"Scott! I thought you said you'd stop playing like a rookie! Now show me that you meant it!"
The black rubber pellets from the turf embedded into my skin fell off of me unceremoniously as I stood from my most recent play, my muscles aching more than I'd ever experienced in my entire life.
Usually if a team won, they'd have the next day off, but not us. I mentally cursed myself for choosing the Patriots when a scout from the Cowboys had approached me before I made my final decision but I didn't have a say once the draft pick rolled around and I was chosen in a much later round leading to less money but my manager reminded me that some important names in the game came from late round picks.
I had been hazed, ridiculed, tortured and finally accepted onto the team, completely forgetting about my old rival as he hadn't even been drafted whatsoever.
The old hauntings of Marnie and Drayton whispered away after my first practice and the litany of paparazzi that followed my almost every move. One flit on the internet proved that I wasn't over exaggerating the attention surrounding my name, and I was just happy that they hadn't traced me back to my parents, the old secrets settling in my bones like an ancient home.
Soon enough it was time to hit the showers and I was more than thankful, an ice bath calling my name.
My post-practice ritual over, I nursed a few cuts and scrapes, noting a particularly strong bruise coloring the side of my cheek from a nasty collision from the game the night before, and winced while sucking air through my teeth as I examined it in the bathroom mirror back at my home...more like penthouse, the earnings that had already flooded into my bank account since signing a nice bonus to the pain accompanying my job.
It still hadn't hit me that I was a professional football player, something I had dreamed about my entire life, even after all the paparazzi, screaming fans in the stands and countless women throwing themselves at me.
I had partaken in the company of a few women since my new status, but it had never filled the void in my chest that had never dissipated since she left.
I knew we were in the same city, so close yet so far away. A quick look through her socials told me she was thriving at Harvard, at least that was how it seemed. She looked different, though, with a sad twinge to her features in some of her pictures that showed her face.
Amalia was deceptively harder to pinpoint, and once I went searching for her just to find more information on Lydia I realized that I was treading on dangerous stalker territory but it was almost like I couldn't help myself.
Radio silence since she'd left for Harvard and it was like a piece of me was missing, a broken raw emptiness that threatened to drown me in its tangled existence.
Was she as ruined as me? Was she still going over every stolen kiss, caress, impulsive action that they'd indulged in before that gruesome breakup?
Rafael was in prison, Nate was a few hundred miles away and not a problem anymore and her problematic family the same distance away, so I didn't understand her silent need for justice against those people.
The man that had hurt her when she was so young, Christian and his father, were both going down, in the eyes of the press and in the courts, but it was like she still couldn't help herself. She was on a tear, and it was a path that I couldn't follow her on. I couldn't be involved with whatever she was up to, especially if it was illegal. I had to protect my image otherwise the reporters would swarm and find out the truth of my background, something that I'd never even really shared with her despite the countless secrets she'd let me in on.
I dreamt of soft, caramel skin and long dark hair tickling my senses while I drowned in the sapphire pits of her eyes.
Civil procedure and torts class was droning and awful, but I somehow managed to keep my glazed eyes open for the duration of the period, stifling my hideous embarrassment when the professor asked me a question and I couldn't answer it.
He huffed and went to the next person and I had to remember to actually study instead of staking out the bars for predators.
My mother was paying for my schooling despite my obvious protestations but there wasn't really anything I could do about it- demand the dean to give me the money back so I could pay for it with my own? No, that hardly made sense, so I just allowed her to do it so I'd at least have money for rent for myself and Amalia. What good was going to Harvard if I was homeless while attending?
I pledged to pay my mother back every cent when I landed my first job after school. I tried to forget that law school was about three years long and cringed as I realized that it would take forever to pay her back a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the entire tuition but I would cross that bridge when I came to it, just glad that my freelance ad writing job was enough to pay the bills and only took me about a day to write ten ads equalling close to ten to fifteen thousand dollars for the entirety of my work. It almost felt criminal, but an easy job was more than hard to come by and I wasn't about to start complaining.
I could hear Amalia starting the coffee and shrugged my heavy comforter off of me, not forgetting to notice the dried tear stains polluting my pillowcase and sighed as I realized that I wasn't anywhere near close to being fine, as I was anything but.
I was working myself to death at law school while trying to be a vigilante protector of innocent girls at night, all while taking care of my handicapped best friend and still trying to keep my sanity and therapy sessions, not to mention dealing with my mental trauma from being abused as a child, not being believed by my entire family and then being abused again by my fiancee for four years, and then running away from the one man besides my father who was good to me...
He was more than good to me. He was everything and I threw it all away, and for what? Some chance at changing an unchangeable social issue that some denied even existed to begin with? Rape culture- and I refused to allow myself to think that even the smallest of my actions wouldn't make a difference, they had to make a difference otherwise breaking up with the greatest man I'd ever come across would have been all for nothing.
I refused to let it be all for nothing.
I didn't miss the tabloids and his picture splayed across the front with multiple different women- women who could put my image to shame, and I didn't blame him. I'd broken up with him, and he had a right to move on, but when there was no prospect of me ever being able to move on from him myself, it stung more than a little.
He needed to move on from me, because I wasn't stopping until I had some way to take Nate down, and the start of that was continuing to follow Layla on social media to make sure that she was still okay and he wasn't abusing her like he had done to me. I knew she was a downright awful person, but she didn't deserve to be treated how I had been by him- no one did.
I rolled my eyes as an internet alert notified me of another spotting of the elusive Emmett Scott. I didn't know why I kept such close tabs on him, especially when I was trying to forget him, but it was easier than remaining in the dark.
It was a picture from the night before, his eyes covered by a baseball cap and hand in hand with a dark skinned, dark haired girl with legs for miles, her native features not dissimilar to my own...
They'd attended a particularly exclusive night club to celebrate the team's win around midnight and I had only taken a breath when I realized I'd found my new hunting ground.
Was it subconscious? Maybe, but I didn't care.
I'd go that night, and this time I wouldn't let my target get away. I felt around the drawer for my taser and pepper spray, willing my racing heart to calm down, for the prospect of seeing the man that I was still desperately in love with once again did strange and twisting things to my insides.
I was going to the Royal in downtown, and I would be going uninhibited.