Page 18 of Playing for Keeps

Adrenaline spiked through me.

No way. Not happening.

My chest heaving, my lungs screaming all kinds of nasty names at me, I chased him down. Luke was fucking fast. I’d always had to eat his dust when it came to sprinting. I’d been okay with coming second to him at school athletics days because in cross country the order was reversed, so it balanced out.

No way was I coming second to him now.

There was one last mud ditch between us and the finish line.

Here was my chance.

I didn’t slow down, stampeding through the knee-deep mud as if it were a tiny puddle. It flew everywhere, coating me in yet another layer of mud. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered but beating Luke.

We were neck-and-neck as we came out, the finish line only a few feet ahead, and then Luke stumbled, his leg splaying out and catching my ankle.

I fell, Luke crashing on top of me.

My breath fled, which I could forgive because I had a 220-pound rugby player crushing my lungs.

For a second I lay there, panting desperately as I tried to force some oxygen inside me. Luke’s weight was like a collapsed wall on top of me, his rapid breathing warm against the back of my neck.

Suddenly he climbed off.

Blinking, I sat up, then hauled myself to my feet.

“What the fuck?” I hissed, stepping toward Luke, getting right in his face.

“Sorry. Accident,” he grunted.

“Like hell.”

We stared at each other, neither of us backing down. His face was covered with mud, the whites of his eyes the only visible contrasting color, yet somehow his face was still so familiar to me. I knew every line and angle as well as I knew my own. His dark eyebrows. His straight nose. His chiseled jaw and cheekbones.

I was jolted out of the staring match by Jacob coming up behind us and slapping us both on our backs.

“Come on boys, let’s hit the showers, eh?”

* * *

It turned out there was nothing like a mud run to make you appreciate the invention of the shower. I had mud in crevices I didn’t even want to think about.

As I stood under the hot spray soaping myself, my thoughts snagged on Luke. Was the mud run a snapshot of what things would be like between us this season? Should I talk to him, try to clear the air? Yeah, perhaps, but he really wasn’t giving out the vibes of someone hanging out for a deep and meaningful.

I traced my finger along the rough skin on the inside of my wrist. It was a scar from when I was nine. One of my mother’s dumb-as-fuck boyfriends had left a stove element on after he’d been spotting, and I’d burned myself trying to heat up a can of beans.

Stoned off his head, the guy had freaked out about me howling with pain, so I’d gotten the shit out of there and ridden my bike to the only place I could think to go.

Luke had been in bed, but I’d tapped on his window and he’d climbed out and bustled me over to the garden hose.

I could still remember his face in the moonlight as he cradled my hand under the cold water, his pajama bottoms getting soaked through.

I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around me.

There was no sign of Luke. He’d obviously hightailed it out of the shower blocks.

Jacob was on the other side of the room getting dressed.

“Pretty sure I need an archaeologist to dig out all the mud,” I said. “But I don’t think anyone would volunteer for that excavation team.”