Hoops (26 page)

He didn’t seem to want feelings from her now. But she had too many feelings, and they were too strong to be quieted. “Oh, C.J., I’m so sorry.”

He shook off her sympathy. “There’ll be other games.”

“I meant about Rake being hurt,” she said softly.

The pacing stopped. Without the steady pulse of his stride, Carolyn heard her own heartbeat as a solo drum. He met her eyes for the first time. Across his face flashed a momentary revelation of tremendous pain. And fear. What was he afraid of?

He started to turn away from her. Moved by a need to make some contact, she caught his hand. For an instant she thought he meant to jerk away from the touch. Instead, he sank down on the couch next to her, with his face turned away.

A curse came out. “He was just trying to do good. He was just trying to help somebody.” His voice hesitated, then strengthened to bitterness. “That’s what comes of trying to help.”

The bitterness came from anger; Carolyn knew that. And she knew anger at the injustices of the world could become corrosive. But he hurt so badly.

Her arms slipped around him the way they’d longed to, and she rested her cheek against his taut shoulder. Through the layers of clothing she felt the tension of his back. Her hands stroked his chest. He caught one in both of his and held it a moment, as if deciding what to do with the captive.

Then he clasped her hand tightly to his side and a breath, long-held, escaped him slowly. Carolyn felt his ribs shudder. Her own eyes stung with the tears he refused to let fall.

Then, although he didn’t stir, she sensed his withdrawal. It was like a cut of cold air. “C.J.?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow for the Final Four.” His words pushed her away. She released him. “The top coaches, top athletic directors from around the country, will be there. Some great programs are looking for coaches. They’ll be there.”

“I see.” She sat up straight. She wouldn’t let the hurt seep into her voice. “You’ve made your opportunity and now you’re going to take it.”

“That’s right.”

“What about me?”

He twisted around to look at her. A fire burned through the fog in his eyes, and for a moment he was her C.J. again.

“Come with me,” he said.

It was as close as he’d come. But it wasn’t close enough. And the fire in his eyes disappeared with her next gentle words. “No. I’m not going with you.”

“So the opportunity’s just too good to pass up, huh?”

It took her a moment to sort through the cynicism to realize he meant the position in England. She shook her head.

“It has nothing to do with that.”

“Doesn’t it?” He looked beyond her. “Doesn’t it have to do with Carolyn Trent, the perfect professor? Isn’t that what it’s been since the moment you were told you’d be stepping down from your academic pedestal to deal with the basketball team?” His eyes focused on her again. “And the basketball coach.”

She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that he’d always been wrong. His eyes wouldn’t let her tell anything but the truth. “It was in the beginning. But it hasn’t been that way for a long time—”

He stood up abruptly, his movements jerky. “Yeah, it’s just a coincidence you’ve got this fancy offer.”

“The seminar doesn’t have anything to do with why I won’t go with you, C.J.
You’re
the reason. This isn’t right for you. This isn’t the right time for you to leave. These aren’t the right reasons.”

If she could just make him see. He’d taught her not to restrict herself to one dimension, but now he was prepared to judge himself on wins and losses.

“If you stay here … You said Ashton could really be great. You said what an opportunity this is. All it needs is some time.”

He wouldn’t look at her. “Yeah, time I can’t afford to waste.”

The harsh words squeezed at her heart as she watched him prowl in the small open area beyond the coffee table. He stopped and faced the window.

“C.J., what happened to Rake doesn’t mean . . .” Doesn’t mean what? What could she tell him? That he wasn’t mortal? That he had all the time in the world? But he already knew, all too well, that the world could topple years’ worth of work and dreams in an instant.

“What happened to Rake just woke me up out of the little dream world I’ve been in. Sitting up here at Ashton like I’m living in some damn
Leave it to Beaver
episode. If I let this chance go by, there might not be another one. I’m not going to stay here forever. Because, by God, before I’m done, I’m going to be somebody!”

Carolyn looked up at the strong bones of his face, unsoftened by any trace of the crooked grin or the usual laughter in his eyes. Restlessly he moved away from the window.

This man, she realized with something close to shock, was as bound up by his own self-imposed rules as she had been. And his expectations of himself were just as unreasonable.

Why hadn’t she seen that before?

Frantically her mind tried to absorb this new understanding. Was the side of him that tried to weigh issues by wins and losses one of those unreasonable expectations? Was he trying to “be somebody” because that was what he thought he had to be?

Carolyn stood up slowly. She spoke deliberately. “This isn’t about Rake, C.J. It’s not even about Ashton or me. It’s about your father.”

Fury burned his eyes blue-hot as they faced each other across the space of the coffee table.

“You’re still the boy trying to be somebody so your father will approve and come back,” she said.

“Who the hell are you to talk?”

Color drained from her face. She saw her own pain reflected in his eyes. She knew with every fiber of her heart that it hurt him to hurt her, but he didn’t relent. Her easygoing C.J., she thought with a new twist of pain. So easygoing on the outside, so driven on the inside.

“At least I know my parents are dead, C.J.,” she said very softly. “I never tried to win their approval so they’d come back. And now, with your help . . .”
And your love, C.J. Dear heaven, I need your love.
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth to control the tremor in it. “I’m learning to be the person I want to be and not guess what my parents might have wanted.”

He was silent and still. She had to say this now, to try to make him see. There might not be another chance. “You’re talking about being caught just like your father did. You’re talking about getting away so that you can ‘be somebody’ just like he did.

“You are somebody, C.J.” How could she make him see? Rake had said C.J.’s one blind spot was himself. How could he be so smart about everything else and so blind about himself? “You’re the coach. You’re the friend to all those guys on the team. This whole university admires you and likes you and respects you. They love you.”

Her voice dropped. “You’re important to Ashton. You’re important to me, C.J.” She put out a hand to touch him on the arm, but he stood just out of reach. “Don’t you understand that?”

Her fingertips, just inches short of him, fell to her side. He stood motionless, expressionless.

“I’m going to that tournament,” he said flatly. “I’m going to find myself the best and biggest job there. I’m going to be on the cover of all the magazines. You may not see them over in England, but I’ll be there. I’m going to have a team that’s number one in the country. I’m going to win the national championship. I’m going to
be somebody.
Do you understand that?”

He flung the last words at her and spun away. Then he grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, not bothering to put it on before slamming out the door and rattling down the outside stairway.

Carolyn folded onto the couch. Her legs would no longer hold her. Her heart could hardly hold the pain. C.J. Draper was somebody; he was the man she loved.

And he had just walked out of her life.

Chapter Thirteen

Carolyn had no chance to decide if her misery wanted company.

Edgar Humbert called the next morning and asked her to take two of his classes because he didn’t feel well. That night Mary Rollins insisted she needed Carolyn to read over a fifty-page grant proposal she’d written. Helene recruited her for an alumni tea Friday afternoon. Stewart wanted her for a Friday evening panel discussion. And every one of the ten basketball players discovered a need for individual consultation.

When Frank, Ellis, Brad and Thomas arrived at her doorstep on Saturday with bags of chips and cans of soft drinks just before the start of the national tournament’s first semifinal game, she didn’t know whether to laugh at their heavy-handed tactics or cry over the cause of their ministrations.

Missing C.J. was a void that didn’t go away for all her busyness. Her heart pulsed pain with each beat. How would this hurt ever heal?

“You were the only person we knew with a VCR,” Brad lied. “This way we can tape the game.”

“I could tape it for you and give it to you later,” she countered with some halfhearted notion of ending the charade.

“Yeah, but this way we can rewind and watch the best plays during commercials,” he improvised.

She was no match for them. Especially not when they were trying to be on their best behavior.

When she came in with a tray of ice-filled glasses, she found the four players carefully arranged around the television in her bedroom, sitting decorously on straight-backed chairs they’d brought in from the dining room. They reminded her of little boys who’d had their cowlicks plastered down for a church service.

How C.J. would have enjoyed this performance! The grin would have fought to come out, his eyes would have gleamed with humor and his drawl would have slowed in an effort to control the chuckle in it.

Carolyn blinked her eyes hard to push back that saltwater thought. There was no use thinking about that. Being weepy didn’t change a thing.

Instead, she set her mind to making her guests relax. First, she slipped her shoes off and settled on the bed cross-legged. Halfway through the first half, the straight-backed chairs were pushed to the edge of the room and long bodies sprawled on the floor, the bed and the easy chair—when they weren’t jumping up to exclaim over a play or rewinding the tape for a quick review.

The cowlicks were back standing on end the way they were meant to, she thought with an inward smile. Between games they ordered pizzas, and Brad and Thomas made a run for more soft drinks.

At half-time of the second game, the camera found C.J. in the stands. Into the intense quiet of the room, the chattering voice of the announcer reported that the talented young coach who’d had such success with little Ashton University was the hottest commodity at the Final Four. Several programs seemed interested in the dynamic new force in college basketball, but the rumor was that he’d be taking the head coaching position at a major university in the Southwest. Not at liberty to say exactly where or for how much, the announcer could assure his listeners it was a big-money, big-program, big-conference job that would give C.J. Draper a real showcase for his talents.

Strangely the words hardly touched Carolyn’s pain at all. The job itself seemed so immaterial compared to the reasons behind it. But it had to be different for the players, she thought as she looked at the faces of these manly boys.

The players had become very dear to her, and the knowledge that the affection was reciprocated warmed her. But players such as Brad, Ellis and Frank hadn’t come to Ashton to study under her; they’d come because of C.J. What did his departure mean to them? A hurt? A disappointment? A betrayal?

Brad muttered a long, low curse under his breath and the room came to life once more.

“Boy, that’s the big time, isn’t it?” Thomas Abbott said in the tone of someone who understood giving way to such a temptation.

Frank’s defense was immediate, “He’s gotta do what’s best for him.”

“He’s made his opportunity and now he’s got to take it.”

Brad’s voice was so low that Carolyn wondered if he even knew he’d spoken aloud.

“There’s no denying that’s a better deal than he’s got here,” Thomas pointed out. “He’ll probably have five assistants, his own secretary and a whole suite of offices. Teams like that probably fly around in chartered jets, not old buses like us.”

No private talks in a sleeping bus, no taping scouting games off the cable channel, no need for someone to spot numbers when he scouted a game. Carolyn found small solace in knowing that at least he wouldn’t be doing those things with anyone else.

Ellis’s quiet voice slipped into the contemplation of unknown luxuries. “We haven’t done so badly for ourselves here. I know some guys from home who went to schools like that. It’s as if playing ball’s their job, and the school’s their boss. Even if they want to study, they hardly have time. The coach sure doesn’t make the time for studying. And when they get out, what do they have? Sure, a few go on to the pros, but what about the rest of them—most of them. No degree. No job. Nothing. Coach did all right by us bringing us here.”

If the others disagreed, if anyone wanted to rail that C.J. could have, should have, given them more by sticking around, no one said it. Not one word of blame or disappointment.

She wished she could be so philosophical.

* * * *

“C.J. stopped by the office before he left for the Final Four, Carolyn.”

She looked up at Stewart from the coffee cup she held with both hands. The cold air that came in when she’d opened the door for him Sunday afternoon seemed to have settled around her despite the bulk of her heavy sweater and jeans.

At first she thought he was part of the keep-Carolyn-busy campaign. But she saw in his face that he’d come for something more.

“He offered me his resignation. He said he wanted to be free and clear when he talked to other schools about coaching jobs.” He reached across the table and gripped one of her cold hands in his warm one. “I thought you should know.”

“Thank you, Stewart. He told me, in his way, before he left.” Her words had come out steadily.

She’d spent a whole sleepless night thinking things through, and she’d come to some conclusions. They didn’t stop the pain, but at least they gave it some meaning. And for the first time in her life she felt as if her mind and her feelings formed part of a whole, not conflicting halves.