His betrayal is only the beginning of her misery . . .
NICHOLAS JORDAN
Hide and Seek
Copyright © 2020 by Nicholas Jordan.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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http://www.nicholasjordanbooks.com
1
THE ROAR OF THE CROWD—several thousand people strong—was so loud that Bree Daniels was struggling to even hear herself think. And she certainly had a lot to think about after the bomb that was dropped into her lap just before the start of the biggest game of the year. It completely changed her mindset going into the game. Gone were her concerns about how Travis and the team would perform. Now all she could think about was what she was going to say to him when the game was over, if she could even bring herself to confront him at all.
It wasn’t an easy or simple decision—despite what Veronica seemed to think—and she was swimming in unfamiliar waters here. This was the first time in her life that she had ever had the unfortunate experience of hearing that her boyfriend was cheating on her. She really thought that she was one of the lucky ones, but now she wasn’t so sure.
It was only rumors. Well, rumors and a few pictures that Veronica’s friend snapped of Travis chatting with Melissa Mercer—the captain of the cheer squad—after practice. While the pictures were certainly suspicious, especially with the way the two of them seemed to be hiding out behind the bleachers after practice, it didn’t prove that there was anything going on between them, and Bree wasn’t in a hurry to accuse Travis of cheating on her without some solid proof. It could easily shatter the trust they built up over nearly a full four years of going out.
But as much as she didn’t want to doubt her boyfriend’s loyalty, she couldn’t just pretend like she never heard the rumors or saw the pictures.
What if he was cheating on her?
It was probably worth the risk of possibly upsetting him in order to set her mind at ease. Wasn’t it? She supposed if she knew the answer to that question, she wouldn’t be sitting in the bleachers on what was quite possibly the most important night of her boyfriend’s life, having this silent debate with herself for the entirety of the football game.
Much to her annoyance, she succeeded in giving herself a dull headache from dwelling on her boyfriend’s possibly unfaithfulness. She knew that she should just banish the thoughts from her brain and focus on the final few plays of the game rather than thinking about hearsay and photos that lacked any context.
This was the division championship game after all. Not only that, but it was only a four point game with under a minute left.
Doing her best to stop dwelling on things that she couldn’t do anything about at that moment—and might not even be worth worrying about anyway—Bree forced herself to focus on the game instead.
Travis’s team was huddled up as they prepared a play. With so little time left on the clock, it would almost certainly be the final play of the game. Bree really hoped that it was a good one.
She didn’t really follow football at all prior to Travis making the team. She didn’t even know the rules until he taught her. She vaguely remembered her dad watching football games on TV, but she was so little back then that those memories were hardly more than vague images.
She didn’t spend much time thinking about her father. She had so few memories of him from before he died that there was really no point in trying to remember. Besides, from everything that her mom told her about him, he wasn’t the kind of guy that was worthy of remembrance.
Her mom even admitted to feeling relief the day that the cops showed up at her doorstep to deliver the news that her husband had died in a car crash while drunk behind the wheel. She never told anyone other than Bree that she felt that way, but she also never told anyone else about the abuse that her husband put her through when he was drinking.
Since Bree knew what an awful man he was, she never really felt much temptation to learn more about her father. The only connection she really had to him was through her grandparents on his side, who she never saw, but they did send her a birthday card every year and sometimes wrote to her just to see how she was doing. Bree didn’t write back. Her mother said that his parents were always nice enough to her, but Bree felt like she would rather distance herself from all things related to her father . . . just to be safe.
Once the huddle broke up, the two teams got in formation facing each other. Travis squatted down behind the center, who had a hand on the ball, ready to snap it the moment that Travis gave him the signal.
Seconds ticked by.
One.
Two.
Three.
Bree counted the passing seconds in her head while clasping her hands in front of her mouth and nibbling nervously on the corner of her bottom lip.
Four.
Five.
Six.
The ball was snapped at last, and Travis dropped back with the ball in hand. His head was on a swivel as he surveyed the field ahead of him, no doubt searching for one of his teammates to throw the ball to.
Only it didn’t look like there was anyone open. Wherever a receiver went, there was one or more players from the opposing teach close by to prevent an easy pass. There didn’t appear to be any opportunity for Travis to pass the ball without it being picked off by the other team, and he was running out of time to make something happen.
The clock was ticking ever closer to zero, and several defensive players were trying to fight their way through Travis’s teammates in order to get to him so that they could tackle him to the ground. If that happened, it was game over for Travis and his team, and they would come up short after all of the work that they put in throughout the season.
Bree didn’t want her boyfriend to face that kind of disappointment, but there was nothing she could do to help him. All she could do was watch from the bleachers and hope for the best.
Just then, two of the opposing players broke through the line and barreled towards Travis at full speed. It looked like it was all over for him, until he suddenly pulled off an incredible maneuver by ducking down and slipping between the outstretched arms of the two players, leaving them both stumbling in his wake as he took off running.
He appeared to have given up on trying to make a pass that simply wasn’t there to be made, and decided that he was going to take matters into his own hands by running for a game winning touchdown instead.
But he had a long way to go.
The end zone was more than twenty yards away.
And there were still plenty of defenders in his path. He would need a lot of help blocking from his teammates, and also a lot of luck.
But if there was one thing that Bree knew about Travis, it was that he was never intimidated by a challenge. If there was something that he wanted, he would go after it until he was physically incapable of pursuing it any longer.
And there was nothing that he wanted more than this win.
Every stride bringing him closer to his coveted prize, Travis ran with the football cradled in one arm, jerking and juking to avoid being tackled to the turf by his opponents.
Although Bree was convinced on at least three separate occasions that Travis’s luck had run out and he would be put flat on his back, he managed to slither free from every atte
mpted tackle and keep on going, never slowing down for longer than absolutely necessary to elude a tackle before picking up the pace again.
Twenty yards was soon fifteen, and then ten, and finally he was just a handful of yards from scoring and securing the victory for his teammates and himself.
But one last hurdle forced him to an almost complete stop as two opposing players moved to cut him off. He wouldn’t be able to slip between these two like he did with the others. They were ready for him.
He had only a split second to decide what to do. Two defenders were right in front of him, but there was also the defenders that he left behind, who were all desperately scrambling to catch up with him.
Finally, Travis made his decision, and it was neither to go straight through his defenders nor around them. Instead, he opted to leap into the air and attempt to go over them.
The opposing players obviously didn’t expect him to try something so bold any more than Bree did. They were caught flatfooted, and that allowed Travis to sail through the air untouched for just long enough. By the time that the two defenders recovered and tackled him, it was already too late. Travis had reached out with the football in hand and managed to get it across the line and into the end zone.
That was it.
A touchdown had been scored with nothing but zeros on the clock. The game was over. Travis and his team had won, and the thousands of people gathered to cheer on the Trenton High team—the majority of the student body, as well as teachers, parents, and other fans of the team—erupted into deafening cheers.
Bree was one of those cheering. She clapped her hands together vigorously and jumped up and down. She looked over at her best friend Veronica seated beside her. Although Veronica had no love for football—or sports in general—she was making an effort to at least pretend to be excited, even though some of that excitement might just be relief that the game was finally over.
“Come on.” Bree grabbed Veronica’s hand. She had to shout for there to be any hope of her friend hearing her over all the cheers. “Let’s go down and see Travis.”
The two of them slipped through the crowd as they made their way to the stairs, passing both fans excited for the winning team and those who had obviously been cheering for the losing team based on their dejected expressions.
Practically dragging Veronica along behind her, Bree scampered down the steps. She was nearly to the field, which had been stormed by a number of fans already, when she caught a glimpse of her boyfriend in the sea of people wearing the purple and silver team colors, but that was not all that she saw.
There was a head of long blonde curls, and a slim but curvy body snugly squeezed into a crop top and miniskirt, also in the team colors of purple and silver.
Melissa Mercer had Travis wrapped up in a smothering embrace, practically clambering all over him as if she were a kindergartener and he was a jungle gym. The only way she could make her infatuation any more obvious was if she had literally stuffed her tongue down his throat or popped her annoyingly plump and perky breasts out of her top for him to gawk at.
Bree’s heart raced. She couldn’t take her eyes off the scene in front of her. Despite the chaos and the excitement around her, her eyes were focused solely on two people, and she couldn’t help but notice that Travis wasn’t exactly beating Melissa off with a stick. He seemed very much a willing participant in the sensual embrace.
She could try to make an excuse for him. Say that the moment just got to him and he wasn’t thinking straight with so much adrenaline coursing through him. But she didn’t want to make excuses for him. She wanted the truth, and she was determined to get it. Before the end of the night, Bree was going to find out whether or not Travis was cheating on her, and she was going to hear it directly from him.
She was done with being left in the dark. It was time for the truth to come out, no matter how much that truth might hurt. It was better than not knowing.
2
A COUPLE OF HOURS AFTER the dramatic ending to the big game, the entire team, and just about everyone in school who wasn’t a social outcast was at a party to celebrate the victory. The party was at Pete’s house—one of Travis’s close friends—and his dad even let them drink in the house as long as they bought their own alcohol. The party was pretty wild even before Bree arrived, and it was getting wilder in a hurry.
Any other night, the neighbors might complain, but not tonight. The members of the football team were all viewed as local heroes after their big win, and no one was going to criticize them for celebrating their victory.
Besides, even if someone wanted to complain, there wasn’t anyone for them to complain to. Pete’s dad was the town’s sheriff, and a former star athlete at the same high school. He certainly wasn’t going to break up his son’s victory party.
With a plastic cup filled with beer in one hand, Bree stood in the corner of the living room with Veronica. They were probably the only two people at the party not having the time of their lives.
Bree felt sick to her stomach, and it wasn’t from drinking too much. She only had a few sips of beer, and only because she was hoping that it might help to calm her nerves.
It didn’t.
She already made up her mind that she was going to confront Travis tonight, but she was struggling to find an opportunity to do that. She didn’t want to talk to him in front of his friends, but finding any time to be alone with him tonight would not be easy.
It might not even be possible.
Even just finding him was hard enough. Every time she bumped into him, he was quickly dragged away by one of his friends to drink some more or to talk about the big game.
As much as Bree didn’t want to put off the important conversation with her boyfriend, maybe it was best not to spoil this night for him. She could always speak with him tomorrow when he wasn’t partying with his friends. It was probably better to talk to him when he was sober anyway.
“Do you want me to find Travis?” Veronica spoke up, having to lean in close and speak at a higher volume than normal to be heard over the loud music, and the even louder people. Unlike Bree, she wasn’t drinking tonight. Veronica was likely the only senior at Trenton High to never have even a drop of alcohol. An accomplishment that she was quite proud of.
Bree shook her head. “I think I’m going to leave.”
“Why?” Veronica tucked deep brown curls behind her ears and raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were going to confront him. Don’t you think it’s better that you just get it over with? I mean, do you want to be up all night stressing about it?”
“Of course not, but I also don’t want to ruin tonight for him. Besides, even if I do confront him, how is that going to stop me from stressing out? What if he admits to cheating on me?”
“Then you’ll know the truth, and you can dump his ass.”
Bree shook her head again. “It’s not that simple. We’ve been going out for four years. How can I just throw that away?”
“So you would actually stay with him even knowing that he screwed Melissa?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that this isn’t as black and white as you seem to think it is. And we don’t know for a fact that he slept with Melissa.”
“No, we don’t. Besides, based on my experience with guys, he’ll probably just lie about it even if you do ask him to be honest with you.”
“Okay . . . That is a pretty pessimistic view on my situation.”
“I’m just saying. Guys lie. It’s a fact.”
“So what am I supposed to do then? Do I just assume that he’s lying to me no matter what he tells me? Do I keep pestering him until he breaks down and tells the truth? What if I don’t believe him, but he’s actually being honest with me? I could destroy something that isn’t broken if I’m not careful.”
Veronica merely nodded without saying a word. It looked like it was finally starting to sink in that this whole situation wasn’t as easy to fix as she seemed to believe that it was.
&nbs
p; “So are you really going home then?” Veronica asked after a moment of neither of them speaking. “Because I’m not sticking around if you’re not. That’s for sure.”
Bree scanned the living room one more time, seeing lots of different faces—both familiar and not—but she didn’t see her boyfriend.
“Yeah, let’s go.” She took her phone out of her pocket. “Just give me a second to send Travis a text to let him know that I’m leaving. I’m sure he would rather me stay, but I’ll tell him that I’m tired. He’ll understand.”
“Does it even matter if he understands? You don’t need his permission to leave. He doesn’t own you, and he especially doesn’t have a right to have any say in what you do considering what he’s been up to.”
“Veronica, please don’t do that . . .”
“Do what?”
“Villainize him before we even know whether or not he’s actually done anything wrong. Even though it looks bad, I still want to be wrong about all of this. I want him to be the faithful and trustworthy boyfriend that I’ve always believed him to be.”
“That’s fine. I hope that I’m wrong about him. Just make sure that you’re not wearing tinted glasses, okay? When you confront him, don’t settle for anything less than the truth, and make sure that you go with your gut. Take it from someone who’s been cheated on in the past. It sucks ass, and I don’t wish it on anybody, but you can’t be all wishy washy about it. You got to handle it. Just nip that shit in the bud and move on with your life. It doesn’t get better if you ignore it. It just gets worse. Trust me.”
Bree nodded and offered her friend an appreciate smile before she turned her eyes back to her phone.
She was about halfway through the text when a pair of strong arms suddenly wrapped her up from behind and lifted her off her feet. She let out a little yelp of surprise before she was returned to her feet and turned around to find herself staring at Travis’s broad chest, covered by a white t-shirt and purple and silver varsity jacket.
Hide and Seek: A Suspense Thriller Page 1
