Sin

15 | The Fifteenth Chapter

The Fifteenth Chapter - You Never Know What Could Happen.

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Surprisingly and unsurprisingly, the next time I saw Tyler he seemed fine. Well, more than fine, actually, considering he was back at soccer practice and had decided that the only way to deal with his emotions was by avoiding them. Hence why he had taken to doing the impulsive.

Yes, that's right. Flirting.

On any other day, believe me, I would've loved every second of it, and probably wouldn't have stopped myself from doing it right back. But this wasn't every other day. This time, I knew that Tyler could cry, and feel emotions and open up to someone. I knew that there was a gentle, vulnerable guy in there somewhere, and that was what stopped me. That was what ruined it for me.

He was trying to hide that guy from me.

"Teddy!" I called, receiving the ball almost straight away from my teammate before passing it on to the next player that called my name for it. We'd been doing drills all afternoon, and I was completely exhausted. It had been a bit of a rough day; Tuesday was supposed to be my favourite day, with Psychology and all that, but that was scrapped when my teacher didn't show up and got replaced by a sub for the day. And I would've done my work, but she insulted my hair in a very subtle but upfront way, so I decided to rebel against her by drawing a little picture of her getting eaten by sharks instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing. It was quite cute; I'd wondered if I should even get it framed.

"River, pay attention!" someone called across field, and I blinked, looking around before realising the ball was slowly rolling towards me before someone else reached it and took it away from me from my left. I let out a sigh of frustration at letting myself get distracted and chased after my player, waiting for Zoe in front to feign right to take the ball so I could sweep in and kick it out from between his legs as he dodged her. I passed the ball on to her, and she proceeded to score.

"Sorry," I called back across the field at Jack, waving a tired hand in his direction before I jogged off to the side, taking a seat on the bench. I grabbed my water bottle, guzzled most of its contents and then checked the screen of my phone. No notifications.

Sighing again, I chucked it to the side with my bottle before getting up and retreating back to the team circle, where everyone was now sitting on the grass doing some last stretches before the end of the practice.

"Alright, we've been working really hard to get good for this next away game at the end of next week," Jack announced as we all did different stretches. I pushed the bottoms of my feet together and brought my heels close to me, pushing my elbows down on my knees. "I know we're going to nail this one, guys, but we need to keep our attention on the game if we really want to make this work. River? What was going on out there? You completely zoned out."

I blinked, realising quickly that Jack was talking about me and the whole team turned to look at me, some faces curious and some sympathetic.

"Right, sorry guys," I replied, frowning. "I just got lost in thought for a second, it won't happen again."

"Good, because we need you out there," Jack continued, raising an eyebrow at me. "We need everyone out there, giving it their all. No distractions, okay? When you're out on that field, it's just the game. Nothing else matters. Got it?" After a lot of agreeable responses and murmurs, Jack clapped his hands together loudly and grinned, his green eyes sparkling with that same familiar humour again. "Good. Okay, good job today, guys. Remember, next training is only on Thursday; Friday's was moved to today. See you guys then."