“Hey, China,” I said as I entered the attached suite a few minutes later. “When are we headed back?”
Chapter 11
WHEN I ENTERED THE LOCKER ROOM, I could have sworn that sixteen pairs of eyes landed directly on me. I eased off my headphones, and the ensuing silence was louder than Neil Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans” had been. Forever in Spandex, more like it.
“Hey, guys.”
Silence. I headed to the adjoining laundry room to pick up my mesh bag full of clean practice clothes. When I plopped it on the bench below my locker, Maddie sidled up to me.
“So, Rez, uh, how ya doin’ this morning?”
“Great.”
Maddie tilted her head as she peered at me.
“That was an awesome game, everyone,” I told the room. “Well done.”
Defensive specialist Lynnette pumped her fist in the air. “Hells, yeah!” She grinned at me as she headed toward the door. “Gotta get treatment.”
I nodded. Lynnette was rehabilitating an ankle sprain she’d sustained the second day of practice. The athletic trainer, Tina, was a no-nonsense woman who kind of scared me—I hoped I’d never get injured.
“Speaking of the game,” Maddie said. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Did you check out your stats?”
I chuckled. “Relax, everyone. I saw the scary spike-beast photo.”
A collective exhale flowed through the locker room.
To my left, Nina’s eyes widened. “How are you so cavalier about it?”
“Imagine how Bridgetown will feel once they see that photo.” I shrugged as I pulled on Spandex shorts. “It will totally psyche them out.”
Maddie started laughing, and Kaitlyn joined in, adding her distinctive, ear-splitting cackle.
“What a great reframe,” Maddie said, still laughing. “You’re right—I’d be freaked out if I had to block you, Ms. Spike Beast, so I can only imagine how our rivals will take it. You’re so mentally tough, Rez.”
My grin vanished. Dad was big on personal responsibility, and it wasn’t fair for me to assume undue credit. “Well, Dane pointed that out, actually.”
Nina glared at me. “He did?”
“Yeah.” My heart thumped faster with her evil eye on me, and I stalled my undressing because I didn’t want to change into my sports bra next to her thin self. “He, uh, he called me before practice. I was a basket case, but he helped calm me down. He got me to laugh about it.”
Slam! Nina spun around and stormed out of the locker room, leaving behind only the echo of her locker door.
I tensed. What was that about? I looked at Maddie, who frowned.
“She’s got a bit of a temper,” she said.
“What happened between her and Dane last year?”
Maddie’s eyes flitted around the room, and I realized all my teammates were staring at us. She shook her head. “Nina asked me not to tell anyone about it. And one thing I’ve learned—never cross your setter.” She turned toward the gym and said over her shoulder, “Ten minutes, guys.”
I stared into my locker, trying to make sense of what had just transpired. Why had Nina cared what Dane said? Did she have a crush on him? Then why did she seem to hate him? I heard a few more of my teammates leave the locker room as I slid my practice shirt over my head.
“Lucia?”
Fellow freshman Brianna stood next to me. I was pretty sure it was the first word she’d spoken to anyone on the team, so I smiled to encourage her to continue.
“Um, I think that photo was really…mean. It was so unfair. You don’t look like that at all.” She blinked at me and appeared to wait for me to say something.
“Aw, thank you, Brianna.”
She smiled, seeming bolstered by my response. “You’re so pretty.”
What?
“And you’re such a good hitter. I hope I can be as good as you one day.”
“Whoa. I…I don’t know what to say, Bree.” My mind raced. How could she think that? “I’m not pretty—I need to lose weight. And Maddie’s a way better hitter than me.”
Her face fell, and my stomach clenched with guilt for refusing to accept her compliment. “But you’re a great hitter yourself,” I added.
Her eyes turned down. “Coach doesn’t think so. He told me…” She paused and took a deep breath. “He said it’s unlikely I’ll ever be a starter for this team.”
“He told me the same thing.”
Brianna’s eyebrows knitted together. “But you started last night.”
“Exactly my point. Don’t let him get you down. Maddie told me Coach can be cruel, but he’s also a great motivator.”
“Hmm.” She seemed to take that in. “But how is telling me I suck supposed to motivate me?”
“Yeah, that makes zero sense. You’re right.” We both smiled. Maybe I would ask Dane to explain Coach’s crazy methods later. “Hold on—I’m almost ready.” I pulled kneepads over my socks, laced up my ankle-support braces, and tied my gym shoes. “We don’t want to be late.”
We jogged out to the court, where the absence of the men’s team seemed strange. I felt jealous of them for having a day off. Maybe we’d get a day off next year if we were lucky.
When I noticed the TV set up near the bleachers, I cringed. More video work. We’d spent hours watching previous Kentucky games before our first match, and I now it looked like the post-mortem on last night’s game would delay our physical practice today as well. Though I was a little tired from this morning’s emotional freakazoid, I’d been anticipating hitting drills. My hand twitched with the desire to karate-chop endless spikes, each time imagining that paparazzo’s face on the ball.
Four hours later, I was sorry for what I’d wished. Coach had made Nina and me stay at practice after everyone else left, and my left arm was about to fall off from the hundreds of hits. My legs shook, my vision blurred, and I hadn’t ever sweated as much in my life.
Nina had been frosty to me all practice, but at this point I doubted she had any energy left to keep up the mean act. She was simply in survival mode, like me. We kept practicing the four set, which we’d botched the night before. Coach had rewound that embarrassing play so many times during video review that he’d etched it into my brain.
“Again!” Coach said as he nodded at Kara. I hate that word. Kara tossed the ball to Nina, who set it to me on the left side of the net. But the ball sailed too far to my left, and I had to scramble to lob it over the net. Brian had no trouble fielding the ball on the other side of the net, and he tossed it into the rolling cart.
As I returned to the ten-foot line, panting for air, Coach glared at Nina. “Do you think this half-assed effort will be enough for my starting setter?”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice sounded as weak as my legs felt.
I glanced at Frank, who sat in the bleachers with a sour expression on his weathered face. He probably wanted to get out of here even more than I did.
“You’re sorry? That’s not going to cut it, Nina.”
Her normally perfect blond hair now hung in sweaty wisps around her face after working itself partially out of her ponytail. There was a wild look in her eyes that alarmed me. “I’m doing my best!” she cried in a shaky voice.
“If that’s your best, I need a new setter. Again.”
Kara paused as she looked at Coach for a moment, but then, like a good assistant, she tossed another ball in the air. Nina hustled to get under it, and she set it to me in a perfect arch. I executed my approach and jumped on tired legs, only to have the ball trickle down to my feet. Oops. My vertical leap was so low that the ball hadn’t cleared the net.
“Jesus!” Coach pointed at Nina. “This one finally does her job…” His accusing finger then jabbed in my direction. “And that one muffs it up!” He threw his hands in the air. “You two aren’t connecting at all today. What’s your problem?”
I glanced at Nina, who looked away from me. Nina hates me, and I don’t know why, I wanted to say. Instead I said, “It’
s because I’m a lefty. It took months for my club setter to get the feel for setting my left hand.”
I snuck another look at Nina, and this time she looked back. The ice in her blue eyes seemed to melt a bit.
“We don’t have months!” Coach hollered, recapturing my attention. “In case neither of you has noticed, our season has started. Every match counts for our national ranking. You need to get it right, now. Again.” He nodded at Kara, who held another torture-ball in her grasp. “We’ll keep going until you two execute ten solid hits. In a row.”
I closed my eyes. Por favor, ayúdame. Help me, God.
Nina and I stumbled into the locker room sometime later after finally giving Coach what he wanted. Lacking the energy to care about lingering fungi, I sank to the germy floor and sprawled out on my back, arms and legs akimbo. Nina did the same a second later.
I stared at the dirty popcorn ceiling and noticed some spider webs clinging to the corner. Our new arena couldn’t come fast enough.
“I hate you and your left hand,” Nina said.
I winced. “Sorry.”
I don’t know how long we both remained collapsed on the floor, too tired to move, before Nina sniffled. I sat up when I saw she was crying.
“I’m sorry Coach was so mean to you,” I offered.
She rolled her head away from me and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “That’s not…why I’m crying.”
“It’s not?”
She sniffed again, and I somehow managed to get to my feet. I shuffled on tired legs into the bathroom area, unrolled some toilet paper, and returned to my teammate.
“Thanks.” She grabbed the tissue and sat up. As I shakily lowered myself back to the floor, sitting with my back against a locker, I tried not to watch her wipe the mascara mess from under her eyes or blow her button nose. She took her time with the tissues, then stared at me. “Did you hear what happened between me and Dane last year?”
Here we go. My stomach tightened, but I tried to play it cool. “No. Well, I know you don’t like him, but I don’t know why.”
“But you like him,” she said.
I was so used to denying my feelings for Great Dane that my headshake was automatic.
“Yes, you do. I’ve seen how you look at him.”
My heart skipped a beat, and I stared at my lap. “It doesn’t really matter how I feel about him. Dane hates Republicans—and probably me too.”
She scoffed through her tears. “He likes a challenge.”
Was that all I was to him? A challenge?
“Maybe he isn’t into you—maybe you’re not his type,” Nina said.
Tell me something I don’t know. Even sweaty and disheveled, she still looked beautiful. I bet she was his type.
“But still, you should know what kind of guy he is, if you have to live with him.”
She was making me uneasy. “What happened last year?”
Nina glued her glassy gaze to the opposite wall. A minute ticked by. “I started dating Dane in November last year. I’d just broken up with Shep…” She glanced at me. “He was a football player. He graduated this summer.” Her eyes found the wall again. “And Dane was a hot-shot freshman. We’re both setters, so it made sense.”
And they were both freakishly tall, blond, and blue-eyed. Masters of the Aryan Universe. They had undoubtedly made a beautiful couple. When I looked at Nina’s profile, I noticed more tears cascading down her face, which unnerved me. I braced myself for what came next.
“Then I got pregnant.”
I froze. Pregnant? As a scholarship athlete? How the hell would I deal with that? My parents would be horrified. I’d have to drop out of school, live at home, hide out from the media…“What’d you do?”
She smiled through her tears, then angrily wiped the heel of her hand under her eye. “I did the only thing I could do.”
I stopped breathing.
Oh, no. My heart ached. That miraculous itty-bitty baby growing inside of her, counting on her for survival…so helpless, so innocent…And then she’d snuffed out that life. What would Dad say? What would God say?
“This is where Ms. Republican gets all judgmental on me, right?” At first her stare was hard, but then her eyes pooled with tears. She drew a hand to her mouth as her body racked with sobs. Her whimpers and gasps filled the empty locker room.
My nose burned and my eyes misted over as I watched her misery. I felt awful for what she’d believed she had to do. I had a sudden realization: my judgment wasn’t what she feared. But her self-judgment was another matter.
Slowly, I crawled toward her. Red splotches marred her lightly tanned complexion, and a bead of snot leaked out her nose. She swiped her face with the balled up tissue she held in one hand. When I clasped her other hand, she looked up at me, her chest heaving.
“Who am I to judge you, Nina?” I stroked her hand. “God doesn’t want us to judge or condemn.”
She started crying harder, which confused me. I’d been trying to soothe her.
“I…thought you’d…hate me.”
I felt myself frown. “Then why’d you tell me?”
“I…don’t know.”
She seemed to regret what she’d done. Maybe she felt like she deserved my hate.
“I probably shouldn’t have told you…but I’m too tired to think straight right now. Maddie told me…you were asking what happened with Dane…I figured you’d find out eventually. And maybe I thought you should know what Dane did before you got in too deep with him.”
My heart fluttered. “What was his part in this?” I inhaled. Had he demanded that she get an abortion?
“He certainly had a part in me getting pregnant,” she muttered.
Duh. “I mean, did he want you to get an abortion?”
“Of course he did.” Her smile seemed bitter. “How were we supposed to raise a baby with both of us being in college, playing volleyball—with his mother running for president?”
What a nightmare. What would I have done in that situation? I wouldn’t have elected to kill my baby—right? I swallowed. “What happened to you and Dane…after?”
She shook her head and sniffed. “He didn’t want to be with me anymore.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I was damaged goods.”
I gasped. ¡Cabrón! How could he have done that? Didn’t he have any morals? “I’m so sorry. I, I can’t believe he did that. I’ll try not to talk about him around you anymore.”
“Thanks.”
“Does…does the whole team know about this?”
“Amy—she was a senior last year—she was the one who took me to Planned Parenthood. And Maddie made up some story to Coach about why I missed practice for a while.” She picked at the shards of torn tissue in her lap. “I don’t know who Dane told, but I bet Josh knows. And his coach, Phil, looks at me different since this happened.” Her head shot up. “Neither of us is supposed to talk about it, and I’m sure it was stupid of me to tell you. Please don’t say anything.”
I paused. How on earth would I handle this bombshell without talking to someone about it? With a jolt, I also realized how this tidbit about Dane impregnating a girl then dumping her could help my Dad’s campaign. But Nina’s pleading eyes implored me to keep her secret, and I finally nodded. “I won’t. I promise.”
When she gave me a weak smile, I suddenly became aware of my exhaustion again. And hunger. I sighed and gathered my sore-ass body off the floor, feeling lightheaded as I stood. “C’mon.” I reached out and helped pull Nina to her feet. “Let’s hit the showers. I bet Secret Service is wondering where I am.”
As predicted, Frank’s bushy eyebrows lifted to the ceiling when I finally emerged from the locker room. “I was about to send a squad in there to see if you’d collapsed.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m surprised I didn’t collapse after that practice.”
“No joke.” He fell into step beside me. “It was hard to watch Coach yell at you like that. I had to sit on my hands so I wouldn’t grab my gun a
nd shoot the man, just to get him to shut up.”
I grinned. Maybe having Secret Service in my life wasn’t so bad.
“But I could kind of see his point,” Frank said. “You and Nina weren’t clicking at all. Is everything okay between you two?”
“It is now.”
He gave me a questioning look.
I sighed. “She told me something that happened between her and Dane last year. She needed to get it off her chest.” Something that rocked my world. When he’d hooked up with Nina, not only had Dane proved he would never be attracted to someone like me—someone who looked nothing like supermodel Nina—he’d also taken zero responsibility for his actions. And, he seemed to be a creepy womanizer to boot.
“Ah” was all Frank said, but it seemed like he wanted to say more.
I studied him as he slid on his sunglasses. He patted my arm in a fatherly way.
We exited the gym, and I let out a long breath, thankful for the lack of media swarming our SUV. I never wanted to see another photographer again. Frank scanned the parking lot and held open the rear door, then climbed in after me.
Allison drove away. “How ’bout some lunch?”
“So they can take more fat photos of me?”
In the rearview mirror, I watched her forehead crease. “I thought Dane helped you feel better about that stupid photo.”
I glanced out the window. It was starting to rain, which made me want to cry. “He only makes things worse.”
Chapter 12
OUR AFTERNOON FLIGHT was sunny and smooth until we neared the Highbanks Regional Airport. That’s where things got interesting. Rain pelted the plane’s small windows, and winds buffeted my mother’s private jet.
“I thought they said the weather would clear by the time we arrived.” China frowned.
Brad blew out a breath. “One thing I learned on military ops: Mother Nature’s a finicky bitch.”
I tried to maintain my tough act, but all I could picture was the CNN headline: Presidential Candidate’s Son Dies in Small-Plane Crash. I felt the tightening of a Lucia-sized panic attack in my chest. My consternation must have leaked onto my face because Brad said, “Relax, girlie. Your mother has good pilots—they’ll divert to another airport if they need to.”
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