Hayes,” the man greets, disdain evident in his voice.
“Eric,” Hayes says back with even more disdain than the man.
Dipping my brows together, I try to concentrate—Eric…Eric…Eric.
The moment it hits me, my eyes widen in surprise.
“Eric? I ask. “Eric Westbrook?”
The gloat on Eric’s lips almost makes me want to barf—but not as much as when I saw Lily and Hayes together at the coffee shop.
“Surprised it took you this long to remember, Mallorie Jade. After all, I was almost your first kiss,” he gloats, puffing out his chest and shooting a look at Hayes as if to say he still remembers that day from eleven years ago when Hayes pulled me away.
Red. That’s all I see as Hayes’s hands bunch into fists.
“Almost doesn’t count, Westbrook,” Hayes taunts. “It’s just something else I beat you at.”
That red in my vision expands because how dare Hayes use our first kiss—my first kiss—as a bragging right with this man.
“Yes, well, I think I beat you where it mattered. The NFL treated me fairly well.”
Now, the red is all I can see. The NFL chose Hayes. He just chose to walk away.
“That’s enough,” I say through gritted teeth, stepping between the two men. “If you want to have an ego contest, you can do it another time. I assume since you are out here, you have a decision from the board?”
Hayes is smart enough to look admonished, but Eric puffs his chest out further, his pride taking a hit from being scolded.
Ignoring the question, he steps closer to the kid who has been watching the exchange with wide eyes.
“I see you met my stepson, Tanner. He’s the star quarterback on your team this year,Coach.”
Eric says the word coach with so much condescension it makes me want to slap him.
When my anger clears, it hits me that he said stepson. Eric’s too young to have a kid in high school, so his wife must be older than him—not that it surprises me. Even in high school, Eric was known for liking older women. His only exception was the day he was going to kiss me.
In a blink, the blanket of sadness covering Tanner turns into all-out hatred as his stepdad claps him on the shoulder. I can’t figure out if it’s toward Hayes or the man standing beside him with a sneer on his face.
“We met,” Hayes says, twirling the cigarette he took from Tanner. Tanner’s face drains of color as he watches the cigarette move between Hayes’s fingers.
Suddenly, the picture of who this kid is becomes more apparent, and unfortunately, that image is even closer to my brother’s than I initially thought.
Eric’s eyes fall to the cigarette and Hayes’s hand. “Smoking is a nasty habit, Hayes. No wonder you couldn’t make it to the big leagues. I hope our boys won’t be picking up on your bad habits.”
At this point, Tanner is as white as a ghost, and I realize he’s waiting for Hayes to go against his word and turn him in—especially now that he knows Hayes is the football coach. But even if Hayes and I have grown apart these past six years, I know that’s not the type of man he is. He might not like that a kid on his team was smoking, but he’ll find other ways to help him.
“I assume since you’re worried about my impact on the boys, that means I’m still the coach, and MJ has a job.” Hayes’s voice is calm despite the needling that Eric has been throwing his way, and when he flicks his gaze to the boy, I understand that he’s doing it for him. Hayes doesn’t want to start the season by losing his temper in front of this kid.
“Yeah,” Eric says reluctantly. “She got it. Barely.”
