Fight to the Finish (First to Fight #3)(48)

“Thanks, man.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, his dark face flushed with embarrassment. “She just . . . wouldn’t leave.”

Graham clapped the man on the shoulder and shook a little. “I know you wanted to be nice about it, and you’re not the kind of guy who takes pleasure in hurting someone’s feelings. But with that one, you can’t be subtle. We’ve all tried it, and it doesn’t work. Be firm next time. ‘Sorry, Nikki, I don’t want to lead you on. I’m not interested.’”

“Easy for you to say,” he muttered, looking down at shoes. “She doesn’t hit on you.”

Probably because she realized from the start it was a lost cause. She’d chosen the younger guys to work on more. She was a viper.

“You’ve done your duty, so you won’t be in the gym alone again anytime soon. Stick in groups. Do as the antelope do and form a herd against the lion.” Or rather, lioness.

That made the younger man laugh, and he went back to sit down. Graham sat nearby, playing on his phone a little, debating texting Kara and leaving her a message for when she checked her phone between classes.

When Coach Cartwright entered fifteen minutes later, he walked straight for them instead of heading to the coaching office. “Either of you boys drive a blue Camry?”

“Yeah, me.” Graham reached for his bag, automatically digging for his keys. “I didn’t do something stupid like leave my dome light on, did I?”

“No . . . that’s not the problem.” The man’s grim face said it all. “Better come check it out.”

Simpson jumped up beside him. “How bad could it be? You haven’t even been here an hour. What . . . oh, shit.”

Yeah. Oh, shit just about covered it.

Wainwright stood, thumbs tucked in the hooks of his jeans. “I’m guessing you didn’t drive here with that brick through your windshield.”

“Son of a bitch.” Graham stood for a moment, shocked to see the brick sticking half in, half out of his windshield. The glass had spiderwebbed across the entire width, but the shatterproof material had kept the brick from going through completely. He looked around, but what the hell did he expect to find? A crazy brick-wielding cartoon villain dancing around the parking lot, waiting to be found and cackling maniacally? Whoever did this threw it and ran like hell. No questions asked.

Even as he scanned the parking lot, he noted his car had been the only one to be nailed. Everyone else’s was safe. He walked up to the car, carefully watching his step to avoid stepping on any glass, if there was any. But it looked as though the windshield had done its job.

“Why didn’t it go all the way through? Even with the type of glass it’s made of, you throw a brick hard enough, it would go through. They’re shatter resistant, but not shatterproof.”

“Maybe they lost their grip throwing it,” Simpson suggested.

“Maybe they’re huge pussies and throw like a three-year-old,” Cartwright muttered. “Call the MPs, son,” he told Simpson. “Get in there and grab your personals, Sweeney. Documents and all that junk. Anything you don’t want heading to the mechanic when this bad boy gets towed.”

It was still locked, so he had to use his key fob to unlock it. As he reached for the door handle, he froze. Not only had the f*cker tossed a brick at his car, but he’d been keyed as well. Jagged scrapes ran down the driver’s side. “Son of a bitch. If it’s not one thing . . .”

He gingerly picked around the few shards of glass that had come loose from the now-flimsy window, opening compartments and searching for anything he wouldn’t want to lose. Who the f*ck was crazy enough to throw a brick through—or mostly through—his window? And had it been aimed directly at him, or simply another bit of vandalism for the team in general, with his car being the unlucky one?

The MPs showed up ten minutes later, and Graham resigned himself to missing most of the practice to an interview.

The warmth and happiness from his lunch hour with Kara bled out, and when he was finally able to return to practice, he found himself with anger to burn. It fueled him, kept him fierce, and sent him home to take a cold shower after a ride from Greg.

That ruination of his lunch hour with Kara was the worst of it. Not the cost of a new windshield, not the expense of having to rent a car for a few days while they got around to fixing his windshield. The fact that his day had been tainted with something so stupid, so unproductive, so childish . . . after his perfect moment with her.





CHAPTER


14

Kara stared at her phone, willing it to ring. Then willing herself to stop staring at the phone. This was absolutely pathetic.

But he’d said he would call her later. She knew for a fact the guys were done with practice, as Marianne had posted a selfie of her and Brad at the movie theater, seeing the new romantic comedy, an hour ago.

#truelove.

She scoffed at herself. Now she was thinking in hashtags. Her life was going off the rails.

Zach wandered into the kitchen and started poking around the snack shelf in the pantry. Though she hated the expense, she stocked pre-made, pre-packaged snacks for him there, and he knew he could have what he wanted from that shelf without question. She’d prefer him to grab an apple, but when your son was as skinny as hers, and his diet as limited as his, you accepted calories where you could get them.