Heart of Thorns (Shadow Valley U Book 2)
Heart of Thorns: Chapter 6

I collect stares when I walk in the locker room two days later.

That’s not really unusual—my teammates see me as a leader on the field and off of it. Even though I’m only a junior now, it doesn’t matter. My parents raised me to take charge in every situation. It takes guts to command a football team, to get them to trust and follow my orders. I recognize that, I accept it.

But these looks are weird.

Verging on… are they laughing at me?

“What?” I snap at one of them.

He just shakes his head and points.

I turn to the wall.

The wall.

An unbidden image of that girl balanced on her ladder, paint on her clothes and skin, working in dim lighting, rises to the forefront of my mind.

I blink and I’m back in the present, staring at the portrait of me—but not.

My face is too recognizable to deny, but my eyes are red, and twisting horns protrude from my forehead. My nose, too, is twice as big as it should be. A proportion she had right the other night.

The locker room erupts into laughter, and I shake it off fast. I push at Stephen McDowell, forcing a smile to my lips.

“What did you do, Thorne? Piss someone off?”

They don’t even know who painted it.

“Hope your daddy didn’t pay for that art,” another defenseman calls.

I roll my eyes. “You think my head is so big that some devil horns will throw me off?”

It won’t.

Football is every-fucking-thing to me, and some girl getting in my head…

Okay, maybe this is a sign that I was an asshole.

Was I, though?

I need to figure out her name.

Speaking of my daddy, though, I had a message from him that I need to check.

I toss my bag down at my cubby and get changed. I sit and scan my phone, my stomach twisting at the text.

Give her a taste of what? Me? My life?

I don’t recognize the name Cynthia until I scroll farther up in my conversations with him. She’s the one I went on the date with just the other day.

The plastic girl.

Freaking hell. She said she was coming to the game on Friday, and I had wholly disregarded it.

How do I get out of meeting up with her and her father after it?

He replies immediately.

I, unfortunately, do.

It means don’t fuck up.

Don’t mistreat his daughter, don’t make an ass of myself, don’t blow them off.

The suddenness of my claustrophobia takes me by surprise. I make a quick exit, waving off Rhys’s concerned expression. My skin prickles, and I catch myself on the wall outside.

Deep breaths.

It doesn’t really fucking help with the mental struggle, but eventually, the knot loosens enough for me to stand straight. I swipe at the layer of sweat that accumulated at my temples and step back into the locker room.

My gaze snags on the devil horns and my own cutting glare.

I don’t look like that, truly, do I?

It’s not meant to plague me. For all my talk about football, what I really want is to have a break from constantly pleasing my parents. I want to just exist for a fucking minute.

But not like that.

If that’s how she saw me… that’s how I must be.

The devil.

A monster.

I’m mid-spiral, silent and back at my bag, when my physical therapist comes in and grabs me.

There’s no more time to think about it.

I am great at compartmentalizing, so I shove down my worries and focus on Jeremy’s back. My physical therapist makes small talk that I let wash over me. My knee is definitely better, but we still do regular maintenance while the team does other drills.

Down the hall, into his room. It’s a combination of weight room and his work space, with padded tables for the guys who need wraps or tape. The room is bright and airy, not unlike the locker room, but it doesn’t smell of sweat. I’m not sure what kind of magic voodoo he holds in this room to make it smell clean.

We do some familiar exercises, and there’s only an occasional twinge of pain that I put out of my mind. Nothing an over-the-counter painkiller later won’t solve. Or, my personal favorite, an ice bath. What’s better than hot water? Freezing cold water, obviously.

Just kidding.

He pats my leg and sends me out to join the team.

I stop by our coach on the sideline, and when there’s a pause, he sends me onto the field. I catch the football, my fingers flexing on the pigskin. Everything about the ball is familiar and comfortable. More than going to school or driving a car, or even writing my own name.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Throw.

Perfect spiral, a thing of beauty.

Of course, practice isn’t easy. It’s hard and sweaty, and I’m cursing our coaching staff by the time they release us. At the door, my physical therapist awaits.

“Let me guess,” I say, holding up my hand. “Ice bath for…?”

“Five minutes today.” He slaps my back. “Nothing you can’t handle.”

I wrinkle my nose and follow him back to his room, and a thought occurs to me.

“You know who’s painting the mural?” I ask him. “You know a lot of people and what goes on around here.”

Jeremy graduated from SVU five or six years ago. He got a post-grad degree and returned here, and he seems content. But he’s the sort of guy who’s friendly with everyone. He’s a talker.

I need one of those right now.

He eyes me. “I saw what she did to your portrait.”

I groan. “Who is she?”

He whistles under his breath and gestures to the tub in the corner of the room. Already prepped for me.

Knowing he won’t talk until I’m in it, I strip out of my practice gear and down to my black briefs. I put my good leg in first, wincing.

Even having done this a million times, it doesn’t quite get easier.

Of course, he doesn’t know that I’ll go home and do the same thing tonight, with bags of ice bought from the local gas station, in hopes of stretching out the pain-free moments a little farther.

Again—I have nothing to truly complain about.

I’m fine. And I will be fine.

It’s an annoyance.

A slight grievance.

It’s no worse than entertaining Cynthia fucking Keenland and her father for a night. We’ll have a drink, he’ll tell me how he hopes his daughter and I get married and have eight kids, and we’ll inherit our parents’ money or companies—or both—and the generational wealth will just continue on and on.

It makes me sick.

A football career is going to one day be a tagline on my résumé. A selling point for dedication and perseverance and leadership.

The trophy wife will be the second, silent tagline. Unspoken but so, so seen.

“Fuck.” That would be the second leg going in, my hands gripping the edges and slowly lowering myself down. The water goes over my knees, then my upper thighs.

My balls have their normal reaction of sucking up practically into my asshole—not fun—and I swear again. And again when the icy water rushes over my navel.

Then I’m dropping the rest of the way in, and it hits me mid-chest.

I clench the sides of the tub and glare at Jeremy.

It’s no easier when I do it on my own. I have no one to blame but myself. This is necessary. That is punishment.

“Name,” I demand, refusing to be distracted.

“Tell me how you fucked up without even knowing her name.” He drags a stool over, a stopwatch in hand, and shows me that he hasn’t even started it yet.

It takes effort to talk without stammering. “Insulted her a few times.”

“A few times⁠—?”

“Jeremy.”

He starts the timer. “So? How did you insult her? Merely for my own curiosity.”

Asshole.

“Called her a s-stalker.” I breathe out. This water seems worse than usual. “And a jersey chaser. I think.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot. Her name is Briar.”

“Last name?”

“The big nose would’ve probably sufficed,” he muses. “If that’s all you did. She was on the hockey team, so I’m familiar with her. She hasn’t had the easiest year, Thorne. I’m telling you that as someone who cares about you, too. If you mess with her…”

“I just want to apologize.”

That’s the truth. I want to apologize for my overreaction—clearly she wasn’t vandalizing the locker room. If she had, it wouldn’t have lasted that long. Someone would’ve painted over it, or… well, there was more than just me.

Right?

I saw that, although I didn’t register it. There were other players, and a scene of the football stadium from the fifty-yard line, the sky dark and the lights shining down on the field.

What’s worse is that she’s actually a good painter.

Devil horns and all.

“Briar Hart,” he finally says.

I nod carefully, then refocus on my breathing. Control, relaxation. It’s the same here as on the field, and it’s the same on those stupid dates my parents plan.

It’s when I lose control that bad things happen.

“Hockey player,” I muse. “Someone else said that, too. But you said ‘was’—?”

“I did.” He clicks the stopwatch. “That’s all for today. I’ll wrap your leg for the game tomorrow. Same as usual.”

“Same as usual,” I echo.

Briar Hart.

What I didn’t tell Jeremy—and what I don’t plan on telling anyone, thank you very much—is that my fascination with her goes beyond the devil horns. I mean, yes, clearly I got something wrong there. The stalking bit, I’d guess.

But there’s more.

Like the fact her bare skin doesn’t make mine crawl, and my heart skipped a beat or two, and I just want to talk to her. I want her to use her claws on me.

Briar… like Sleeping Beauty.

I used to like that fairy tale. The cursed spindle, sleeping for a really fucking long time. The prince who wakes her up—with a kiss, of course.

Somehow, though, I think Briar is more the prickly brambles keeping the prince out of the castle than the sleeping princess within.

Either way—I’ll make it right.

And figure out why she’s different from every other girl shoved in front of me.