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)
“Yes,” Jean said. “I will need to pick up my phone.”
“We’ll get it on the way home,” Jeremy promised.
They were early for his appointment, but the minutes passed easily enough. At last Jean was shown to the back, and he closed the office door behind himself. He took his seat when his doctor motioned to it, and the man sat back in his chair to consider Jean. A slow gaze tracked the new bruises staining his face and neck.
“Do we need to talk about this?” he asked.
“Home game last night,” Jean said.
The doctor’s stare lingered on his throat, but he decided not to push. “I’m glad you came back. I wasn’t sure you would.”
There was no point lying. “I didn’t want to, but I—” The easy excuses fell apart; they were still true, but they rang hollow in the moment. It was Rhemann’s voice in his head, Rhemann’s and his friends’ and Neil’s, drowning out his miserable thoughts and excuses with unrelenting force. Jean squeezed his hands until his fingers went numb and willed himself to believe the words as he slowly spoke them into existence: “I deserve to get better.”
“You do,” the doctor said, with an easy and unhesitating compassion that would somehow keep Jean sane during this horrible session, “and you will.”
“One week at a time,” Jeremy had promised him.
Jean drew in a slow breath and nodded. “Okay.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jeremy
Monday morning practice was as tense and miserable as Jeremy knew it would be, and that was despite him spending all of Saturday and Sunday arguing with his teammates via text. This was the second time Jean had been attacked at the Gold Court by a former teammate, and the Trojans were justifiably riled up about it. That Zane had put his hands on Jean and gone home again with no repercussions whatsoever was unforgivable; that Ingrid’s story made it sound like a two-sided rivalry was worse.
Jeremy understood his teammates’ anger, and his own hurt was a lingering weight in his heart, but he’d promised to follow Jean’s lead. He didn’t have to like it or agree with it; within a few days it was obvious Jean knew what he was doing. He’d been taking slow and careful steps away from the Ravens all summer, but for him to finally and emphatically reject everything they stood for was a tremendous leap toward healing at last.
This was the most settled Jeremy had ever seen him, though it took time to pinpoint the change: Jean was finally treating the Trojans like his team instead of the team he’d been assigned to. It was a tiny but critical shift in his outlook and demeanor. Jeremy wouldn’t ever forgive Zane, but for now he would let sleeping dogs lie.
It helped that the press had bigger fish to fry this week. Due to Rogeson’s death, the Ravens had been excused from the southern fall banquet on Saturday. Their first public appearance of the season was now their upcoming match against the Foxes. Both Edgar Allan and Palmetto State had campus events all week to hype up their respective student bodies, and Wymack invited the press to his locker room on Tuesday afternoon.
Because of practice, Jeremy had to wait until he was back home before he could watch the video, but Jean’s private lessons delayed his friends almost as long. Jeremy messaged Laila when he was home and settled at his laptop, and she let him know when they’d gathered around Cat’s computer. It wasn’t as fun as being there with them, but it made him feel a little closer as he finally hit Play.
The Foxes’ freshmen went first, and Jeremy listened with no little exhaustion as they wrote the Ravens off as overhyped has-beens. It was a bold stance to take, seeing how long the Ravens had been dominant and how little of NCAA Exy these kids had experienced so far. The upperclassmen were only marginally better, but Jeremy would have been surprised by civility. The Foxes had been kicked around for too many years, the butt of a thousand cruel jokes, and had learned years ago to bite back any chance they got.
They were called up in pairs, and it was inevitable that Kevin and Neil would be thrown together for their bit. Kevin couldn’t be rude with a camera in his face, but Jeremy could read between the lines: Kevin had no interest in the rematch whatsoever. Edgar Allan was a shattered ghost of its former self. Without the perfect Court or Coach Moriyama on the line, the team had no challenge or value to him anymore. Kevin gamely did his best to keep Neil out of the conversation, not trusting his vice-captain to speak, but the interviewer was persistent.
“What about you?” the man asked as he stuck his microphone in Neil’s face a third time. “Are you looking forward to the match?”