Page 6

FIVE

ELIO

Kyle Hobbs was tested on Saturday morning for performance-enhancing drugs, suspended immediately until the results arrived, and doomed our wavering captain to public embarrassment within the same quarter of the hour.

Two days later, the team was in the locker room. Kyle, the frontrunner for the captaincy in case Easton lost the final shreds of confidence, was not present. His name was no longer in the running. And neither was Easton.

Patrick looked around the locker room, where guys were putting on their protective gear. “Do you think he’s giving up?” he asked.

“How should I know?” It wasn’t like Easton ever told me anything that mattered. Looking back, Easton almost never spoke about his past. He was from a small town, but he never said the name. He was adopted late, at seven years old, but he never spoke of his parents or the time before it. He mentioned some musical training, but he shifted away from the topic when I asked about it. Most importantly, he’d never told me the reasons Kyle hated him.

It wasn’t just Easton. Kyle hated his friends, too. And Kyle’s friends were loyal to that hound.

So, when I sat on my bench and looked at the Steel Saints, I didn’t see a team that was about to unite after a catastrophe. I didn’t see a path for us to learn a lesson and apply what we knew. I saw a problem that was about to be thrust into my hands.

I would never live up to this responsibility.

It was a small mercy when Assistant Coach O’Brien walked in alone and charted out the subgroups for today’s drills. He mixed and matched players in a way we usually didn’t. It almost felt like the entire team had been replaced by newbies who’d never played together, and Coach O’Brien needed to see us in action before making any further decisions.

Head Coach Webber wasn’t present just now, but he would join us, Coach O’Brien had said before sending us out on the ice. The game was awkward, but no more awkward than it had been over the last two weeks. The focus was on me, and I couldn’t say I liked it. Coach O’Brien, as well as Coach Webber, once he appeared, put me with different subgroups, drilling my decision-making rather than any tactics. They recreated various situations with other groups, putting me in with my little teams and observing how I coped.

Tricks and tactics were often prepared in advance. Those were the things we practiced the most between the games. We simulated scenarios and tested various ways to make the best out of them. But today, those things seemed secondary. The captain, largely a symbolic figure, still needed to inspire action. And if I were to take on the task, I needed to lead this lot. It was the only thing that was left to me. However, the captain still needed to make quick decisions in the heat of a skirmish. After a few rounds, it was clear that the entire day’s training was about evaluating the speed of my actions.

Part of me wanted to stop, toss the stick aside, and admit aloud what I had been feeling for weeks. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want the captaincy, and I didn’t want my team to be ripped into shreds. This was no way to build a career.

Besides, I wasn’t fit for the job. Sure, there was nobody else more fit for it. Lennox could have been that guy if he weren’t so brutishly rough. Connor was liked by everyone, but he was a happy-go-lucky sort of guy with a cavalier approach that didn’t exactly make for a confident leader. And the worst of all, every single pair of eyes brimmed with the same sort of skepticism. Nobody wanted the captaincy like this.

Maybe, in some other lifetime, I would have loved the challenge. Maybe, if I weren’t in conflict with the whole, wide universe, leading the Saints out of the pit would have been fun. But that wasn’t the life I was living.

After the practice, Patrick came up to me again, ripping off his pads.

“Don’t you think we should check on him?” he asked. He wore his signature scowl, which clashed with the outpouring of friendly concern.

I shrugged. “Do whatever you want. I’ve got bigger problems to deal with.”

Patrick looked at me with cold, blue eyes, not a sliver of affection in them. “I understand.” He turned away from me and picked up his towel.

Guys filed into the showers one after another, and I followed. I kept my gaze on the tiled floor as I walked between the stalls, slipped into a shower, and let the sweat drain away. I wished my worries could go off so easily, but no amount of hot water helped with that.

Something was tugging on my heart harder than ever before. A sadness I didn’t know where to place. Too many battles, too many defeats.

I felt it stronger than ever. Something was missing. Part of my mind reached out, feeling the space, wandering through the bits and pieces of my life, searching for the missing things.

Nothing.

I’d hoped to find the place where it had been, whatever it was. I’d hoped to see its shape and fill it in with my imagination. But there was only a feeling of emptiness that was slowly but surely eating me from the inside out.

I returned to the dorm room exhausted but unable to lie still. It was even more unbearable when Patrick arrived. He’d stayed out after practice, carrying his backpack with him all afternoon. He shut the door and stared at me. “He’s not picking up his phone, Elio.”

I gritted my teeth. “Maybe he’s sleeping.”

Patrick tilted his head furiously. His lips curled into a sneer of disdain, and his eyes cut deep into my soul. “You’re not worried at all.”

I exhaled, wishing I could sink into the mattress and disappear from his line of vision. Was I worried about Easton?

“He’s been coming in with bruises for a month, Elio,” Patrick said. “And Kyle outed him in front of everyone.”

I knew that. Why was he parroting the same goddamn thing over and over again? I didn’t want to think of things going through Easton’s mind. I didn’t want to have another worry on my plate.

“We should check on him,” Patrick decided.

“Good luck with that,” I said.

Patrick’s eyes flared like blue ice. “You’re a shitty friend.”

I sat up, my feet thumping on the floor. “You called, didn’t you? And he hasn’t answered. What else can you do? In the two years I’ve known him, he hasn’t invited me over once. I don’t even know where he lives. Half an hour up north from here isn’t an address, Patrick. So, if you don’t have an actual plan, please get off my back.” I got up and took my jacket from the hanger by the door.

“Where are you going?” Patrick asked.

“The library,” I muttered.

I walked out of the room because the tension was rising once again, turning the very air stuffy and unbreathable. Yeah, Easton was somewhere in this city, probably alone and licking his wounds. The image of him trapped like this battered against the glass dome I had placed over my soul. I didn’t have the strength to tackle it. I didn’t have the emotional capacity to extend myself so far.

I didn’t go to the library. Instead, I went to the student center and the bar at the heart of it, where a lot of athletes played darts or pool, watched whatever games were on the TV, and bonded in ways the Saints hadn’t in years.

My mission was not to get drunk, but the chatter and the atmosphere of the bar made it too easy to forget my objectives. I wanted to be left alone. In fact, I wanted things to go back to how they had been a few weeks ago. Easton had been the captain, and Jaxon had still, in my mind, been in New Haven. I had my friends around me, and Jaxon had barely been a faint scar on my heart.

I ordered a beer and sat down like a hard-boiled detective in the opening scene of a dated police procedural. Just glancing in the mirror behind the bar, I could see myself that way. Divorced, unshaved, disheveled, wearing a dirty trench coat and drinking something hard to numb the pain. Yeah, I was turning myself into a cliché.

The beer was cold and delicious. My heart flickered with joy at the taste of it. I’d denied myself this indulgence as often as I could get away with it. Sometimes, when the team celebrated some small victory, like the state quarterfinals, I had no choice but to order a drink. Other times, when the mood was right, Easton, Patrick, and I drank a beer or two. But I never got drunk. Not since two years ago when the booze had clouded my mind, and Jaxon dragged me into his room.

I ordered another beer before I knew it. The flavor was too rich, the numbness too tempting. It went down like honey. Knots loosened and untied in places I hadn’t realized were tense. My body melted a little, my shoulders sagged, and my mind roamed a little more freely.

Was this how it started? I wasn’t sure I had it in me to fight against the pull. I could almost feel the allure. Ronan Mercer must have felt this way. Of course, in Ronan’s case, wealth and fame opened pathways for him that I couldn’t dream of. Those wild parties. Those girls of drugs and drugs on girls…

So what if he was a scarecrow these days? So what if his was the story told to rising stars to warn them against that path? He was still rich, although considerably more alone and infamous rather than famous.

And then, I looked to the door of the bar, seeing Ronan’s little brother walk in with a scowl. He was flanked by four guys, each bigger than the one before, built for the football battlefield and scanning the place for trouble. Jaxon wore the stain of his brother’s actions simply because they shared the last name.

Had it been me, I never would have followed Ronan’s footsteps. But it was too late. Jaxon had already dedicated his teens to football when Ronan’s habits were discovered.

Staring at Jaxon, I tried to look away and think of other things, but my mind kept going back to those days. He had been my best friend, and the troubles had mounted so high that I worried about him constantly.

He moved out of my field of vision, but the image of his past self remained right before my eyes. Shaggy, light brown hair, years before he’d cut it short, and bright brown eyes and dimples on each side of his lips punched so deep by his easy smiles. I couldn’t get him out of my head.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I picked up my beer and drank some more. When I looked at my reflection in the mirror again, Jaxon was there, just above my left shoulder. In the distance, surrounded by his teammates, he sat in a booth facing the bar. He looked away as soon as my gaze found him.

The night dragged on, my fingertips tingling a little after the third beer. It didn’t take much to get me drunk, and the fog was settling comfortably over my mind. And the cloudier it got, the more I let myself look at him.

It’s that easy? I thought, blood simmering in my veins. I saw him. I truly saw him now. The wrinkled nose, the narrowed eyes, the pursed lips; he hated me. But there was more to it than that. He hated something else even more.

I lifted my glass as if making a toast, watching him watch me in the mirror. He didn’t look away. It was a challenge, he understood, and he wasn’t backing down. So I toasted him and drank, emptying my glass before pushing myself off the chair.

Slowly, I turned around, looked straight at Jaxon, and left. Even as I reached the door, I could see him interrupting the conversation among his friends and getting up.

The world was a little more out of balance than I had realized. It tilted now and again under my feet, and I leaned against the wall just as the door of the bar opened and shut.

I sauntered a little and took a few steps down the street, listening for the soft footsteps following me. Some small part of me trembled with excitement. I wondered if a gazelle felt like this when it heard the dry grass crunch behind it. I didn’t want to be caught and cornered. But wouldn’t it be interesting if I were?

After a few more steps, the last gulps of the beer seemed to find their way into my head. My feet worked on their own, although they didn’t cooperate. As I tripped over nothing I could see, a pair of arms caught me from behind.

Heart leaping, I realized the snare had just snapped shut.

“Christ, you’re drunk,” he said in an angry huff.

“Yeah?” I steadied a little and straightened my back. “You’re following me.”

Jaxon let go of me and took a step back. “Don’t flatter yourself. I saw a lonely drunk about to get hurt.”

I turned around as he spoke and faced him. My vision was steady, almost sharp, as I met his gaze. “Is that all you saw, Jax?” I asked.

He glared at me, lips pursing. As he edged away from me, he partially stepped into the shadows between the bar and the print shop. The alley was empty, open on both sides, with only trash dumpsters positioned in the middle for the plastic and glass waste from the bar and the old paper from the printer.

Jaxon receded deeper into the shadows. His shoulders squared and his back straight, he was like a marble statue that could move its legs. Pretty. He’d always been pretty. There was a softness to him that others never saw. He could be gentle, almost feminine, when you knew what to look for.

I stepped into the shadows after him. “Why do you care if I get hurt?”

He didn’t say anything for the longest time. My vision slowly adjusted to the lack of direct light, and I saw his deepening frown. “My nose,” he said. “You said you had to know. Why?”

Last night, I had watched him in the mirror, our positions reversed from those of tonight, and my gaze had gone to his nose so many times that my heart was in shreds. Each glance ripped it further apart. And now, as I looked at the bump I’d marked him with, the corners of my lips dragged down against my will. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Jax.”

He snorted. He had every right to make that disgusting sound. I would have done the same.

“I swear,” I said hoarsely. “I’d take it back if I could.”

“How drunk are you, El?” he asked.

I pulled back my shoulders and shook my head. “Not that drunk.” If only the alley wouldn’t shake together with my head, I might even be able to prove it to him. As things went now, I wouldn’t dare stand on one foot or recite the alphabet backward.

“Liar,” Jaxon said.

I shook my head again harder. “I feel like shit, Jax,” I said. “I shouldn’t have hit you. I was scared.”

“Right,” Jaxon replied. “’Cause I’m a big, bad wolf.” He snort-chuckled and took another step back. “And you never did anything to lead me on.”

The excitement of a few moments ago was swiftly replaced by fear. He was scratching the surface, and I didn’t think I wanted to let him go any deeper. Tension filled my muscles, or tried to since they were already numb with alcohol. “I didn’t,” I said, my voice too close to a growl to encourage an honest discussion.

“And looking at me all night before sauntering out wasn’t an invitation,” Jaxon said.

“It wasn’t,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m apologizing for something else, Jax.”

“Yet you’re standing two feet away from me in a dark alley,” Jaxon said. “Christ, El, can’t you see what you’re doing?”

I’d come closer than I’d realized. I towered so near him that he had to lift his head to look into my eyes. I pitched my voice low for Jaxon’s ears only. “This isn’t what you think it is.”

He cocked one corner of his lips up and nodded. “Right.” His teeth closed gently around his lower lip, and he shook his head once. “See, I believe that this isn’t what you think, El. You think I believe you when I know you’re not trustworthy.” He stepped forward, closing the distance between us. My defensive mechanism kicked in, tightening my muscles in case I needed to do something. Do what? I didn’t know. All I knew was that a strange buzz of excitement soared through my chest. But Jaxon rose to the tips of his toes and leveled our gazes. He bared his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. “You know what you want. You just don’t know how to take it.”

My fist was on his chest before I knew it. Had it leaned in a little too much? It was hard to tell. Everything was out of balance and out of focus. I held on to him as much as I held him away from myself. But the space was narrowing, and Jaxon wasn’t closing the distance this time.

When my lips pressed against Jaxon’s, the building excitement reached its crescendo. The wave of thrill and guilt crashed over me, but my fist tightened, holding the creased fabric of his hoodie so he couldn’t get away.

He didn’t try to get away, though. He didn’t even budge.

He liked it.

I dragged my lips hard over his mouth, taking him in, tasting him, letting all these crazy impulses run wild. An ancient curiosity bloomed within me. I remembered it all too well. It carried the scent of our summer at Still Water Cove and the warmth of the long nights in the loft we’d shared.

Some part of me—a rebellious and self-destructive one, to be sure—was dying to know what it felt like. And it felt like a drug. You knew where it would lead you. You knew what it would make of you. But you couldn’t resist it if you tried.

He was intoxicating and addictive. I knew that now. I knew I had a weakness in me that would trap me on this road to ruin. And I indulged in it.

What harm could it cause if I only wanted to know? If I only wanted to see what it was like?

My body pressed harder against Jaxon’s, pinning him against the bar’s brick wall. The quiet night was soon filled with quick breaths as I kissed him, the back of his head resting against the wall and his hands clutching my jacket.

He tasted like some fruity, minty cocktail, sweet and warm, and I felt him being absorbed by my flesh, felt him entering my bloodstream, felt him sinking into me like heroin.

A whimper, smaller and quieter than a sparrow landing on a branch, came from his lips, and he held my jacket firmer. And as I leaned in a little more, pressure from his fists pushed me away. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice gruff and raw.

I frowned. My reactions seemed to be slowing down even now. The booze was catching up with me. I didn’t know whether to curse it for making me slow and weak or to blame it for giving me the courage to reach for something I never should have reached for. “Isn’t this what you want?” I asked, my words coming out squished together by the numbness that slowed down my tongue.

Jaxon’s eyebrows trembled briefly. He pursed his lips, wavering a little, his hands relaxing on my chest but keeping us apart. He was about to break. I could see it in his eyes, clear as day, that he couldn’t find a reason to stop this.

Then, he gave the slightest shake of his head, licked his lips, and inhaled.

That was the moment when my stomach dropped. Or, rather, turned. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” I blurted, stepping away from Jaxon and hurrying into the bar, hoping to God the restroom was empty.