Page 131 of Forever Relentless

But it had been none of those things. It was possibly worse. He wanted me to spend my Saturday night with them. He wanted to tell me he expected me to be ‘on duty’ tomorrow night after the spring game.

Socialize with the team. The team I was apparently part of. Kill me now.

“It could still have been worse,” I muttered as I headed back to the training field.

I didn’t get paid to work Saturday nights. But I didn’t have any reasonable argument against him. He was intimidating. I mean, head coaches usually are. They wrestle with the testosterone that’s in the locker room on a daily basis. They needed to be hard-asses.

A group of males were like wild turkeys. Hard to herd and deaf to reason.

I’d lived with Mason. The thought of him multiplied by fifty? Eighty? It made me shudder.

On the surface, Coach Sutherland was the exact same guy as Mason’s high-school head coach. Or his middle-school coach. A hard-ass who knew how to keep a firm line with a bunch of turkeys.

But I knew he knew what happened to Mason was bullshit, and I damn well knew Sutherland knew, or at least suspected, who attacked Tiffany. And because of that, I would never be able to think of him as anything other than a shithead who needed to be held accountable.

“Where’ve you been?” Diana asked, coming out of a room and giving me a surprised look.

“I was with Coach Sutherland,” I mumbled. “Getting told I was needed at the after-party tomorrow night to capture content for the team’s social media.”

She glanced at me. “Is that part of your job?”

“I didn’t think so.” I let out a sigh. “I’ll check with Gaby. I sure as hell am getting paid for it.”

“Yeah.”

She walked beside me, and I blew out the breath. “Oh, for God’s sake, Diana, I know, okay. You think he can keep anything a secret? The fact that you were in his closet in his garage was a big clue.”

She stopped walking, and so did I.

She’d pissed me off, and I wasn’t in the mood to play nice. “You have trouble with your boyfriend, sort it out with him. Don’t use my bro — don’t use my friend as a revenge fuck, okay?”

“Jesus, Briar!” she hissed, looking around.

“Don’t ‘Jesus’ me. You’re too old to play games, and you’re too old for him!”

She stepped back. “Yeah? How’s Matthews?”

I bit back my sharp reply. I didn’t like the sneer on her lips, or the look in her eye.

“Fuck you. I’ll see you later.” I walked away and then turned back. “And also, fuck you again.”

I stormed out into the field and ducked as a ball came flying toward me.

“Shit!” I heard Dante shout. He jogged over to me. “You weren’t supposed to be there, sorry.”

I felt like screaming. “That’s the problem. I’m not supposed to be here.” I strode past him and marched to my bag, where I’d left it.

“Matthews, you’re pushing that sled like it’s heavy, fucking move it!”

I spun to look, not caring that I was obvious. Noah was here? He’d been benched. “Why is he here?”

One of the second team had been running laps and heard me as he slowed to a walk. “Because the spring game’s tomorrow and he’s a beast.”

I watched all six-four of him push the sled further down the field faster than anyone. His muscles in his legs were working hard, his arms were locked, biceps bulging, his head was down, and I was pretty confident he’d push that piece of equipment right off the corner of the earth if he could.

A beast? Yeah, I could see it.

“But he was benched,” I repeated stupidly.