Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“He wasn’t. This was a fight eight months overdue.” It did nothing to take the guilt out of Jeremy’s stare, so Jean added, “It is good he came. I needed to see him one last time.”
He was surprised that he meant it, but there were tender scars where there’d been open wounds before. It was a curious development; he would have expected Zane’s viciousness to leave him more broken, not less. Maybe it had less to do with Zane’s aggression and more to do with Rhemann lancing the poison from his shattered heart afterward. The bone-deep tension he’d carried for too many months had finally snapped free of him, leaving him empty and tired.
“Good,” Jeremy echoed, soft and disbelieving. He reached for Jean’s neck but stopped a hairsbreadth from touching the mottled skin there. “Enough is enough. If you’re not comfortable speaking out against him, at least let me make a statement on your behalf.”
“There is nothing to say.”
“We can’t just ignore this.”
“Says the man who refused to care about his own bruises,” Jean said, voice sharp.
“Jesus, Jean. It’s not the same. Faser—” Jeremy winced as he realized his misstep. Jean committed the man’s name to memory even as Jeremy tried to distract him: “Zane was obviously trying to hurt you, and you won’t hold him accountable. You deserve better than that.”
That word again; Jean wanted to claw it from Jeremy’s tongue. He grabbed Jeremy’s chin to force his head up. “Fuck what I deserve. What about what I want?”
A bold demand—and unbearably thoughtless. This wasn’t at all what Jean meant, but he felt his mistake as soon as Jeremy’s startled stare locked with his. The ghost of Riko’s knife at his throat had him snatching his hand back, and Jean retreated to a safer distance. Jeremy stepped back in turn, but he had nowhere to go. He leaned against his car instead and studied Jean’s face with a steady, unwavering gaze. Jean refused to meet it but counted heartbeats until the danger passed.
At last Jeremy said, “What do you want, then? Tell me, because I don’t know how else to help you. They’re coming after you at home, at school, at the court—I can’t watch them do this to you all year. It isn’t fair or right. I need you to feel safe with us.”
“Most of the time I do,” Jean said, and meant it. “You promised you wouldn’t look away, so I will let you look. But let him walk away, captain, and let me lock the door behind him. He will not be back. He came here for a truth, not a number. There is nothing else he can take from me.”
Jeremy said nothing for an age, then offered only a defeated, “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Jean said immediately.
“I don’t like this,” Jeremy said.
“This is your prerogative.”
Jeremy dropped his gaze, conceding the fight. Jean let him go, and Jeremy pulled open the passenger door for him before starting away. Jean put the bucket of vegetables on the floor between his feet, and he buckled as Jeremy climbed in on the driver’s side.
There was no chance they’d make it home in silence, but Jeremy held out until they were on the interstate. Then he rummaged one-handed in his cup holder and offered Jean a coin.
“Nickel for your thoughts?”
Jean wasn’t sure what his thoughts were, but maybe there just wasn’t space enough in his head to untangle them. He took the coin and rolled it between his fingers while he stared out the window. “I didn’t like the Bobcats,” he said. He felt Jeremy’s eyes on him as he started in the least expected spot, but his captain held his tongue and forced his attention back to the road in front of them. “I should have, yes? They play the way I was trained. The right way,” he added, knowing it risked an interruption from Jeremy.
Jeremy didn’t take the bait, and Jean worked through his prickly thoughts in peace. All summer he’d fought an uphill battle, trying in vain to drag the Trojans off their high horse and grumbling discontent about the restraint they demanded of him. He’d argued for them to see sense and sort out their priorities, and they’d gleefully refused him at every turn.
They’d been brilliant last night, as he’d known they would be—they were Big Three, after all, and the stars of Kevin’s dreary world—but it wasn’t their performance that rattled him. It was the jarring contrast between the Bobcats and Trojans, emphasized by Zane’s unapologetic heartlessness afterward. What a sharp reminder of how far he’d come from a hideous normal.
“I don’t want you to be like Zane,” Jean said, slow as he tried piecing it together. “I don’t want Coach to be like the master. I don’t want to teach Tanner contrition when he continuously fails my drills or to break my racquet over Cat’s back if I think she should have performed better. I don’t ever want to go back to how things were. Maybe you are fools, and I am the biggest fool for indulging you, but better to be reckless fools than Ravens.”