ChapterTwenty-Three
Alex
My head is pounding by the time I walk into the gym. Spending the night with a freshly refilled flask—courtesy of Soren—put me at ease enough to help me sleep, but it also provided an awful awakening this morning. Vomiting was my first task. A dizzy spell was my second. By the time I got out of the shower, I felt like the walking dead.
Seems fitting, considering how my life has been lately. I’m not quite dead yet, but I also don’t feel like I’m alive either. If I feel like throwing a pity party about it, I will. And it starts with locating something that’s going to get my fucking headache under control.
Whatever ibuprofen had been in my system disappeared before lunch, and now I feel the full force of my hangover. Every step I take makes my temples throb, and the sunlight makes me want to hurl. It’s not normal to feel so bad.
And if I’m this bad, how’s Soren feeling today? He parties so much harder than I do. Tomas, too, with all those drugs. And he kept them to himself. What a fucking selfish prick.
I rub my forehead while waving away a concerned Coach Neill.
“Alex, you’re late.”
I grumble under my breath while tossing my backpack onto the first seat of the bleachers. “Whatever.”
“And you look like shit. What got into you this weekend?”
Well, surprisingly, no one, if you can believe it. “Nothing.”
“I’m not convinced.” She stands next to me with her arms crossed over her chest. “You smell like vodka. So, what’s bothering you? Why are you drinking so much?”
I shoot her a hard look. “What’s it to you?”
She snorts. “It’s nothing to me, Alex. I can stop training you whenever I want. Is that what you want? To have nobody in your corner?”
“You sound just like them, you know.”
“Alexandra Moretti, you’re being a massive bitch right now. Take a seat.” I try to move away, but she squeezes my shoulder and urges me to sit down. She hands me a bottle of water and says, “You can’t afford to risk your safety without the right mindset. If you drink like this, then you lose your edge. You want to get ambushed like your father?”
My lower lip quivers bitterly. I uncap the bottle and position it near my lips. “I loved him so much…”
“Enough to be like him?”
I grimace. “No, I don’t want to end up like him.”
“Then get it together.”
“How?”
She sighs as she settles on the bench next to me. “By avoiding the right people.”
“Coach, what do you even mean by that?”
The expression on her face is a mixture of worry and fear. I don’t like how her eyes glaze over, how she seems to be thinking particularly hard about something that might be important for me to hear.
“What do you know?” I ask her in a low voice. “Come on, Coach.”
I turn to her while cupping the water bottle between my hands. The plastic is cool against my hot fingers, a relief that cracks through my grumpy hangover. It’s unlike Coach Neill to be this preoccupied, even when it comes to everything that happens to me regularly. At this point, the two of us are used to what those wretched boys do.
That’s not how it’s supposed to be, I think, my temples aching so hard that white lances across my vision. I bow forward and cringe through the headache, breathing slowly and carefully. But it is how it is. I can’t cry over this shit right now.
Coach Neill sits quietly with me as my fit passes. When I’m able to open my eyes, I sip the water, allowing the cool liquid to soothe me.
She sighs. “I might know who killed Felipe.”
My eyes widen so quickly that I think they might explode. “You might knowwho killed my father?” The way she avoids my gaze tells me everything. I slam the water bottle down and growl, “Coach, you have to tell me.”