Wildcard a westbrook eli.., p.10
Wildcard : A Westbrook Elite Standalone, page 10
Is he still here?
“How many more times can I repeat myself?” I asked. It was borderline ridiculous.
The man snapped his notebook shut and left. I didn’t watch him go. Good riddance.
“What happened?” Lars asked when he was gone.
If it had been anyone else, I’d have told them to get bent. But it was Lars, so I told him, the words practically memorized because I’d informed the cops so many times.
When I was done, Lars frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Never better,” I muttered, drinking more of the latte. Trauma coffee was pretty good.
Feeling Lars’s quiet stare, I sighed and lowered the cup from my lips. “It was a shock, you know?”
“Practice is canceled!” Coach bellowed suddenly, following it up with a serenade on his whistle.
We turned to see a group of Elite standing in the door, gaping.
“Pass the word!” Coach yelled again. “Night practice instead.”
Groans rose to the rafters.
“You want us to practice tonight, then get up and practice again in the a.m.?” Jamie complained.
“You want some cheese with that wine, Owens?”
“Cheese sounds kinda nice.”
Lars snickered, and I hid my smile behind the coffee.
“So we done here?” Ryan asked.
Coach gave him a baleful look. “This doesn’t even include you, Walsh.”
Ryan said nothing, just crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
“Go,” Coach told everyone. “Don’t be late tonight, or you’re all swimming ten extra laps.”
I started toward Landry, and Lars fell into step beside me. When we approached, everyone shifted, making room for us, and an odd sort of comradery befell me.
They’re here for Landry. And because they’re nosy bastards.
“Carb-loading mode activated,” Jamie announced. “Wes, bro, call up Kruger and Prism and tell them to meet us at Shirley’s.”
Everyone started off, but Landry remained rooted in place, her eyes lingering on me.
I glanced at Lars. “I’m not gonna make breakfast, bro. I have something to do.”
His blond head nodded. “If you need anything, just text.”
“Thanks.”
When he was gone, I stepped so close to Landry she had to tilt her head back to look at me. “How about that conversation?” I said.
She nodded, and I reached out to palm the small of her back.
“Rush.”
I looked up at the sound of Coach’s voice.
He was coming over to us with Barney and Fife in tow. “It seems you left out a few things when you were talking to the police,” he said, a knowing glint in his eyes.
“What things?” Landry asked from my side.
“Things you should have disclosed,” said the officer I’d been speaking with earlier. Then, as if he were part of some sort of movie and in the running for a Golden Globe, he put his hands on his belt and leveled a stare on me. “We’re gonna have to ask you to come with us.”
My stomach knotted. I glanced at Coach, the familiar burn of betrayal in my gut. “I hoped you were different,” I said, quiet.
His expression flickered but then went back to the same ol’ status quo. “That’s my daughter.”
I nodded.
“Come where?” Landry asked, looking between everyone.
“Nothing to worry about, ma’am. You’re free to go,” the officer replied.
“I’m not worried about me,” she snapped. “I’m asking about Jason.”
Oh, that pierced. Actually, it ran through me like a newly sharpened sword. When was the last time anyone worried about me?
“He’s just gonna come on down to the station with us. Answer a few more questions.”
She gasped. “You’re arresting him!” This little siren stepped in front of me and spread her arms as if she could create a wall to protect me.
I bled out. Everything I was drained away and became hers.
It didn’t matter if, once she knew, that look left her eyes. It didn’t matter if she turned her back like everyone else.
I loved her.
I’d love her still.
“Now, he’s not being arrested. We just want to talk.” The officer placated her.
“You already talked.” Landry demanded, “We’re done.”
We. More than just me. We.
My body swayed toward hers, my fingers grasping at her hips to palm them and draw her back against me.
Coach made a sound of protest, but I ignored him. How could anything else matter with her here?
My nose buried itself in the hair at the side of her head. The soft strands tickled my cheekbones when I inhaled. Her scent was cherry vanilla. I was addicted.
“This is impeding an investigation—”
My head snapped up, and the officer’s words died on his lips.
“Don’t talk to her,” I growled. “Don’t even fucking breathe in her direction.”
The man reached for the handcuffs on the belt he loved to stand there and caress.
Landry gasped, threw her arms out to the sides again, and plastered her back against my front. I smiled into her hair.
She was fucking adorable, and I loved her so hard.
“I’m gonna go talk to these idiots, baby,” I whispered against her ear.
She spun, wide green eyes finding mine. I had never once associated the color with life, but now it was all I could think of.
She started to say something, but I caught her face between my palms. “I’ll find you later.”
She shook her head.
I leaned in, not giving a rat’s ass that everyone was staring. Let them. I had to soak this in—her in—because the minute I walked out of here, Coach was going to take it all away.
I kissed her cheek, letting my lips linger long enough that Coach started to snarl. Pulling back, I laid them right against her ear, speaking low so no one else would hear.
“Be a good girl and let me go.”
Her lower lip quivered. I thought about sucking it into my mouth. I sure as hell wanted to. My hands fell away when she stepped to the side.
Turning to the officers, she threatened, “If he’s not back in an hour, I’m coming to the station.”
As far as threats went, it was kinda weak, but my chest swelled, the intensity of how much she made me feel threatening to take me down.
“Well,” I said to the officers, “let’s get this over with.”
I followed them outside and let them put me in the back of a squad car. The whole time, all I could think about was how I was leaving Landry with her father, the man who knew the truth about me. And that in an hour, there would no longer be a we. I’d be back to being just me.
14
Landry
“My office. Now,” Dad ordered as I watched the squad car drive away with Jason in the back. They were treating him like he was a criminal. Like he was the one at fault here.
What was worse? Jason was barely fazed by it, acting like it wasn’t anything new.
I glanced at the dummy still lying beside the pool and frowned. The cops mentioned that maybe it had just somehow fallen into the water. But even if that were possible—which I thought was a bunch of crap—why would it be dressed in a wig and clothes? Didn’t that seem a little suspicious? Or a lot suspicious?
“Landry!”
Groaning, I turned to where Dad stood darkening the locker room door with his impatience and glower.
“I’m coming.” I relented, accepting my fate and resolving to just get this over with. I knew he told Elite I was off-limits, and yeah, I guess he meant it, but I really didn’t think he’d be this incensed about me dating one of his swimmers.
You aren’t dating. The thought was almost as shocking as it was true. It seemed laughable and even borderline unimportant. We weren’t dating. Hell, we barely spoke.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter my father seemed to think Jason was trouble and the cops had just hauled him out of there. There was something about Jason I couldn’t deny. Something about him that made me want to submit to him from the moment we’d met.
It went beyond dating. It went deeper than superficial knowledge I didn’t even have. Those things were details. Details my heart didn’t seem to want or need.
I couldn’t exactly say that to my father, though. He’d burst a vein. And I wasn’t even sure I could explain the way Jason made me feel.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded the second I stepped into his office.
I didn’t bother closing the door because no one else was there.
“What?” I was calm even though he was practically frothing at the mouth.
Folding my arms over my chest, I noticed the lack of warmth in my body. My clothes were damp from being held by Jason, but even cold, I didn’t want to change. It was as though even though he’d left, part of him was still there with me.
“You know what,” he said, and I could practically hear his teeth grind.
“I found what I thought was a body in the po—”
He made an aggressive slashing motion in the air, and a frustrated sound vibrated his chest. “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.”
I dropped my arms at my sides. “I like him,” I said, not mincing words.
“You like him,” Dad parroted and then rubbed a hand over the trimmed stubble shadowing his jaw. “You barely even talk to him.”
“I’ve seen him a few times outside of practice.” I hedged. Sometimes I wondered if Dad knew life existed outside of this pool. Coaching was his entire life. His veins were probably filled with chlorine.
He was a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor who lived in a townhouse he’d barely furnished because he spent the majority of his time here. In my entire twenty-year life, he never dated anyone that I knew about. The only person he’d ever made room for, along with swimming, was me, something that went over so well with my mother. Not.
It wasn’t like he didn’t have the opportunity either because I knew he did. All my life, people told me how “hot” my dad was with his short dark hair, hazel eyes, and scruffy jaw. Even though he switched from competitive swimmer to coach a long time ago, he still had the body, toned but not too bulky, standing just under six feet with long limbs and broad shoulders.
“It stops now,” he declared as though he were laying down the law. Like he could demand my heart stop beating.
I felt my temper spike. “I’m twenty years old, Dad, not twelve. You can’t tell me who I can and cannot date.”
“The hell I can’t!”
I made a frustrated sound and threw up my hands. “You act like I picked up some drug dealer on the wrong side of town. Jason is one of your swimmers! Swimmers that you personally interview before letting them on the team. He’s Elite, for crying out loud. He goes to Westbrook, Dad. One of the most prestigious colleges in this country.”
He made a gruff sound, his voice lowering now that mine was raised. “He’s different.”
“Different?” I scoffed. “Why, because he came here from Pembrook, one of the other most prestigious colleges in this country?”
Dad’s attention zeroed in, his stare scrutinizing my face. “What do you know about him coming from Pembrook?”
I know I still wear the Pembrook hoodie he gave me that night. I know I wish it still smelled like him.
I shrugged one shoulder. “Just that he transferred from there.”
I probably wouldn’t even know that if it weren’t for the hoodie I’d sneezed all over and then stole.
Dad seemed to relax, and I remembered I had questions too. “Why?”
“Why what?” he asked, gruff, his gaze averted.
Suspicion rolled over me, clouding all my other feelings. “Why do you say he’s different? Why are you really so against me dating him?”
Yeah, yeah, not technically dating, but I had to speak in words my dad would understand.
He bristled at the D-word, and I held up my hand. “Why, Dad?”
“Just stay away from him is all.”
“No.”
His head snapped up, nostrils flared, and an incredulous look filled his eyes. “What did you just say to me, young lady?”
Ooh, he brought out the young lady.
“If you want me to stay away from him, then give me a reason. A good one.”
He sighed like he was tired and yanked the chair from beneath his desk. The wheels squeaked. Then the chair itself groaned when he threw himself into it.
“Can’t you just take my word for it?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his face.
If it was anything else, anyone else, then probably. But it wasn’t. “So you can rat him out to the cops but refuse to tell your own daughter?”
“I didn’t rat him out,” Dad growled, thumping his hand on the desk.
Oh. He feels guilty.
“I have an obligation to do what’s best for this team. I can’t just put one man above the rest of Elite.”
I perched on the edge of a chair on the other side of his desk, sitting as close as I could. “I understand that, Dad. You’re a good coach.”
He made a sound but said nothing else.
“You’re a good dad too.”
That brought his head up. He stared across the desk to where I sat, and I offered him a small smile. “You’ve always been there for me. Even when Mom made it hard.”
The whites around his hazel orbs widened in surprise.
I laughed beneath my breath. “I told you I’m twenty, not twelve. Though, even at twelve, I knew. I mean, she packed me up and moved to Ohio, making it that much harder for you.”
“She had a good job offer,” he said, the words weak.
“You don’t have to do that,” I told him. “You don’t have to defend her to me.”
He looked like he’d swallowed a basket of bees, yet he plowed on anyway. “Your mom and me—”
“We can talk about that later.” I interrupted. “This isn’t about that. It’s about Jason. And me.”
“There is no you and Jason!” he rumbled.
“There is,” I rebuffed gently. “I don’t want to defy you, Dad. But there is.”
“He killed a girl.”
I sucked in a breath. “What?”
“Back in California. That’s why he had to come all the way here. He can’t show his face there anymore.”
Denial, swift and pungent, slammed into me. Jason was a lot of things. Aggressive, dominating, gruff, and yeah, even a dick.
But a murderer? No way in hell.
A vision of the police putting him in the back of the cop car flashed behind my eyelids. Is he really a criminal?
Denial overpowered those nasty thoughts. “If that were true, he’d be in jail right now. Not at Westbrook.”
“There wasn’t enough proof. It was all circumstantial.” Dad went on, his words like a punch to my stomach. “His parents hired some bigshot, undefeated defense lawyer, and he was never convicted.”
I reached toward my throat, horror making it tight. “There was a trial?”
“No. There wasn’t enough evidence for it. He walked.”
“Thank God,” I whispered, mind reeling from this revelation.
“What?”
I waved my hand in the air, almost an afterthought. “A trial would have been so hard for him.”
“I tell you he was suspected of murder, and you worry a trial would hurt his feelings!” Dad stood so forcefully his chair slid back and slammed into the wall. “Stop thinking with your hormones, Landry!”
I jumped to my feet too, to meet his hot stare across the desk. “I’m not thinking with my hormones!” I yelled and then pressed a hand to my aching chest. “I’m feeling with my heart!”
“Fucking women,” he muttered under his breath.
But I heard, and I gasped, slapping the hand just holding my heart onto his desk. The force of the slap made my skin prickle and sting, but I ignored it just as I ignored the tears tingling my eyes. “This has nothing to do with me being a girl. If you’d ever been in love, you would know that.”
He sucked in a sharp breath, and too late, I realized what I’d said. My mind reeled. Silence reigned. I didn’t backpedal, though I sorely wanted to. My God, how could I just blurt out something like that? Something I hadn’t even thought about.
It didn’t matter. Suddenly, that just became a detail too. Like love wasn’t even the biggest thing between us.
If not love, then what? my heart whispered.
I don’t know, I whispered back.
The vein in his neck was throbbing. “I tell you he’s a murderer, and you tell me you’re in love?”
“He’s not a murderer!” I argued. “You just told me they didn’t have enough proof.”
“The evidence is pretty damning.”
I dropped into the chair, my chest heaving, my breathing coming in quick gasps. “Then why did you let him come here?”
Something Jason said to him earlier echoed through my mind. I hoped you were different.
My heart ached for him. My body burned to find him, to tell him I was on his side.
“Honestly,” Dad said, finding his chair and pulling it under him once more. “When I met with him, I didn’t believe it either.” He got this faraway look in his eyes as if remembering the interview he had with Jason. The interview he was probably in town for over winter break when I met him.
Suddenly, his dark mood and the listless way he floated at the bottom of the pool made so much more sense.
I’m trying to remember. Hadn’t he said something like that the night we met? He’d been so mad at me for making it hard for him to think.
“I thought he deserved a second chance.” Dad pulled me out of my own turbulent thoughts, reminding me we were having a conversation.
“But you don’t believe that now?” I questioned.
“I believe that the safety of my daughter and the other swimmers on this team comes first.”
“That’s such a cop-out!” I shouted, springing to my feet once more.
“There was a body in my pool!”
“It was a dummy.”
“The girl he was accused of murdering? She was found in a pool too.”
