Page 114 of Play For Me

His subtext is clear—I put her privacy at risk.

“There isn’t enough evidence here for me to get you dismissed from the program,” he goes on, and relief crashes through me. Before I can get too excited, he goes on. “But you will not be working with Ransome anymore. I’m not risking it.”

I swallow hard. I should be happy, I know that. This could have gone a lot worse. He isn’t completely kicking me out. But the idea of not being able to help her through this recent injury scare turns my stomach leaden.

“Who will take over with her?” I ask. I hope it’s Kelly. Jeff, the other student trainer, is way too meek. Cecelia will walk all over him.

“Me,” Devon says. “It makes the most sense after the scare with her knee.”

I nod, feeling a little better. She seems to respond well to Devon, though I know she doesn’t trust him as much as she trusts me. She won’t be as comfortable being honest with him or asking for help.

God, I fucked up. We only had to get through two more weeks of the regular season. What if switching trainers right now, when she’s in the midst of recovering from her sprain, fucks with her ability to play? The idea that my carelessness could affect her season makes me sick.

“For the rest of the regular season, you’ll be picking up the slack with some of the other players,” he goes on. “You can meet with Jeff and Kelly to get their training notes.”

They way he phrased that has me sitting up straighter. “For the rest of the regular season?” I ask.

That’s technically the day clinicals end, but most teams will give the student trainers the option of continuing to help out through the playoffs, should their teams make it.

Devon’s expression is cold. “I’ll re-evaluate before the tournament begins.” He jerks his chin toward the door, clearly dismissing me, and I rise on numb legs.

“Barnes,” he calls once I’m at the door. I look over my shoulder to see him staring at the files on his desk, not meeting my eye. “Good job keeping her off the leg this weekend. That couldn’t have been easy.”

If he’s saying he guesses I was with her at her house—in her bed—all weekend, I don’t want to stay to find out. So I mutter a quick affirmative and speed walk out of the office.

I leave the soccer facility feeling numb. It could have gone so much worse. He could have kicked me out right then and there. But I have no idea what this is going to do to my grade or if he’s going to talk to my advisor. And if he decides that he doesn’t want me back for the conference tournament, there’s just no way to spin that. It’s going to be obvious the head trainer hasn’t been pleased with my work.

But worse than all that is how shitty I feel about not being able to help Cecelia through the rest of the season. I know what it means to her. I know how scared she is that things will go wrong. And I went and fucked everything up all because I couldn’t keep my hands off her when I knew Devon and the team doctor were nearby.

The restof the day is kind of a blur. It’s hard to concentrate on my classes when my brain is still back at Devon’s office, going over and over how badly I fucked up. The team has a weighttraining and tape review session this evening and I wonder if Devon will tell her then, that he’ll be taking over her treatment. I wonder what her reaction will be.

I should have figured out a way to tell her myself. I could have skipped a class—it’s not like I got a lot out of sitting there in a numb daze anyhow. But I guess I’m too much of a chickenshit to tell her how badly I messed up.

It’s a relief to get home after classes. I haven’t looked at my phone all day but I know I’m going to have to call her eventually, and I need to try to get myself calmed down before then. This is definitely the kind of thing I could shut down over, and I don’t want to do that to Cecelia.

But my plans of sitting in a dark room for a few hours are thwarted when I get off the elevator on my floor and see who’s standing outside the door to my apartment.

“There you are,” Brent Barnes says, and I freeze in place. “I’ve been calling you for weeks.”

I blink at him, praying that I’m imagining his presence. But no. My father is standing right there, wearing the same expression he always used to give me—frustration and barely disguised disgust.

“Dad,” I say, my voice tight. I’m struck by the sudden, insane urge to run away. To literally drop my backpack and just take off in a sprint. Anything to avoid what I’m sure is going to be a miserable conversation.

“Oh, so you do remember that I exist,” he mutters. “The fact that you can’t pick up your fucking phone says otherwise.”

“I’ve been busy. School.” I hate the sound of my own voice. I can hear it changing, hear it going dull, all the emotion sapped out. I learned to do this at a very young age—to do everything I could to hide my feelings from my parents. To hide myself.

“Yeah, well, if you would have picked up the phone you would have known that I was planning on being near campus this week and wanted to talk to you.”

“Right,” I mutter, trying not to let his tone hurt me. It’s no different from how he usually talks to me. My father has always made it clear that my intellect is endlessly disappointing to him.

He stares at me for a minute, like he’s waiting for something. Finally, he throws his hands up. “Well?”

“Well what?” Even as I say it, there’s a part of me that’s wincing.Don’t ask so many stupid fucking questions all the time,a memory of his voice rails in my head.Can’t you just figure it out for yourself for once?

I try to never, ever ask my parents questions.

“Well,” he grinds out. “Aren’t you going to open your fucking door so we can go inside?”