“I hate that he’s right,” Rowan says nodding.
“Of course I am. We were all off today. It happens.” Barrett raises both arms out to his sides.
Vaughn scoffs, not bothering to show his disagreement. “It shouldn’t happen. Not this late into the season. We were lucky we pulled it together in time.”
Barrett eyes the guy next to me carefully before he lets his gaze slide over to me. My skin crawls as he takes in the scene—Vaughn’s hand on my inner thigh, me hugging his bicep.
Slowly, a grin spreads across the goalie’s face.
“Ooooh. Now I see why your head wasn’t in the game today, Collins,” Barrett jokes. “You got a new girl.”
Vaughn growls low in warning. Barrett doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. My skin pricks with a hint of embarrassment. Not at being with Vaughn, but at being the target of Barrett’s taunting.
“Wait. Aren’t you and blondie best friends?” he asks me, as if it’s suddenly just occurred to him. His stare moves from me to Claire and back again, and then he laughs maniacally.
I don’t respond, though a thousand retorts sit on the tip of my tongue. It feels like a trap, like he wants to goad me, and I’m not giving in.
“Well, shit, Lace. Who needs enemies with friends like you?” he asks, still laughing way too hard at his own jokes.
My face heats. I know it isn’t true, but it still hits a nerve.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Claire start to stand and Austin holding her back.
Vaughn’s mouth falls into a hard line and a muscle in his cheek flexes. His grip on my leg tightens. “What the fuck did you say to her?”
“Ah, don’t get all bent of shape. I’m kidding. Laugh, Collins. It was a fucking joke.”
“It was a dick thing to say, and you know it,” Vaughn says, tone low and sharp.
Everyone else is quiet, waiting to see what Vaughn will do. And what he does is glare so icily that even I shiver.
Barrett holds up his hands defensively. “Damn. No one has a sense of humor anymore.”
He walks off, muttering something about Vaughn needing to fuck his way out of the bad mood.
I can’t tell if Vaughn hears him, but his expression stays the same: pissed.
Conversations slowly start back up around us.
“I’m sorry,” Vaughn says to me.
My cheeks are still hot with embarrassment, but I don’t want Vaughn to feel bad. “Barrett’s an asshole. Everyone knows that.”
“Not completely wrong though.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
My brain is stuck on Barrett’s parting words about Vaughn needing to fuck his way out of a bad mood. A dick thing to say for sure, but that has me thinking about sex. Specifically about us having sex. I had always planned to wait until college. I’m not sure why. Something about it being a few years off made me think I’d have time to mature and find the right guy. Now I wonder if I was just using it as a convenient excuse to put it off because I hadn’t dated anyone who I’d wanted to have sexwith before now. And realizing I already want to with Vaughn after a week of kissing is a little frightening.
“I wasn’t playing my best today either,” Vaughn says.
“Oh.” A small laugh slips out. Of course that’s what he meant.
He looks at me curiously.
“Sorry, I thought you were referring to needing to, you know, fuck your way out of the bad mood.”
His brows shoot up and by the shocked look on his face I’d say I, well, shocked him.
