Talkin' Trash
Page 40

“Do you want honesty, or do you want me to sugarcoat it?” he asked.
I snorted. “Since when did you sugarcoat anything that you’ve ever told me?”
He shrugged, then let me have it with both barrels.
“I think that both of you are too stubborn and bull-headed to see what’s right in front of your faces. You’re trying to protect yourself, while he’s trying to protect you. He won’t watch his own back because he’s pulling double duty making sure yours is covered. He won’t ask for help. He’ll ruin his career and possibly get himself hurt in the process. While on the other hand, you’re fighting so hard, sabotaging your own relationship, because you don’t want to get hurt like your mother was twice.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he continued speaking before I could get a word out edgewise.
“I think that you are incredibly naïve. I think that you’re fighting something that’s inevitable. You both love each other. You know damn well that he didn’t cheat on you. Plus, all those hospital photos of him looking like absolute shit are the result of him being drugged.”
Everything inside of me stilled.
“What did you just say?” I tilted my head and gave him a look that clearly said exactly what I was feeling.
Terror.
“I said that he was hospitalized for drugs in his system. It was clear to everyone and their brother that what happened to him was the result of Tantor’s scheming and conniving. I’m just surprised as hell you didn’t force him to tell you what the hell had happened.” He shook his head. “I’m honestly more disappointed in the way you didn’t react. I thought for sure that you would’ve been a whole lot more pissed off that Tantor fucked with the club, again, via Linc.”
It felt like a bomb had just exploded in my mind.
“He was DRUGGED?!” I screeched, standing up so fast that I knocked the entire coffee table back a whole foot. “By that woman in the pictures?”
Steel’s eyes regarded me for a few long moments.
“Yes.”
“Because of Tantor?” I confirmed.
He nodded without saying a word this time.
“And he knew, all along, that something had happened?” I asked. “He knew that he was violated, and he didn’t tell me?”
“From what I understand,” my mother said softly, “you’ve been avoiding him like the plague.”
I had.
I’d turned my Google Alerts off. I’d avoided social media for two entire months, not wanting to see anything that had to do with Linc James and his lying self—though, I guess, lying was a relative term. He’d lied, of course, but not about anything that had to do with cheating. He hadn’t lied and then allowed me to think that he had.
He hadn’t even tried to get me to understand!
He’d let me believe the lie, but why?
“Why did he allow me to believe that?” I asked carefully.
I remembered all the times that Pru had looked at me oddly over the last month. When I’d almost break down and go on to social media to see what Linc was up to on his fan page. To just get a tiny glimpse of the man that had broken me into so many tiny little pieces.
She’d gone out of her way to help me be strong. She’d even given up her own social media account!
All the sneaking around on her phone, as well as the covert glances, and having her father talk with my landlord all made a sick sort of sense.
She was in on it.
Everyone was in on it.
I allowed myself to be shoved into a dark closet and had nobody to blame but myself.
Skirting around the coffee table, I walked to my room and said over my shoulder, “Feel free to hang out. I have something to take care of.”
Steel started to laugh. “That’s the girl I know and love.”
***
Let’s just say the next thirty minutes didn’t go the way I’d planned.
Firstly, with the way I’d been dressed, I’d never intended to leave the house. Hell, I hadn’t even meant to go outside and check the mail.
Had I planned on going outside, I definitely wouldn’t have worn my shortest, tightest, most comfy shorts I owned. But, as it was, I’d put them on this morning planning to not go anywhere. They were honestly not much more than a pair of slightly longer boy-cut underwear.
Hell, I had to wear a thong with them just so the hem of the panties wouldn’t show along the bottom of the shorts.
Secondly, I wouldn’t have been wearing Linc’s jersey that he’d gotten me the year that I turned seventeen.
It was an old one from his college days and fit me like a glove.
I’d put on quite a bit of weight since those days and had grown two boob sizes.
Needless to say, it fit me more like a crop top if I was doing anything in it that required my arms to lift in the air.
I’d felt so blah lately that I hadn’t done my hair in at least three days, and I was on day four of not washing it.
Granted, it did look good up in a messy bun, but that was it.
Oh, and let’s not forget to mention I had zits from hell on my face.
I had no clue what had happened in the last two months, but the goddamn things had popped up, one after the other, until I had a bad one at least once a week. The moment that one healed up, another would replace it somewhere else on my face.
Luckily the one I had right now was on the lower part of my jaw and easily covered up by a smattering of concealer.
But, having left the house in a rush, I hadn’t been able to cover it in my haste to leave and get to where I was going.
It was only when I was pulling into the parking lot and parking that I realized I had no freakin’ clue how to get into the stadium.
Did they sell tickets at the gate?
Figuring it was worth a shot, I snatched my phone and my keys off the seat of my car, and then bailed, barely managing to lock the car with my key fob in my haste to get where I was going.
It was only when I arrived at the gate that I realized I didn’t have my wallet.
Shit.
I pulled up my phone and started to pull up my Apple Wallet thingamajig as I waited in line to get to the woman behind the glass.
She smiled at me, taking me all in when I arrived.
“I need one ticket,” I told her.
She smiled. “Tickets are sold out but for the front row seats, and those are about a thousand dollars a pop…”
I swallowed back the cry of alarm that threatened to spill out of my throat and offered her my phone. “Do you take Apple Pay?”
She nodded, a smile on her face. “I do. You pay right there.” She paused. “What’s your name?”
I gave it to her, and her mouth dropped open.
“Oh!” she cried. “You don’t have to pay then. You have tickets that have been waiting for you at each home game for two years! I’ve always been wondering if I’d ever meet the infamous Conleigh Reins.”
She quickly did something on the computer, and printed out tickets, before handing them to me.
All the while I looked at her with bafflement.
“Enjoy your game. Do you know where seat 36A is?”
I had no clue, which I indicated with a shake of my head.
“It’s front row, middle of the field, and at the fifty-yard line on the home team side.” She pulled out a map and started to draw a line with a Sharpie marker to help me find my way. “Oh, I’m so glad that you’re here! Enjoy the game!”
The woman’s smile was infectious, and I found myself smiling back even though my heart was pattering like a battering ram in my chest.
But the moment I got into the stadium and saw all the people, I had a mini panic attack.
That was until I heard Linc’s name called over the loudspeaker as a particularly bad hit took him down, and then saw him on the big screen along the top of the opposing side’s stands lying there unmoving.
That’s when I truly panicked.
Before I could give it much thought, I was practically running down the stairs.
I’d made it to the front of the stands, practically at my seat, in less than five minutes.
It took me longer than I would have wanted because of all the goddamn people. Even worse, I’d spilled something on my tennis shoes as I’d hastily passed a man carrying four cups of beer.