My head racing with all the things I needed to do, I stared Ten right in the eyes. He gulped but didn’t say anything. Finally, I shoved roughly against both him and Hamilton. “Get off me.”
Both guys released me in the same breath. I stumbled a little from the sudden loss of their restraining hands. Then I took a second to breathe in a fresh gulp and clear my head as I straightened my clothes. When I felt like I was in my own body again, I glanced at the two guys staring at me with blatant concern.
“Thanks for the heads-up. But...” I shook my head slowly. “I can’t let her go down by herself. We started this together. We end it together.”
Ten winced. ?
?How did I know you were going to say that?”
He didn’t try to stop me as I stalked out the door. Both guys dogged my heels, but I ignored them all the way to the locker room. When I shoved my way inside, I jerked to a halt, watching the crowd of guys, hooting and hollering as they clumped together in front of the message board.
I saw red. About fifty dicks were about to die.
But Ten pushed me aside and plowed forward. “Coach!” he yelled. “You piece of chicken shit bastard. Get that picture of me and my girl off the goddamn board.”
With his roar echoing around the room, Ten rushed into the crowd of guys, shoving them aside to reach the picture. Then he ripped it down and tore it into shreds.
Coach Jacobi appeared in the doorway of his office, a clipboard in hand. “You saying that’s you in that picture, Tenning?”
“Yes, sir, I am. Couldn’t you tell by the look on her face? Only I can bring a woman that much pleasure.”
I clenched my teeth and shook my head. “He’s lying.”
“No, they’re both lying.” Hamilton spoke up from beside me. “That’s my arm, Coach.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jacobi exploded. “All three of you fucked her?”
“No,” I bit out, pissed off completely. How dare they tarnish her like that?
“But we’ll all swear to it,” Ten quickly jumped in, not letting me defend her. “We’re a team, and we protect our teammates.”
“Yeah.” Shadow, one of my offensive linebackers, stepped forward. “We don’t want to lose one of our own just because he got lucky with the hottest teacher on campus. So that’s me in that picture.” It obviously wasn’t him. His arm was way too thick to belong to the arm of the person in the picture.
“No, it’s me,” my head running back shouted from his locker. Since his skin was too dark to match mine, he was just as blatantly lying.
A few others jumped in to protect me, and I just stared around me helplessly. They weren’t going to let me go down with the ship.
With a disgusted grumble, the coach ripped off his hat and threw it on the ground. “Fine,” he muttered to the room at large. “I’ll let this go this time since it didn’t make any media attention. But if I hear about one of my boys sleeping with a teacher, or coach, or a goddamn janitor on this campus, he’s getting kicked off my team. I don’t care if I have to get rid of every single one of you. This shit stops now.” Then he stormed from the room. As he left, the guys around me clapped and hollered as if they’d actually accomplished something.
But I had gained nothing. Aspen had still been kicked out of Ellamore. And she’d known it was going to happen, had even taken measures to keep me from getting caught with her.
I whirled around to growl at Hamilton. “You don’t even have one of these fucking tattoos.”
He grinned and shrugged. “The coach didn’t notice, though.”
I shook my head and stalked toward the door.
“Hey, where’re you going?” Ten raced after me.
I spun to point an ominous finger at him. “Just stop right now. You might’ve kept me from confessing, but you’re not stopping me from this. I have to find her.”
“But what about training?”
“Fuck training.”
***
I tried her office first. Save for a desk, computer, and empty bookshelves, the room was completely bare. Cold, hard dread settled in the pit of my gut as I glanced around for even the slightest sign of her existence. But even her quote board was gone.