Up In Smoke → Liam Dunbar [1]

Chapter Two

"So you've thought about it, and...?" Liam asked, scaring the crap out of Addy. She walked in the empty – at least, she thought it was empty – hallway, towards the lacrosse field. The whole school day she was distracted. She wanted to make her family proud, but she also didn't want to a) embarrass herself in front of a bunch of boys, or b) be the only girl on the team.

No girl ever really played lacrosse at Beacon Hills. Addy thought they were all just scared of Coach. He could be pretty intimidating if he tried. However, he never held problem with her before. She assumed it was because her brother was one of his favourite players on the team. 

It wasn't only that, though. Lacrosse was her brother's thing, and she didn't want to take that from him. She didn't get the opportunity to talk to him at lunch about it due to serving a lunch time detention she earned last week.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Liam! Don't sneak up on me like that!" Addy punched his arm. She hated being sneaked up on, it was just one of those things. She liked to know her surroundings, and she hated sneaky people. 

"Sorry," he murmured, rubbing the sore spot on his arm. That girl could really throw a punch. "But really, what have you decided?"

"I don't know. I kinda wanted to talk to Brayden about it, but I haven't seen him today, I had detention at lunch." Addy shrugged. She hated lunch detention, and unlike most people, would rather have after school detention. Most of the time she was stuck there anyways because of her brother.  "Either way, good luck at tryouts."

Liam nodded. He liked talking to Addy; she was pretty laid back about things. Not to mention she was absolutely beautiful. He could see them being friends in the future and the quickest way to make that happen would be for the two of them to play on the same team together. 

"And Liam?" Addy called out, as Liam ran down the hall. His footsteps stopped as he turned back around to the brunette. "If you take my brother's spot as captain, I might just have to kick your ass."

Just for fun, she threw a wink at the end, making the situation playful. She was deadly serious, but Liam didn't know that. He raised his two fingers in a mock salute as he rounded the corner, still not sure if she was joking or not.

Addy made her way to the lacrosse field. There wasn't much time left to decide if she really wanted to play. Her brother was already out on the field, tossing a few balls into the net. She remembered him saying something about skipping last class just so he could get a little extra practice. Brayden really wanted to be captain.

"Hey Ads!" Brayden waved her over to where he stood. She quickly dropped her bag on the bleacher before jogging over. "So, rumor is you wanna play on the team."

Addison glared at his smirk. Truth be told, Brayden knew she would want to play lacrosse one year, either because she would admit she actually liked the sport or because of boys.It was the latter reason this time, but he didn't know that.

"Rumor is that I was thinking about wanting to play. It still isn't a yes," Addy snapped. She hated the arrogant side of Brayden because most of the time he was right when he was confident. Except once, but that's a totally different story.

"Hey," his voice got soft. He placed a hand on her shoulder and looked down to her. He wanted her to play but didn't want to pressure her into doing it. If she was going to join then it needed to be on her own behalf. "I think you should play. It'll be fun. Besides you can always quit the team if you don't like it. There's a lot of pressure sometimes."

"I don't know. I just don't want to embarrass myself," Addy muttered, twisting the toe of her boot into the grass. She was nervous and self concious. It was normal to feel that way when trying something new but she just wasn't used to the feeling. Brayden squeezed her shoulder where his hand was already resting.