Page 10 of Cross the Line
Shayne stalks towards us with an all-business scowl on his face as he swipes at his iPad. “What happened? What did you see… hear? Tell me everything, Four.”
“Her name is Cecilia,” I grumble at him before she manages to give him what he wants. “Cece wasn’t there for the whole thing.”
She gives me a sheepish look. “I was about to open the door of the administration stairwell when I heard you asking him why he was there. I’m sorry,” she adds quickly with an apologetic grimace. “You sounded angry, and it caught me off guard. It felt rude to interrupt.”
“So you eavesdropped instead,” I scoff, trying to rub the achy throb from my eyes.
“Not really. Not everything. I had a VM from merch about the shirts for the kids, so I listened to that.” Cecilia pauses as though she’s trying to refresh her memory. “Then you started walking away, but Coach Hallman grabbed you, and when you told him to get off of you, he didn’t. You had to pull away from him, and even then, he continued stalking you?—”
“Harassment, stalking… we can work with that,” Shayne says with a tinge of relief and excitement to his words that irks me so badly I explode.
“You can’t spin a lie with more lies,” I bark into the air as I pace back and forth. “I haven’t seen Ryker Hallman in seven years. Since that night.” Pointing at Shayne’s iPad, I suck in a deep breath, allowing it to set heavily in my lungs as I allow the words to spew like acrid vomit. “Since those photos. We weren’t making out and we weren’t exploring,” I tell Connie when she approaches me. “We were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and I had never had liquor before, so I was… I couldn’t… I… I couldn’t stop Ryker or Presley or any of it. My body couldn’t keep up with my head, and…”
I can’t do this.
The unforgiving sting behind my eyes blurs my surroundings as I push past Coach, Shayne, and Cecilia and run out of the room.
I run and keep running through the long corridor and down the stairs. I continue charging through the hotel, chasing the merciless pounding of my heart until there’s nowhere left to go. Just the fire exit in front of me.
“Eli,” a soft voice calls behind me while an equally tender hand rests on my shoulder. “You can’t keep running.”
“I’m-I’m…”not.I want to say, but I can’t bring myself to lie to Connie when she moves to stand in front of me. Instead, I tell her, “Those photos, the article… it’s not true. It’s not, Connie. I never. I didn’t?—”
“Breathe, Eli,” she instructs in that cool, no-nonsense tone that makes it impossible not to comply. “That’s it, deep breath. Illegitimi non carborundum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Remember?”
I nod, and she smiles.
It’s a while before I can get my heart to slow and my lungs to open up. The deeper I breathe, the wider it feels like I’m opening myself, so when she asks, “You said you couldn’t stop any of it. Any of what, Eli? What couldn’t you stop?”
I can’t stop myself from answering, “It was just supposed to be a party, but… but it was a trap.”
“What was the party for? What were you celebrating?” Connie heads for the stairs and sits on the third step up, waiting for me to join her.
“Back in junior league. We’d beat the favorites to win the tournament, and… yeah, the guys always had a party. They never invited me, though. Or Ryker.”
“Why not? You were part of the team, weren’t you?”
Nodding, I pause in front of her. There’s too much nervous energy running through me for me to sit.
“Presley was the cool guy, and he didn’t like me, and because Ryker is gay, he had a problem with him, too.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I thought he was a good person. That he was my friend.”
Connie’s brows pull together. “And he wasn’t?”
“No,” I snap. “He set me up.”
“At the party.”
“Yes. He made me feel bad for not going to the party, and… and…” I shrug, pacing from one side of the stairs to the other while she watches me. “We were meant to be friends. No one else wanted to be my friend because of who I am. My father being a pastor… a preacher.”
“That’s where your nickname comes from…?”
“Yeah. I… ugh… I used to take a moment before each game, you know, to pray. It was what I was taught. To ask God for guidance, for victory… success. I was stupid and naive, and the other guys…”
When I shrug again, Connie asks, “You told me that Presley is from the same town, same church. Didn’t he pray, too?”
