“I’m gonna go. I’ve given them enough pictures, and I have to get back to the team.”
I hug her tightly. “I’ll see you later, Mac Attack,” I tease.
She just winks and jumps down.
I head to the locker room entrance, where I found her before. A few reporters are hanging around. I want to make sure I can get her out of here without a lot of fuss, but she never comes out.
“She’s not here anymore,” Hendrix tells me when she comes out. “I’m not sure when, but she left already.”
I nod in understanding. I know exactly where to find her.
Chapter Forty-Three
~MAC~
Ileft the stadium without even letting Danny know I was gone. I figured he would figure it out and I was right. I can feel him before I see him. It’s the way his intense eyes watch me from his spot along the fence. The creaking of the fence may have given it away that someone is in my backyard, but that could have easily been Cassie or Amelia. Both girls were really worried about me when I said I wasn’t going out with the team. Cassie reminded me that hiding wasn’t the answer. I decided it’s safer and better for me if I just hang out at the house.
Danny is here now, so it’s not like I’m alone.
Thump.The leather ball slaps the wooden rebounder again, and I go to set it up again. I couldn’t send it again because the ball rolled up my leg and landed funny on the bounce. Not what I was hoping to have happen. The game wasn’t what I was hoping to have happen either, but here we are, with another loss. Honestly, I don’t think anyone figured we would win that game, but those are the games I think we have the opportunity to shine. Show them what the Blaze is made of. But that’s not what happened tonight.
“What are you doing, baby?” he finally asks.
I turn and see he’s no longer leaning on the fence but is makinghis way over to me. I take a moment to look him over. He’s wearing casual gray shorts and a navy-blue Blaze T-shirt. Sandals are on his feet. He looks so casual and sexy. I want to walk over to him and capture his lips in mine. But that’s not what’s going to happen. He’s staring at me so intently right now. I know he’s trying to figure things out on his own so that he can better talk to me.
“I’m just getting some touches in,” I tell him.
We both know that’s a lie. He calls me on it.
“I can see that. But why? You had a good game tonight.”
“I didn’t shoot,” I tell him, reminding him of what he asked me when he saw me at the end of my match.
He nods, slowly bending down so that we’re eye level. “What’s going on with you? Why would you not shoot the ball? I even heard Watts yell at you to shoot. Fuck, Jase asked you to shoot too.” He reminds me of the shouts that I had heard from the sidelines.
None of my fellow players seemed to be worried about the fact that I wasn’t shooting. In fact, they seemed to be pretty happy that the ball was being passed around—or that I was getting yelled at. It makes the tears form in my eyes again, and I hit my knees, a loud sob breaking through.
“Baby.” He comes rushing over to me and gathers me up in his arms.
I want to collapse the whole way, but he’s not letting me. Instead, he holds on to me as he guides himself onto the grass and pulls me into this lap. He rocks me back and forth while I wail and cry.
“You’re okay. You’re okay. I promise you. Everything is going to be okay,” he keeps repeating to me.
“I don’t know about that,” I sniffle out when I can finally speak.
“You’re going to have to give me more,” he says quietly, stroking my hair and rubbing my back.
I sigh and pull back so that our eyes are connected. “My teammates think I’m a ball hog. They think I don’t pass enough and that I get all of the attention. So, I was trying to let someone else get a shot in tonight. I was passing more. I was trying anything to not make it seem like it’s the Mac show.”
“Who thinks this?” he asks. “It can’t be your friends, right? None of them are this cruel.”
He’s right, none of them think this or are that cruel. I shake my head. “No, it’s none of them. It’s the other members of the team. Some who play and some who don’t. They think I take too much of the attention away. Pull the focus or something.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to go out tonight? You didn’t want to draw too much attention to yourself?”
I nod. “Yeah, I thought it might be best if we weren’t always being watched by the people around us. Or by someone who might take a video and write another article or something. I just don’t know how to win this.”
He holds me and rocks me back and forth. “It’s going to be okay. I promise you that. What do your coaches think about all of this?”
