Iced Out (Leighton U #1)(23)
He watches me approach, brown eyes giving absolutely nothing away. Which is unsettling. Normally, the guy’s easier to read than a picture book, at least when I’m pissing him off.
“We need to talk,” I tell him as I come up beside him, fiddling with a twenty-pound plate to keep my hands occupied.
He looks amused as he watches me, a stupid little smirk on his lips. “Don’t sound so ominous. I might piss myself.”
I roll my eyes. Why would he make anything simple?
Of course, Braxton has to make it even more difficult by choosing that moment to start walking back toward us, cutting this conversation off before it can even begin.
Goddamnit.
My attention flashes back to Oakley, and I give him the most imploring look I can muster. “Just meet me outside the back doors to the locker room once you’re done here, okay?”
He blinks, flattening his lips into a thin line. And he stays like that for a few seconds, clearly in debate as Braxton reaches us.
“All good, Reed?” Braxton asks, a frown creasing his forehead when he notices me. Ever since the whole debacle with the damn drug tests went down—and I came out of the whole thing clean as a whistle—he’s been leery of me.
“We’re good,” I answer for Oakley, still pinning him with my stare.
Five minutes, I tell him with my eyes. Just give me five fucking minutes.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity and the world’s most uncomfortable silence, he nods before giving me a clipped fine. Then he just walks away, Braxton in tow, like the whole thing never happened.
God, he’s such a fucking asshole.
Even if he does have a major lapse in judgment by saying yes to this, one of us is sure to end up dead before it’s all over.
Following his lead, I head in the exact opposite direction and do my best to garner some focus for the rest of our training session to work off some of my irritation, along with the new sense of anxiety floating through my nervous system.
From Ashes to New’s “Light It Up” blares through my AirPods as I grab a seat in front of the cable row machine, going through the last of my reps for the day. The muscles in my back are on fire with every pull of the bar, but it’s nothing compared to the searing sensation I feel on the back of my head from Oakley’s eyes burning a hole right through me.
I’m still feeling them until the moment he leaves for the locker room over an hour later.
Ten
Quinton
This is so stupid.
Those four words are stuck on repeat inside my brain as I pace the hall near the locker room’s back entrance. I’ve been waiting for Oakley for twenty minutes now, and now I’m wondering if he agreed to meet me and then ditched out because it’d be funny.
Newsflash, it’s not.
He was still in there after I’d showered, though. Talking to Coach in his office. So there’s still a chance he’s being kept by whatever they need to discuss. So I keep waiting for another half an hour before he finally appears from the locker room.
He glances up, and the curious yet weary expression on his face lets me know he wasn’t expecting me to still be hanging around this late.
“Wow, you’re still here,” he muses before brushing right past me toward the exit.
“I told you we needed to talk,” I say, falling in step right beside him.
“So talk.”
Be nice. If you bite his head off, he’ll never even consider it.
It would be a lot easier to say if I knew he was actually listening. Looking me in the eye to know just how serious I’m being about this, no matter how crazy it might sound.
Grabbing his arm before he reaches the set of double doors to the parking lot, I drag him in the other direction.
“What the—”
“Somewhere private,” I hiss, pulling him down a deserted hallway leading to who knows where. But we’re sure as hell less likely to be overheard by some random person down here than by the main exit.
Once we’re about halfway down the vacant corridor, I come to a halt and face him.
“Private enough for you?” he asks, a fair amount of snark in his tone.
My jaw ticks, another bolt of irritation zapping through me, and I realize this will be a lot more difficult than I thought. Maybe even impossible with the way we constantly take digs at each other.
Plus, I don’t know how to broach this other than blurting my theory out and hoping for the best. Which, with my track record, won’t do much good.
“God, this is insane,” I mutter more to myself than him.
He shifts, leaning back against the wall, and I look up to find a frown line creasing his forehead. “Not exactly the way you wanna lead into something, de Haas.”
“We need to start hooking up more.”
I wince at the words tumbling out of my mouth in a spectacular display of word vomit before I have the chance to figure out the right way to phrase it. And believe me, I’ve spent every minute since he walked into the weight room this morning trying to piece my thoughts together well enough to pitch this idea to Oakley.
And this was not the execution I was hoping for.
Fucking smooth. How can he resist that offer?
Oakley blinks a couple times, studying my face. I do my best not to let my confidence falter under his stare, but it’s hard not to feel completely transparent right about now.