Kickin' It (Red Card #2)(41)

“Maaaaatt!” she yelled, smacking my back, my ass, every piece of skin she could access.

“Gooooaaaalllllll!” I boomed once we reached the goal, and then I tossed her on her feet and ran around her in circles. “Ahhhh, and the crowd goes wild!”

She put her hands on her hips, laughing. “Matt Kingston, did you just score with me?”

And because I was too happy to lie and completely uncensored with that same happiness, I just shrugged and whispered, “I wish.”

She didn’t show any surprise or shock, just sauntered over to me like she was about to give me everything I wanted and needed in that moment. She wet her lips. God, I wanted to taste her. It was at the top of my bucket list and would be even after I did it.

A task I would never tire of.

Something that my heart and body would never consider completed.

A box that could have a million checks next to it and still have room for one more.

She leaned up on her tiptoes and brushed a soft kiss across my lips, then swiped the fucking whistle from my right hand and jumped up and down. “WINNER!”

I clapped. “Wow, good job, cheater.”

“It’s not cheating if you were planning on it anyway. That’s what I like to call opportunity.”

“Really?” I nodded. “Opportunity, huh?”

She kept dancing, so I tossed her back over my shoulder while she blew the whistle then dropped her on her ass next to the bag of balls. “Guess that means we’re starting with burpees. We were going to start with drills, but someone stole my whistle.” And my heart, and my everything. “I want thirty.”

“I thought whoever held the whistle held the power, like the Ring but not near as flashy?” she grumbled as she started her first burpee.

“Power is always equal between us.” I shrugged. “The whistle was just a reason to get you to fight back. If you lose your fight, you’ve lost the game.”

She stopped doing her burpees, chest heaving. “You’re too smart.”

“Yeah.” I stared her sweaty body down. “That’s what I’m feeling now.”

After ten, she pulled off her shirt.

And I was welcomed back into hell again.





Chapter Twenty-One PARKER

“I can’t move my legs!” I yelled at Matt. We’d had two more days of training, and the guy had gotten more and more grumpy as the days went by. Sunday’s practice had been so playful and fun.

Then Monday happened.

Willow warned me not to get in his way.

The man was like a bear who found out all the honey sources in the world had been completely depleted.

Like a vampire who didn’t have his True Blood.

I even gave him back his whistle, wondering if his attitude was some weird thing about a girl beating him.

But he barely even said thank you.

And now?

Now I was kicking balls toward his face with glee.

He’d called me slow.

And then he asked if I was on my period because I was getting more tired than usual.

The nerve of the guy, I mean really.

I kicked a ball toward his junk and shrugged when he deflected it and shot me a glare. “Sorry.”

“Was that necessary?”

“What crawled up your ass and died?” I fired back, kicking another ball. “You’ve been like this since Monday. It’s Wednesday, and my tryouts are this Sunday. Could you try to be more . . . cheerful?”

“No,” he said in a deadpan voice. “This”—he pointed to his face—“is all the cheer I have right now.”

“Is it Willow?”

“No,” he growled.

“Is it me?” I stopped kicking. “You can tell me if it’s me, just tell me what I need to do, I can do better. Just—”

“Shut the hell up!” he roared. And then his face fell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

I put my hands up toward him.

He flinched. “It’s not you, it’s Erik.”

I dropped my hands immediately. “Wh-what?”

“He’s called me three times about you. The last message was to warn me against girls willing to spread their legs for opportunity, and just this morning there was a letter sent to the house with your name on it, no return address. It looked suspicious so I opened it, and inside was a picture of you with your college team with a heart drawn around your face.”

The breath whooshed from my lungs, and I fell to the ground on my knees.

“I didn’t delete the messages and I kept the letter,” he admitted, walking over to me and putting an arm around my shoulders. “And you know I don’t believe him. I already let the commissioner know what he was doing, and they’re looking into it and his past behaviors to see if anyone else has come forward. And nothing. Nobody has said anything—”

“I’m not lying!” I yelled. Tears poured down my face, and when I swiped them from my cheeks, my hands came away wet and gritty with the dirt from practice.

“Parker, look at me.” He gripped my chin. “I know that, don’t you know I know that? This isn’t about you. This is about the other girls who are silent. Because if he’s bold enough to do this to you, he’s bold enough to do it to others, and what makes you think he isn’t threatening them? Isn’t making them think that he can make or break them? And not just women your age, young girls too. I just found out Sunday night he taught an Olympic-development soccer camp last week. I can’t . . . I can’t imagine him at a camp with underage girls, it makes me want to vomit, and all they have is speculation, since I haven’t mentioned your name other than the threatening messages . . .”