Living Your Lie (boyxboy)

Chapter 31

"You gonna be okay out there?" Nathan asked me.

I shrugged, staring out over the lacrosse field. I watched as a bunch of guys wearing Panthers jerseys ran around, practicing drills and warming up. I felt my throat growing tight when my eyes landed on the familiar movements of one player in particular.

I quickly turned away and put on my gloves. "I don't know."

"Don't let him get inside your head. You've worked hard for this and he doesn't deserve you."

"It's not about that," I said. I was trying to decide if I regretted my intimate conversation with the guys a few days ago about everything that had happened between Dante and me in the last year. "I just haven't talked to him since everything came out. I don't know what's going on with him."

"Well he's not your boyfriend, so you don't have to care."

"I wish I didn't care," I mumbled. "But I can't help it. He was drunk that night, and I'm sure he didn't actually want things to go down the way they did. I know he wasn't ready; it's why we didn't work out."

Nathan clapped me on the back. "Talk to him after the game or something then, if you have to. But right now, get in the zone, because we need to fucking win this!"

I swallowed and nodded, wishing I could be as enthusiastic as he was. I bent down and picked up my lacrosse stick and said, "Let's run passes."

As we stepped onto the field, Dakota and Greyson jogged passed us. Greyson nodded his head at me and said, "You better not fuck this up, Sinclair."

Nathan smacked my arm, "Don't listen to him."

"Whatever," I said, pulling a ball out of my pocket and dropping it to the grass only to scoop it back up, cradling it. Nathan jogged away from me, halfway twisting to face me as he moved and I tossed the ball to him, relieved when it went exactly where I'd meant it to go and he caught it with ease.

Two hours later, I was standing in front of Coach Blackwell and panting for air. I tore my helmet off and wiped the sweat off of my face with a towel the team manager had tossed to me.

Coach was yelling at us to get our asses in gear as I gulped down some water. We were using our final timeout and there were only fifty seconds left in the game. So far, I had been thanking all the gods that ever existed that no one had said shit to me or Dante about our past relationship.

Instead, I'd been running my ass off all over the damn field, trying to anticipate everyone's moves. I was a midfielder, so I always had to have my eyes open to figure out what needed done. Usually I was good at it--I mean, I was the captain of the team for a reason--but today was as tough as it always was when we played Dante's team.

Dante was an attacker and he was fucking fast, faster than me even though I hated to admit it, and time and time again throughout the game I was struggling to keep up with him and intercept the passes his teammates threw to him. I'd failed a decent chunk of my attempts to do so and by halftime coach had assigned Greyson the task of staying on Dante's back, which I was all too glad for. He was faster than I was too.

Now, we were almost done with the game and Coach was freaking out on us. I knew he wanted us to win this one just as much as we did, but I honestly didn't see how that was possible. The panthers had always been a more skilled team than us no matter how hard we tried or how much practice we put in. And today, that was proving to be true again as we were a point behind them and the clock was so close to running down to nothing.

"Sinclair, I want you and Giraud both on Williams, give him hell, you hear me?"

I nodded and the ref blew the whistle. I put my helmet back on and ran back out onto the field. Greyson and I positioned ourselves so Dante would be in between us.