Breathless #5 (The Breathless Romance Series - Book #5) by Claire Adams

would think
that if you really believed that Johnny had had anything to do with that, if
you thought he was capable of hurting and driving a girl to suicide, you
wouldn’t want anything to do with him.” The redhead blushed. “So I gotta think that you’re of the belief that it’s more
important to get rid of me than it is to do something that might actually be
good for Johnny. Sort of a ‘if I can’t have him, no one will,’ am I right?” I
spoke loudly enough for the people nearby to hear, a few feet away from the girl.
Someone giggled.
    “You’re not woman enough for him!” the redhead said.
“Besides, I don’t want him anymore.” I snorted, rolling my eyes.
    “I think you want him bad. But here’s the deal,
sweetie: you don’t get him. In fact, even if he left me tomorrow, you wouldn’t
get him because he doesn’t go for backstabbing rumor-mongering bitches with a
jealousy complex.” Someone — I thought it was one of Johnny’s frat brothers — hooted
appreciatively. “So I’m going to warn you this one time: you ever say anything
to me about Claire White, if I even hear her name from you again, I am going to
make you regret it.” I turned on my heel and went back to my seat, shaking. I
wasn’t a very violent person, but in that moment, I was more than willing to
punch that stupid girl out if I had to.
    As I sat down again, the game went into the second period
and I sighed. It was starting to look hopeless, absolutely hopeless. Johnny
made one goal and then the other team pulled ahead again by another point. We
were a consistent two or three points behind, all the time. It wasn’t good.
Normally by this point, we were at least keeping the other team from scoring
any points, even if we had only a one or two point lead. It was unheard of for
us to be behind. It never happened — at least, that I knew about, and everyone
else seemed to be almost as shocked as I was, if not more so.
    “What can anyone do about it, though?” Georgia asked
me when I mentioned it to her. I chewed on my bottom lip. The second period of
the game was moving forward just like the first one had. It was not a good
situation. It wasn’t a situation anyone wanted — or at least, it wasn’t one I
would have thought anyone wanted. I looked around; most of the jeering people
had been taken out, the reporters were being thinned out by campus security,
which gave me a deep feeling of relief. But there were still students jeering
the team as a whole — and that was their right. There were a few students
waving signs accusing Johnny of aiding and abetting rape, and I wanted to punch
them, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to figure out how to help Johnny.
    The problem was that I had no idea what the actual
problem was; he didn’t seem insecure and he didn’t seem to be distracted by me.
If he were distracted by me, then I would have just left. This was not a time
for me to enjoy the flattering feelings of a guy being so distracted he
couldn’t work for thinking about me. But Johnny wasn’t even looking at me very
much. He just wasn’t as quick, wasn’t as focused, wasn’t as aggressive on the
ice as he normally was. I bit my bottom lip and worried it between my teeth.
The second period was quickly winding down, and we hadn’t even been able to
make up the lead the other team had on us. I didn’t even know if it was
remotely possible to make up a three-point lead in such a short time. We would
have the last period of the game to try and make it up, but if the other team
kept up at the rate that they were going, it wouldn’t matter if we had a whole three
more periods.
    Johnny needed to get his mind off of whatever was
clouding it. He needed to…I bit my lip again, watching him on the ice. I tried
to figure out what was going on in his head. I tried to think of what would
help him, something I could do. I was getting antsy, and I could hear in the
commentator’s voice that he knew that the team was in trouble without