Chapter 25 Game Night
POV: Carly
"Alright ladies, first game of the night. Let's go show them what Black River Academy is made of!"
Carly shook her pom pom in the air and watched her squad erupt around her in the metal locker room. The noise from the crowd outside was already bleeding through the walls and she could feel it in her chest like a second heartbeat.
She loved this part. Always had. The moment right before they ran out, when everything was still potential and nothing had gone wrong yet.
Tonight though, her stomach was doing something that had nothing to do with pre-game nerves.
Two days.
Two days since the taco dinner and Niko's invitation to the music festival and her telling him let me think about it on the stairs outside Degrassi Hall while absolutely already knowing her answer.
The festival was tonight.
The game was also tonight.
Tommy was also tonight.
She pressed her eyes shut briefly and opened them and smiled at her squad and told herself she would figure it out.
She peeked her head through the locker room door. The football team was outside getting their pre-game speech from Coach Tanner, which was mostly just yelling. Tommy was front and center with that expression he got before games, jaw set and eyes focused and completely in his element.
Her stomach dropped.
Not from affection. From guilt.
She let the door close and turned back to her girls.
Whitney was already looking at her from across the room with that expression.
Carly smiled back and clapped her hands twice.
"Let's go."
They ran out into the light and the noise hit her like a wall and her head emptied out the way it always did the moment she stepped onto the track. She found her position and snapped into it and let the crowd and the music and the cold night air of Black River Falls do the rest.
She was fine.
She was completely focused.
Then she saw him.
Under the bleachers.
Niko was leaning against the metal bars with his group around him, leather jacket, a cigarette between his fingers, looking at the field with that expression that said he was present but barely. His friends were loud and rowdy around him and he looked like someone standing slightly outside of a party he was technically attending.
She had never once seen him at a school game before.
She kept her pom poms moving and kept her smile in place and told herself she was not going to read into it.
She was absolutely reading into it.
She thought she caught his eyes for half a second across the distance and felt it in her toes and immediately looked at the scoreboard.
The scoreboard was very interesting.
She focused on the scoreboard.
Then Aurora appeared.
She came from somewhere in the crowd and slid herself under Niko's arm like she had a reserved spot there, offering him the bottle in her hand. He bent slightly to hear whatever she was saying and the corner of his mouth lifted.
Carly's pom poms slowed down by approximately three percent.
She corrected them immediately.
She was not watching this. She was at a football game doing her job and she was not watching Niko Monroeson and Aurora do whatever they were doing under the bleachers.
Aurora went up on her toes.
Carly turned and faced the field and counted the players like that was something she needed to do right now.
"Care."
Whitney appeared at her elbow, voice low. "You're supposed to lead the victory cheer."
Carly blinked. The scoreboard was lit up and the crowd was screaming and she had missed the entire thing.
"Right." She turned to her squad. "Sorry ladies. Shortened version this time. Ready?"
They cheered.
She cheered louder.
She did not look under the bleachers again for the rest of the first half.
At halftime she led the routine clean and sharp and hit every count and felt the crowd respond and that familiar pride settled in her chest the way it always did when things went right.
When she finished she let herself look.
Niko was watching.
Not the routine. Not the band. Not Aurora who was talking beside him.
Her.
His jaw was working slowly and his arms were crossed and he was looking at her the way he looked at things he was trying to figure out. Still and focused and completely unbothered by the fact that she caught him.
Then he was gone.
Just gone. One second there and the next the space under the bleachers was just his friends and Aurora and an empty spot where he had been standing.
She stared at it for a second.
Then the final whistle blew and Tommy made the last touchdown and the field erupted and she made herself move.
Tommy found her in the chaos, pulling his helmet off and shaking the sweat from his hair, grinning at her with that full bright smile she had fallen for in the first place.
He scooped her up before she could say anything.
She laughed and held on and let him spin her because she owed him at least that much.
He kissed her when he set her down. Deep and certain and she kissed him back and told herself to be here, just here, just this.
"Come back to my room." He said against her lips. "Teammates are all going out. Just us."
Her body tensed.
"I can't." She said. "The girls are doing a celebration thing at Sierra's. Junk food and movies."
She felt him pull back slightly.
"You're serious." He said.
"I promised them." She said.
His jaw tightened. "So you're choosing a sleepover over your champion boyfriend."
"Tommy."
"I'm not trying to be a jerk." He said, and she could hear that he meant it, which made it worse. "I just feel like lately you'll take any excuse not to be with me and I don't understand it."
She put her hands on his chest. "That is not what's happening."
"Then what is happening, Care? Because I invited you to the cabin and you still haven't answered. I try to spend free period with you and you're buried in your grimoire. I ask you to come back with me tonight and you have a sleepover." He looked at her steadily. "Do you even want to be with me?"
The question sat between them.
She made herself meet his eyes. "Of course I do. Don't ever ask me that."
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he pulled her in and kissed her forehead and she closed her eyes and felt the guilt settle into her bones.
"Tomorrow." She said. "I'm all yours tomorrow."
He nodded against her hair.
She pulled back and gave him a real smile and kissed him one more time and then walked toward the locker room to change.
She had eighteen minutes to get to the gate.
POV: Aurora
She saw Carly looking.
She had been seeing it all night actually. The cheer captain keeping her face forward and her pom poms moving and her eyes darting back to Niko every few minutes like she was doing it against her own will.
Aurora would know. She spent a lot of time watching Niko's face and she knew exactly what it looked like when he was aware of someone without showing it. That particular stillness. The way his jaw moved slowly. The careful nothing of his expression that meant he was paying close attention to something he did not want anyone to know he was paying attention to.
He had been doing it since they arrived.
She had handed him the bottle and leaned into him and said something that made him smile and he had smiled back and it was real enough. It was always real enough with him. That was the complicated thing about Niko. He never gave you nothing. He just never gave you everything either and the space between those two things was where Aurora lived and had been living for six months.
She watched Carly look one more time and then forcefully look away.
She watched Niko's jaw tighten when Carly looked away.
Aurora took a long sip from the bottle.
She had known something was shifting in him. Had known it since the start of semester. Had been standing in that hallway outside his dorm room two weeks ago putting pieces together and telling herself she was imagining it.
She was not imagining it.
She looked at the space on the field where Carly McPherson was leading her squad through the halftime routine with her curls flying and her smile wide and her whole body moving like she had been doing this since before she could walk.
Aurora pressed her lips together.
She was not going to do anything with this information yet.
She was just going to hold it and see what shape it took.
Niko disappeared somewhere between the second half and the final whistle and she let him go without asking because asking Niko where he was going was one of the fastest ways to get him to never tell you.
She stayed with Enzo and Marcel and watched the game end and watched the field flood with celebrating students.
She watched Carly in Tommy Lancaster's arms.
She watched Carly look toward the empty spot under the bleachers where Niko had been.
Aurora finished the bottle.
She was going to need to pay very close attention from here on out.
POV: Tommy
He watched her walk away toward the locker room and told himself he was fine.
The game was won. His team was celebrating. His girlfriend had promised him tomorrow. Everything was fine.
He stood on the field with his helmet in his hand and watched the locker room door close behind her curls and felt something sitting in his chest that he could not name clearly.
It wasn't jealousy. He didn't have a reason for jealousy. She had said it herself, Sierra's room, movies, the girls.
He just kept thinking about the east lawn.
The night she had texted him saying she was studying and come back from the wrong direction.
He had filed it away then. Told himself it meant nothing.
He was still telling himself that.
Jerry clapped him on the back and said something about The Hole and he turned and smiled and said yeah maybe later and went back to looking at the locker room door.
She had tensed when he asked her to come back with him. He had felt it under his hands before she covered it with a smile.
He knew her body. He knew the difference between her actual reactions and the ones she performed for him when she needed to buy herself time.
Something was going on.
He just didn't know what yet.
He turned and walked toward the locker room with his teammates and told himself he was going to let it go for tonight.
He believed himself for approximately thirty seconds.
Author's Note:
Aurora is watching. Tommy is feeling it. And Carly is currently speed walking to a gate to meet a vampire and I am not okay about any of this. Drop a like and tell me in the comments whose POV hit you hardest tonight because all three of them are carrying something heavy right now. Add us to your library.