Chapter 1 Jack
“You assholes ruined our kits,” Blaine growled behind me.
So much for ten fucking months.
The low chuckles of football players ended with one of them saying, “No idea what you’re talking about, bruh.”
“The fuck you don’t.”
I shook my head as I exchanged books in my locker. I couldn’t fault Blaine for getting hot about the football team fucking up our soccer kits, but what good would it do? Not like it’d repair the damage.
Ty sighed beside me and slammed his locker closed.
“There a problem here, gentlemen?” he asked as he turned, inserting himself where I wouldn’t.
Was I pissed this last prank destroyed our uniforms?
Sure. Our season was months off, and though we didn’t buy them, it was a step too far, a step proving how ridiculous this feud had become.
Soccer versus football? What even was that?
The drama hadn’t started with us. Rumor had it the students of Hickory Bend High had been a powder keg ready to blow before we’d moved to town, and they’d readily taken sides as our two teams drew a line in the sand.
For me, it was a lot simpler and a fuck ton more complicated than this latest dick-measuring contest. I didn’t hate the football team.
I didn’t care about the bullshit going on in the hallway or the pranks they kept pulling since classes started.
I closed my locker and leaned against it.
I wouldn’t throw my weight into this match as long as it remained barking, but I’d be ready in case Ty needed me.
Well, okay, fine. If Blaine was getting his ass beat, I might help.
He was one of the few with us in our competitive league. We kind of needed him.
“Aren’t you fuckin’ pissed, bro?” Blaine asked Ty as several other soccer players moved into position behind him. Though our season wasn’t until spring, I was surprised by how close everyone on the team had become during camp and had remained so.
Ty shuffled forward, and everyone parted for him on cue. He grabbed the back of Blaine’s neck and shook him. “Hell yeah, but you really think it’s a good idea to brawl before second period?”
Blaine slapped Ty’s hand away. He liked us probably about as much as he liked the football team right now, but same as me, Blaine would back a teammate first and foremost.
“Fuck off, Ty. This shit needs to end. Our fuckin’ kits?” Blaine glared at the football team, who had formed an arc across from the soccer players. “That’s too far.”
Ty shook his head and blanked his expression. “I’m confused, bro. Fuck off? You want me to be pissed or not?”
A few students, who weren’t athletes but were getting a front-row seat to the performance, laughed. Ty ate up the attention. He cocked his head and grinned at Blaine, who took a deep breath as his cheeks grew darker.
“You should want to be pissed, Captain,” Blaine added. It hadn’t been our doing, but Coach had named Ty and me co-captains after it became clear we’d bring a lot to the team this year. A spot that had been Blaine’s before.
“That’s co-captain to you. Don’t forget about Jack,” Ty said and glanced at me.
“Don’t pull me into this,” I said, keeping myself unconcerned—for now.
“You should be in it already.” Ty angled his head toward Blaine. “So says Blaine.”
Blaine shoved Ty, and a cold shiver streaked across my shoulders. Ty laughed, but so did the football players, which made Ty refocus and growl in their direction.
“Now I’m confused,” one of them said. I didn’t know his name, not that I’d taken the time to learn too many of them anyway.
“Yeah, you girls need a moment to kiss and make up?” another football player said.
Ty clamped a hand on Blaine’s shoulder—who slapped it off again—and said to the football players, “Be with you fuckheads in a moment.”
As he turned to say more to Blaine, one of the footballers shoved his shoulder. “The fuck you say?”
“Ty.” There was an unspoken apprehension in my one word. Ty heard it loud and clear.
“I got this.” Ty straightened to his full height, flipping from casual fun to intimidating.
The students not involved in this backed up.
I swallowed the anxiety currently growing inside me and eyed the crowd. Exits. One at each end of the hall. Left would be my best option. I wasn’t planning on running if shit hit the fan, but it helped. It always helped. I needed to see the way out, even if I didn’t take it.
“Dude, no fighting at school,” someone said.
“Thought we could bitch about it, and that’d be it,” Ty said. “But if you wanna make things physical”—he held out his arms—“then let’s fucking go.”
“Whoa, hey.” A blond head, the one I’d been secretly dreading getting involved, forced his way into the middle.
I pushed off the locker and narrowed my eyes with the change in the atmosphere. Avoiding this new drama took a back seat as the need to take action, to move, intensified.
Cal Winters.
God, I hated him. I might not’ve hated the football team with their bullshit, but I hated Cal. I hated how his presence alone forced me to do things I didn’t want to. As if he had more control of me than I did.
Since that night two years ago when I’d made the biggest miscalculation of a person’s character, I’d had no trouble shutting out the world.
In fact, most often I had to force myself to get involved.
I could be a teammate when they needed it.
I could watch my brother’s back when he needed it.
But I wasn’t a joiner. That scared kid that got jumped by homophobic assholes still lived inside my head, shouting and crying at times, but I wasn’t weak.
The wall I’d built around me helped, but apparently, it wasn’t perfect.
A basic human need for connection was something I hadn’t been able to tame yet. Like a stubborn weed—moving and searching for a crack, an opening to bury deep into, to weaken my fortifications—it remained.
I don’t need anyone. I don’t want anyone.
Just gotta make it until May and get out of here.
I repeated the words my blood never listened to.
Like some weird science shit, my veins hummed as Cal drew close.
Hell, he didn’t have to be close, just within sight, just the mention of his name, and my cells pulsed, ready to jump at any second.
The problem was controlling what I’d do when I couldn’t hold back any longer. It hadn’t happened yet, and I was afraid of what I’d unleash if it ever did.
“Guys.” Cal halted the shrinking distance between our teams with a few shoves to shoulders and glares. “Back the fuck off. You’re not doing this here.”
“Yeah. Listen to the voice of reason, pussies,” Ty snapped because of course he couldn’t let it go without a last word.
Cal scowled over his shoulder. “Ty, fuck. Don’t you ever shut up?”
“Nope.”
Cal turned, his big frame acting as a wall to hold his teammates at bay. “Sorry about the kits, bro.”
“Yeah, sure,” Blaine said. “Sorry you didn’t ruin them sooner?”
Cal and Ty huffed in Blaine’s direction. “Calm your tits, Blaine,” Cal said. “It shouldn’t have gone that far.”
“Fuck you, Winters. You don’t get to act all high-and-mighty when it was you who fucked us over.”
Cal clenched his jaw but didn’t take the bait. He was a master at keeping his cool. If I didn’t hate him so much, I’d admire that.
I stayed on the perimeter, almost straddling the invisible lines between the two sides, but kept my eyes peeled for trouble. We didn’t have long between classes, but no one seemed to care. The hall was crowded, everyone eager to watch the show.
“Don’t act so innocent, Blaine.” One of the football players bumped into Cal’s shoulder as he surged forward to get a word in. “You boys have done just as much damage.”
“Of no value,” Blaine was quick to point out.
“Guys,” Cal shouted. “Let’s get to class and cool off.”
“Afraid of us calling it like it is?” Blaine didn’t know when to quit. Any second, teachers would be rounding the corners, wondering where all their students were.
Cal smirked, and my heart rate spiked with it.
None of that, now.
He glanced at the football players behind him. He and a few others were pretty big, but those guys were MIA at the moment. Still, Cal didn’t seem bothered by it or Blaine’s bluster.
“Not afraid, just smarter. No one can afford to get kicked out of school,” Cal said.
Blaine stepped up, surprisingly going toe-to-toe with Cal. I closed the distance between them and me, almost within the same second.
Few things in life could get me amped from zero to boiling. Something or someone messing with my family would do it, and apparently, someone messing with Cal too.
“Smarter? That’s rich, coming from you dumb jocks. You dicks think we’re gonna let this go?” Blaine puffed up, ballsy for his smaller frame, but it did nothing when he bumped chests with Cal.
“Back off,” one of Cal’s teammates said as he reached around Cal to push Blaine away.
And shit went sideways.
Ty, who didn’t like Blaine any more than I did, was territorial and loyal to the team. One shove incited another, and then we were all bumping and knocking into each other.
I surged forward, yanking my teammates back with shaking hands and ignoring the tremors in favor of separating bodies. Our best players were in this fray, and we couldn’t afford to have anyone kicked off the team because of this shit.
Cal was doing the same. He gripped shirts and shoulders in his big hands and hauled them away from the soccer players.
“Ty,” I barked. He could stop our guys with a few growls, and if he didn’t do it soon, this was bound to get worse.
In the mash-up of students, I got pushed, my back ramming into another, and when I spun, a pair of light blue eyes clashed with my darker ones.
The world slowed. The fighting and grumbles around us blurred and faded.
But before time could freeze entirely, Cal was slammed into from behind.
Everything was already in slow motion, so I had plenty of time to react before Cal was forced against my body.
And react I did.
There was no fucking way I could let his stacked muscles hit mine without it sparking something that needed to remain lifeless.
Instinct. Survival instinct.
Cal widened his eyes and gaped, because he had to know it too. This wasn’t going to end well. Right before we collided, I thrust my arms in front of me, and he flew backward, barreling into his teammates.
Fuck.
Yeah, everyone around us was basically doing the same thing, but it was never the same thing when it came to Cal and me.
Cal righted just as time returned to normal and shoved me with lightning reflexes. Like a whip, it happened so fast I didn’t brace myself and slammed into a locker. The bang was louder than the force of it and got everyone’s attention.
“Get off me,” Cal shouted.
Students and players turned, some yelling, “Fight, fight.”
Ty rushed in front of me. “Stand down, Winters.”
Cal knocked him away. Jesus, fuck, the balls and strength on this guy. I couldn’t let that flutter behind my ribs get to me, though. For one, he shouldn’t have touched Ty. Now I was pissed. And two, I could never let him know all this animosity between us was like foreplay to my fucked-up brain.
I surged back in, getting right in Cal’s face. “Touch him again, and I’ll put you down.”
“Try it,” Cal taunted.
I should’ve backed off. Where was that indifference I lived in? If I stopped right now, this would be over. Everyone was staring, no one fighting anymore. This had now become one-on-one. My ego loved it. My nerve endings loved it. I loved …
The words hung in the air like a red flag in front of a bull. I fisted Cal’s shirt and swung around, slamming him into the lockers as if fighting him would fight the ideas threatening to become reality.
I didn’t love shit. I fucking hated Cal Winters.
We snapped and snarled but never threw a punch.
Students were cheering and yelling as the two of us danced, spinning and jostling as we tried to strong-arm each other to create distance between us, and somehow only crashed into each other over and over.
The harder we thrashed, the more I had no idea what we were trying to accomplish.
An ear-piercing whistle echoed around us, silencing and freezing everyone.
“Get to class,” Coach Sullivan shouted.
Students parted left and right, leaving a straight shot between Cal and me and the football Coach with Ms. Haney, one of the math teachers, next to him. We lowered our arms, as if that mattered now. We’d been caught.
Coach Sullivan glared. “Winters, Rutledge, follow me.”
Cal shot me a pained expression. I couldn’t have hurt him, or if I did, he couldn’t be feeling it yet, not with all the adrenaline still pumping in our veins. No, something else was in that look. He righted his clothes and snatched his bag off the floor. I followed suit and marched after him.
How bad would this be? Coach Sullivan wouldn’t want Cal in trouble, wouldn’t want to risk his players missing a game, but Ms. Haney saw us too.
Sweat cooled on my skin, making me shiver. The high wore off, leaving the anxiety that had paused while Cal and I were locked in, well, whatever that had been. Jaw tight, nose flared, I worked on breathing and settling my insides.
Exits? The door at the end of the hall. The windows. Wait, did they open?
Fuck. Fucking fuck. I shouldn’t let Cal get to me like that. I shouldn’t let anything get to me. I shook my head, angry at myself more than anything else.
Since day one, it had only gotten harder to avoid what my head kept whispering about Cal fucking Winters. And every day since day one, I’d stepped closer and closer to some unseen thing, an unknown.
Before moving here, I’d never have called myself a violent person. Blaming Cal for provoking me was easier than blaming myself. Violence wasn’t an answer, but maybe in some fucked-up way, I wanted a fight. I wanted something to punch and kick and beat as I hadn’t done the night I’d been attacked.
I wanted payback for the sixteen-year-old me.
Did Cal deserve to be the outlet for my vengeance? No. Was that enough to stop me?