Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
You’re in it now.
Shaking their heads, Clark and Jimmy escaped quickly, cutting out into the gym, while Chris lingered for a hesitant second before plastering on a smile. “Sure, Coach,” he said, angling through the door of Damon’s office. “What’s up?”
Damon settled to lean against his desk, folding his arms over his chest and studying Chris. He looked normal, maybe a little tired; was Damon reading too much into that hesitation, or into Chris’s easy smile? Damon had called him and several of the other players over after class for any number of reasons—ranging from talking about how they felt about upcoming games to something about their gear, and the boys were so used to it by now that they always came to him without hesitation. They rarely thought of him as a teacher; as someone who could get them in trouble. They just thought of him as Coach.
So why was there a certain wariness behind Chris’s smile, as if suddenly he saw not Coach Louis, but Mr. Louis, and the threat of discipline and punishment dangling over his head?
You’re imagining it.
You and Falwell got this idea in your heads that something’s up, so now you’re looking for something that isn’t there to settle this uneasy feeling inside you.
He wasn’t sure how to approach this, anyway. He wasn’t any fucking good at prodding for information, dissembling, that kind of thing. So he just decided to go straight up with it, and asked, “You gonna make practice this afternoon?”
No—he sure as hell wasn’t imagining the way Chris’s eyes darted to the side, and the guilty flush in his cheeks. Chris parted his lips, but didn’t say anything; he just made an odd sound, then turned his head aside, rubbing his hand to the back of his neck.
“Maybe...?” he hedged. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling that great. Might need to bench it.”
“Yeah?” Damon drummed his fingers against his inner arm. “You been in to see the nurse?”
“Not yet,” Chris answered almost too quickly. “I just, you know, started feeling a little weird during the game. Want to wait and see how I feel. Might’ve just gotten overheated, you know?”
The thing with kids was they couldn’t fake casual if somebody fucking paid them—and Chris’s attempt at casual, with his wide, easy grin and steady fixed stare, instead made him look like someone smiling at gunpoint.
Damon just eyed him, then sighed, looking away. “You sure you ain’t staying to work on that art project? I saw it. Falwell showed me. That wisteria tree. You’re damned good, kid.”
Chris made a soft, choked sound; that smile turned to a frozen grimace. “Oh...you...you talked to Mr. Falwell?”
“Talk to him all the time.” Well...since yesterday. “Faculty meetings. Lunches. That kinda thing. You got a problem with me talking to Falwell, Chris?”
Say it.
Just come clean with me, kid.
But Chris only let out a forced laugh that pitched his voice up by a whole damned octave, and shook his head. “Nah. Mr. Falwell’s nice. He’s been helping me a lot with the fine details, ’cause it’s really hard with something that delicate.”
There’d been a certain light in Rian’s eyes, when he’d talked about the things he’d made. Subtle, but there: like candleglow in a dark room, that brightness so small and yet standing out like a scream against so much empty nothing.
That light wasn’t there, when Chris talked about the sculpture project he was supposed to be so invested in; invested enough that he’d skip practice to work on it.
In fact, he didn’t sound interested at all.
Damon sighed. “Once you’re done with that thing, you gonna start showing your face again? We’ve got our first home game in two weeks.”
“Sure,” Chris said, nodding quickly. “I don’t wanna miss the game, Coach.”
He said it the same way he talked about the wisteria sculpture.
Perfunctory. No interest, just the words he was supposed to say.
Something was definitely going on here.
He stared at Chris for several hard moments. Talk to me, Chris. ’cause you miss too much more practice, and you’re off Walden’s grace period and off the team. Not my rules. And then there goes your scholarship.
But he couldn’t bring himself to say that.
Chris had to know the stakes.
Damon grinding it in was just...
Threatening him. Muscling him. Trying to scare him, just to force Chris to fess up about what the hell had him being so weird.
And that wasn’t Damon’s style.
He’d just...have to make it clear his door was open—and hope Chris would take that invitation when he was ready, because Damon had the feeling right now that if he pushed too hard, Chris would run without looking where he was going. Something was wrong here. Off.
The way Chris swallowed and licked his lips nervously.
The way his pulse ticked against the hollow of his throat.
The way his eyelashes trembled, and he didn’t blink, his eyes so very wide, their muddled green-brown shade stark.