Sighing, I look down at the man lying in a fetal position and holding the towel to his face. “What did you do to him?” I ask.
Pierce’s eyes flash indignantly, and he pulls the towel away to yell at me. “Excuse me? I’m lying here bleeding, and you’re asking whatIdid tohim?”
Roman steps in, crouching down to take over for me. “Well, it looks like the bleeding has mostly stopped, so it’s probably not broken,” he says, not sparing much sympathy for our teammate.
“Go get dressed,” Roman says quietly, gesturing to my state of nudity with his chin. Right. There’s blood on my knees and soaked into the white fabric of the towel still wrapped around my waist.
Just then, Coach McCoy storms into the room with Sean on his heels, nearly tripping over Pierce, who still refuses to get up off the floor. Coach McCoy looks down at Pierce, then at me, rage in his eyes.
“What the hell did you do?” He barks down at Pierce.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Leaving Coach and the other captains to deal with Pierce as he dissolves into a full-blown tantrum, I step back into the showers to rinse the blood from my knees and calm my nerves. My ears ring like I took a hit to the head. What the fuck just happened?I’ve never seen Brody like that. And he thought I had something to do with whatever he just punched Pierce out for?
When I’m finally clean again and have pulled on some underwear and a pair of pants, I walk over to where Brody’s roommates, Aaron and Jay, are talking in hushed tones with Fish. Cade notices me heading their way and follows.
“Yo, what the fuck was that about?” Cade asks, making the others look up and notice me approaching.
“That was actually what I came to find out, too,” I say, my tone serious. “Does anyone know where Brody ran off to? I should check on him.”
Aaron’s eyebrow lifts, but if he’s curious why I’d chase after Brody after he just berated me, punched Pierce, then ran out of here, he doesn’t ask. It’d be a normal thing for me to do if I’d been half the captain I should have been this year, but as things stand, I know it seems strange. I can't be bothered to care about what anybody thinks right now, though. I need to get to the bottom of what happened.
“Brody isn’t answering his phone,” Aaron says. “But Pierce?—”
Just as he says his name, Pierce, who has finally made it to a bench and is being cleaned up by one of the trainers, shouts something about pressing charges. “He’s going to fucking regret this!”
“Watch your mouth, Pierce,” Coach barks.
“I’m not saying Pierce didn’t have it coming—” Jay says.
“—but that wasn’t like Brody,” I finish for him. “What happened?”
“Pierce was talking his usual shit. It started with him making fun of how Brody was flirting with some guy.”
That part I know, because I was very aware of the way Brody was so casually affectionate with that pretty boy with the freckles. He taunted me with it all fucking day, and Pierce even commented several times about the way Brody and I were watching each other.
“Yeah, well it didn’t end there. Pierce kept on and started saying some fucked up shit about Brody’s family and his brother?—”
My spine snaps straight. “His brother? How’d he find out?”
Jay’s eyes widen. “Don’t know. Pierce just said he heard some stuff and made a few calls back home. All I know is something finally struck a nerve. I thought he was going to hit Pierce right then and there, but he went and argued with you in the shower instead. Then he stormed out, decked Pierce, and left.”
“Honestly, I probably would have taken a shot, too. That shit he was saying about his family was fucked up,” Cade says. “Who does that?”
I swallow hard and bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste iron. There’s so much I want to say. I want to defend Brody and his family. To tell them that his dad wasn’t some drunk monster, that he was a good man who died in a freak accident that the Jamison family exploited for money and attention. That Davis isn’t some delinquent. That he was a kid swallowed by grief who went down a dark path. And that the happy, funny, friendly Brody they know has been drowning under the weight of it all this time.
But none of that is mine to share.
Jay taps my elbow and gives me a sympathetic look. I try not to read into it, but it feels like he can see through me. “What happened in there, Beck?”
The look on his face, the betrayal, the awful things he said. The tears. I started seeing past my own blind rage and jealousy the moment I saw the first tear track down his cheek. He wasn’t just pissed, he was hurt. Badly.
I nearly choke on the realization. “He thinks I told him,” I say, mostly to myself. My spine straightens. “Has anyone heard from him yet?”
They shake their heads as I’m backing away to grab my phone and shoes. I have to find him. Right now. I have to tell him it wasn’t me, that I’d never betray him like that. More than that, I need to make sure he’s okay.
Aaron gives Jay a look, then chases me out of the locker room. I see Coach talking to one of the officials, and I head across the gym to see if he knows where Brody might be.
