Small Town Hero - #ONC 2024

Chapter 13

Seeing Layla walk away wounded with tears rimming her eyes felt like someone had driven a stake through my heart, plucked it from my chest, and plunged it into a furnace. I wanted so badly to chase after her, catch her and tell her I was stupid and mistaken, and that I would go to the dance with her because that's what I wanted to do more than anything in the world, but I couldn't. I had to think about her greater good, her well-being, not just the way my pulse pattered when I noticed her flushed cheeks and hazel eyes when we were under her Trans Am. Not just the way I felt when we sat on the floor in her garage, holding hands. It was after a life-and-death situation, I know, but I still experienced it. I remembered the cute twitch to her lips when she had asked me about Lexa Thorn. I also remembered the way my heart thrummed when she fell on top of me, and how I wanted to kiss her more at that moment than ever before. Truthfully, that wasn't the first time I had imagined what it would be like to kiss her. There had been other moments. I had just suppressed them because I was so smitten with Lexa.

But something happened when Layla turned the corner and disappeared. My heart withdrew from the sizzling flames, the outer shell turning cold and impenetrable like hardened steel. I needed the fortitude and determination to prepare me for the task that lied ahead. The head football coach had put me in this position, and he needed to know how I felt about it. However, as hard as it was to drive a wedge between me and Layla, I considered it far easier than walking into the coach's office and giving him news he didn't want to hear. What I did with Layla, I did to keep her safe, away from me. I couldn't trust myself around her, not knowing if a monster was hiding in the dark places of my heart, waiting to devour her. Honestly, I did Lexa a favor too when I said no to her. Now, I had to march into the den of a predator and confront him, not knowing if he would howl at me and tear me to pieces or sink his fangs into my neck and drain me dry.

I would have the rest of the team to contend with, too.

When the seventh period bell rang, and after hustling to the field house, I knocked on Coach Steele's office door and waited for him to answer. I realized as I stood there that I wasn't afraid of him anymore, at least not in the sense that I was before. I discovered that my courage and self-doubt, after going through so much over the weekend, had grown along with the new strength I'd experienced after taking the pill. Watching Layla walk away made me realize I didn't care what happened to me as much as I cared about what happened to the people I loved. I had to prove, at least to myself, and hopefully to everyone else, especially Layla, that the darkness inside me was not as strong as the light within me. That there was still something good within my heart, even if a monster was gnashing its teeth to get out.

The door swung open, and the coach stared at me with that wolfish grin. "How's my star quarterback?" He gestured for me to come in, and after I did, he closed the door.

"Take a seat," he said as he dropped into his leather chair and looked up at me. As he opened his desk drawer to retrieve the bottle of red pills, the fact I still stood caught his attention. "Is there a problem?"

I swallowed a tiny trace of nerves that had tried to make me tense. Instead, I used it as fuel. "You didn't tell me everything about the pill you gave me."

He frowned. "Did you experience something abnormal after the game Friday night?"

Heat burned my cheeks, twisting them into a snarl. "You could say that. You didn't tell me about the monstrous side effects that came with taking your supplement. And you sure didn't tell me that killing someone, or any living thing for that matter, would make it permanent."

"Woe, woe, woe. Who told you that?"

"Does it matter? Is it true?"

Coach Steele rose to his feet, and as I watched him stand, a coldness fell over him. His lips twisted into a smile, and his brows furrowed into thunderheads. "What'd you kill?"