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“Three. You gonna tell me where you’re going with this?”

“Just proving a point,” Mikey said, spinning back around and dropping into his seat with a laugh.

“Fucker.”

From a few rows behind us, Bogart called out, “Callahan still going on about Wilder?”

“What’s wrong with Wilder?” Koffee boomed.

I hunkered down in my seat, yelling “Nothing” at the exact same time Bell shouted, “Everything.”

I popped back up, spinning to face him. I had my own personal reasons for disliking the guy, but why would he?

“Seriously,” Koffee pressed. “Why all the hate? Kid seems nice.”

“Would you get your picture taken with Kid Rock?” Bell asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Huge grin, one arm slung over his shoulder, the other giving a big thumbs-up?”

Koffee’s mouth opened like he was going to say something, then he closed it and huffed, his grin twisting into a grimace—like he’d caught a whiff of dog shit on the bottom of his shoe. Which wasn’t far off the mark, considering.

“That’s what’s wrong with Wilder,” Bell said, his tone firm as he did a slow sweep of the bus.

When he got to me, he tilted his chin up, and I gave him a small nod of acknowledgment. Then he turned back to Morrison, while I spun back around in my seat.

“Holy shit,” Mikey whispered, sliding down until his knees hit the seat back in front of him. “Is that why you hate the guy?”

“I hadn’t even made that connection,” I admitted. “Though it tracks if you think about some of the brands he’s done deals with.” Deals I’d told my dad made zero sense, but in the context of what Bell had just said, now made perfect sense.

“I hate him because he’s an annoying prick.”

“And because your dad is obsessed with him.”

I sighed. “That too.”

“How many texts today?”

“Three,” I admitted. “Though I haven’t checked my phone in a couple of hours, so who knows.”

The bus drove over a pothole in the road, and Mikey’s shoulder knocked into mine before he straightened back up.

“He still bitching about the Miami game?”

“Yeah,” I breathed out, my knee starting to bounce. “I don’t know why he won’t drop it.”

After Raleigh, there’d been speculation that Bell might be scratched against the Barracudas. No one in the organization was entirely certain where the rumor about a lower-body injury had originated, but the press had a field day with it.

So had my dad, unfortunately, believing I’d be moved up to the first line as Bell’s replacement. “This is it, Hunter,” he’d said when I finally picked up the phone after he’d tried calling me four times. “Don’t blow it.”

In the end, there was nothing to blow—Bell hadn’t been injured, I stayed on the second line, and we lost.

But none of that seemed to matter. My dad had convinced himself there was some grand conspiracy afoot to keep me from what he viewed as my rightful place in the team’s hierarchy.

“What’s his problem?” Mikey asked, digging a granola bar out of his bag. He tore the packaging open with his teeth and tilted it toward me in offer.

I shook my head. It was mostly sugar.

“Fuck if I know,” I told him. “According to my uncle, he was like this when my mom got passed over for the cover of some special swimsuit issue.”

Mikey stopped chewing and turned his whole body toward me. “Do you mean the Sports Illustrated one?” he asked, each word spoken slowly.