With Every Heartbeat (Forbidden Men #4)(36)

I didn’t appreciate it.

“Change of plans,” Coach called. “First stringers take four laps and hit the showers. Everyone else line up for a couple more plays.”

Ready for a hard run to help jog off the sudden tension I was feeling, I took off toward the track circling the field. A lap later, I found myself running alongside Ten and Noel. Needing to exhaust more energy today than usual, I wondered if Noel would be able to stay a couple minutes longer with me after we ran. Coach had told me that if Noel kept working with me one-on-one to be a quarterback, I might even take over the spot of the second-string quarterback. That was the position I really wanted, so it’d be a double bonus if I asked Noel for a few tips before we finished for the day.

In my opinion, he was a better coach than Coach. He was more patient and could pick out a person’s strengths and weaknesses. He knew exactly what kind of things I needed to work on the most to improve. The guy really was my mentor; I looked up to him more than about anyone I knew.

Case in point: when he’d realized his younger brothers and sister Caroline were being neglected by their mother, he’d driven hundreds of miles down to where they lived and gathered all three of them up, then brought them back to Ellamore to live with him. That was exactly the kind of family devotion to earn my respect. Made me wish I’d had a big brother when I was growing up.

But as the three of us jogged side by side, I noticed Noel was particularly quiet today. Usually, he and Ten carried on the conversation while we finished our end-of-practice laps. But Ten was the only one talking, describing this girl he was pursuing in his history class, and Noel wasn’t responding at all. I usually only listened, so Ten wasn’t too concerned about my lack of input, but he finally did scowl at Noel.

“What the f*ck is wrong with you today?” He nudged his elbow into Noel’s forearm.

“Hmm?” Noel ripped his gaze away from the baseball diamond not far from our practice field. “You know, if you guys won’t tell me which baseball player had that picture of Aspen on his phone, I can find out other ways.”

Ten groaned. “Jesus, man. Can’t you just let that drop? I told you we took care of it.”

Noel shot him a glare. “Would you be able to let something like that go? He was spreading around indecent pictures of my woman. Damn it.” He stopped running and ran his hands through his hair as he continued to stare daggers across the football field to where the baseball players were also having an afternoon practice. “It was one of those f*ckers...right...over...there.”

Eyes hardening with intent, he began to stride that way when Ten caught his arm. “Whoa, man. We haven’t finished our laps yet.”

“Screw the laps. I need to kill that bastard. I need him dead. Right now.”

“No, you need to screw your f*cking head on right. It won’t do your woman any good to expose yourself, which would, in effect, expose her. Now keep running.”

Noel gritted his teeth, shook his head as if to fight off his rage and then started running again. Ten and I fell into step on either side of him.

“I wonder if the f*cker got the picture from Marci Bennett.” I knew Marci was the girl who’d taken the picture of Noel and Aspen together. She’d gotten Aspen fired...because she’d wanted Noel for herself. “What if she’s spreading them around to everyone? What if—”

“She’s not,” Ten assured him.

Noel and I glanced at him together. “How do you know?”

He snickered. “Because the picture on that phone was a fuzzy shot of what the Coach posted on the board in the locker room. And besides, I deleted all the pictures off Marci’s phone...when she was putting her clothes back on.”

My mouth fell open because that was the first I’d heard of this.

“You f*cked her?” Noel exploded. “The bitch who ruined Aspen’s career? What the hell, man?”

“Hey, I needed a reason to get access to her phone. And I’ve learned they’re more willing to let you take naked pictures of them after you screw a dazed smile onto their face.” He shrugged. “Actually, the me-photographing-her-nude thing was her idea, but hey...she was handing me her phone, so who was I to say no?”

When both Noel and I continued to stare at him as if he was insane, he lifted his hands. “What? I did it for you, man.”

“You keep any of those naked pictures of her?” Noel finally asked.

Ten choked out an incredulous sound. “Really? You want to see her titties after what she did to your woman?”

“No, asswipe. I want to use them as leverage in case she had any more of me and Aspen that you didn’t get off her phone.”

“Oh. Well, I’m pretty sure I got them all. She was pissed as f*ck when she realized what I did.” Ten shrugged. “And anyways, I’m already one step ahead of you. I forwarded the least flattering ones of her to myself and I’m already using them to keep her quiet.”

“Damn, man,” Noel murmured as we finished up our mile run. “Thank you.”

I was a little impressed that Ten had gone to so much work for Noel, too. He had his annoying moments, and a lot of them, but he could always be counted on in the friend department. Which made me feel kind of crappy.

I hadn’t done anything on that level to help Noel. In fact, now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure if I’d done anything for him at all.