Page 72 of Touchdown, Tennessee

“So good-hearted,” I teased.

“Hey, I mean it. Anytime one of the guys even mentions having a headache, I’m there to offer an ibuprofen.” He turned to give me a slight smile. “You can feel free to write aboutthatpart.”

Even after he’d cleaned all of my wounds and pressed bandages over a couple of them, something inside me felt a bit… exposed.

I was still reeling from everything that had happened outside.

Why, why, why?

Why the fuck had I told him as much as I did?

I never opened up like that to anyone. Certainly nobody at TNU.

My therapists had known, over the years. I’d trusted them, but almost no one else. The personal details of my childhood were enough to disturb anybody.

There had been one person I’d told, in my freshman year of college, when I was new and made the mistake of trusting someone. I’d told him even less than I told Andrew tonight, but he’d treated me like damaged goods afterward.

I’d even noticed him pick up his wallet and put it in his pocket afterward.

Afraid that I was going to fuckingstealfrom him.

“Come with me. I want to show you something,” Andrew said, flipping off the light in the bathroom as he led me out into the hall.

I followed him over to his room. He turned on his bedside lamp and rummaged through some papers on his desk, then unearthed a huge stack of TNU Weekly papers.

“Wow.”

“I managed to get the last twenty papers,” he said. “I found every article you wrote and I sat and read through every word.”

“Were you afraid of what I might write about you, so you went and read my old stuff?”

“At first,” he said. “Then I just kind of… lost myself in it. You know you’re a really fucking good writer, don’t you, Gray?”

My heart did something weird when I heard his compliment.

“I’m serviceable.”

He shook his head. “No. You’re incredible. I can promise you that I’m not a big reader, but the moment I started getting into any of your articles, I could not stop reading. You fuckinghookme in.”

“I do always try to have a good hook in the articles.”

“I saw that you wrote one about the treasurer of the accounting club. I thought there was no way in hell it would be possible to get me interested in that. But then you startedmaking comparisons of that guy to Yoda from Star Wars, and I kept thinkinghow the fuck is Gray going to make this analogy work?And then it did.”

I smiled softly. “I did enjoy that one.”

“Nobody told me that you don’talwaysskewer your article subjects. Sometimes you make them seemwise. Important, too. You’re incredible at it.”

“You sure are buttering me up. You feel bad that I bled?”

“No. Well, I do feel bad that you got hurt. But I… I was so fucking impressed with your writing.”

“Thank you.”

Compliments always felt weird.

Even weirder when they came from a person who usually seemed like he wanted to rip my head off.

But compliments from Andrew hitdifferent.