I reached for the door, and Faith grabbed it as I went through. She was right with me.
“Okay, I get it,” she said. “Insults, insults, insults. I got it. I was more than a bitch to you in the beginning, and deserve this. I do. I’ll take it, but I mean it when I say that Coach is going to have us run together. He wants us to push each other even more, and if it’s just you and me, he thinks that’ll happen. If we run with the others, there’s more distraction.”
“For you.” I turned right down the hallway.
She was still hot on my heels. “You too. You get distracted because of your friend Taylor. You’re distracted when you worry about her.”
“Courtney and Grace can run with her.”
“You know what I mean.”
I kept going. The door was just in front of me.
“Hey!” She stopped behind me, her voice getting the attention of other students as they came and went from the classroom.
I braked. “What?” I looked back to her. “What do you want me to say?”
“That you’ll run with me.”
“And why should I do that?” I started toward her, one step at a time. I knew when she clued in that maybe she should be wary of me. Her head straightened. Her eyes grew alert, and she began to edge backward.
“Why not? We’re running mates.”
“We’re on the same team. Unfortunately.” I advanced one more step.
She began to look around, but for what or who, I didn’t know. She stopped backing up and tucked her hands behind her back this time. Her head lowered a little too, but not much. She chewed on the inside of her lip.
“What are you saying, Samantha? That you won’t run with me? You don’t have a choice. We’re on the same team.”
“You’re right. I don’t have a choice about that, but I do have a choice if I’m going to run with only you. I don’t trust you. What part of that sentence don’t you understand? I know why Coach wants us to run together, but it has nothing to do with my distraction. I’m a pro at shutting things out. If I want to go, I will go. No, he wants me to help you. He wants to hone in on your competitiveness, and if the two of us run together and only together, only one person is going to be helped by that arrangement. You. You’ll get better.”
She swallowed, her throat moving up and down. She seemed timid, then suddenly it was all gone. Her eyes closed to slits, and she almost hissed back at me. “Because of your race time on Friday, this university now has an Olympic hopeful. Do you know what that’s going to do for this school? For money? They can blast that all over their promotions. It’s huge. And because of my increased race time, it’s proven that I can get even better than I have been. You’re helping me, yes. You will continue to help me, yes. You’re going to do that just by being on the team, but if you think you have a say about running with me, think again. This isn’t Coach’s idea. This is coming down from his boss’s boss. You will run with me, or you won’t run at all. I’m here to save some time because we both know that when Coach brings this to us later today, you’ll have the same fight we just did. But you’re new to college sports. You don’t know the politics that go on behind closed doors, and trust me when I say that you’ll find it’s easier to accept that you’re going to be running with me alone than fighting it in the long run. And you’re wrong. I will help you too, because the better I get, the more you’re going to hate it, and the more you’re going to push to destroy me.”
Matteo and Nate rounded the corner and faltered to a stop.
There were other guys with them, but they went around them. I waited. Logan and Mason came next. They stopped just behind where Faith stood, all four of them wearing varying frowns. Matteo seemed mostly curious. Nate was wary, casting furtive looks to Logan and Mason beside him, and the last two: the same dark frowns they wore when they dealt with Adam were on their faces again. This time, their target was Shaw.
She had no clue. She was almost brazen, finishing what she’d been saying and placing her hands on tiny hips. “Got it?”
Now it was my turn.
“You don’t think I know what politics are?” Did she not know who Mason was? He was almost as high up on that totem pole as an athlete could go. “If you think I don’t know how to play ball, you’re stupid. No matter what anyone says, I’m not helping you. And no one’s going to make me. Got that?”
A silence had fallen in the hallway. I knew where it came from. The sight of Mason, Logan, Nate, and Matteo drew attention and slowly, everyone else stopped to watch whatever they were witnessing. Half the attention was on Faith and me, the other half on the guys.
Faith frowned, realizing the attention we had drawn, and she turned around.
“Oh.” Her mouth fell open a little.
A part of me was smug. If this attention unnerved her, she really was an idiot declaring I was the inexperienced one. Politics was politics. I met Mason’s gaze and knew that if orders came down that I didn’t want to follow, I’d find leverage to get my own way. Eventually. That was manipulation 101.
Mason’s eyes shifted to Faith, and she gulped, feeling the full force of his stare. She never had before, and I remembered what that felt like. He could stare at a person, making them feel like they were stripped bare so he could see into their soul and thoughts. Faith tried looking for an escape. She scooted over two steps, but the crowd didn’t budge. She was locked in place now. We were completely surrounded.
“Are you here to threaten, order, or intimidate Sam?” he murmured, his voice almost a weapon in itself.
She didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if she’d registered that he asked a question. She only blinked a few times.
“Which one?” he asked again.
She jumped, and one of her hands rose to pat her hair absentmindedly. “Wha—huh? What did you say?”
Logan snorted. “Yep. You’re a real threat. Sam should be quaking in her boots.” He shook his head. “Don’t bother, brother. She’d piss her pants if she played in our league for even a day. The girl’s a sheltered, ignorant princess.”
“Thank you.”
He snorted again. “That wasn’t a compliment.” He stepped forward as if he were going to pass her to head into the classroom, but he paused next to her and raked her up and down. He shifted his bag to his other shoulder. “Mason and I could’ve grown up sheltered, just like you. We chose not to be because we don’t respect people who put their heads in the ground. In fact, we loathe those kind of people.” His disdain was clear. Then he brushed past and winked at me. The crowd parted, and he walked into the room.
All heads, or it seemed like all heads, swiveled in Mason’s direction.
“If you give Sam one more threat, one more order, one more time trying to intimidate her, you’ll learn how inept you are,” he said. “We’ve held back because she asked us to. We won’t anymore. You hurt one of us, we hurt you back.” Then he went past her too, but unlike Logan, he took my hand and pulled me with him.
The crowd remained parted, and as easily as Logan had gone, Mason and I went through too. Logan was in the back row where a few other guys had sat down, but when we walked up the stairs, those guys stood up and moved down. They sat in front of us, and our entire group took the last row.
I moved past Mason and Logan to sit at the end. Everyone was openly staring, or trying to hide their staring. I had a feeling this was how it was going to be for the rest of this semester.
Then the professor came in and announced, “Welcome to Sports Psychology.”
“Hey.”
I was heading to the library after lunch when Logan came up and fell in step next with me. “Did you eat?”
“Not really.”
I went into the food court. I tried to eat. I really did, but left after staring at my food for thirty minutes. The whole confrontation with Faith was weighing on me. I’d felt a momentary break after Mason’s press conference. I didn’t have to worry about what might happen to him anymore. I wasn’t worried about Faith trying to use Nettie against us, but the whole fight with her didn’t have to happen in the first place. I regretted allowing myself to be baited, but then again, I was also sick of people trying to push us around.