Chapter 21 Orion #2
Coaches, trainers, and school security rushed in, the adults ushering us all out of the gym and into the parking lot. Already, the sirens of an ambulance could be heard in the distance, faint but growing louder.
Tucker looked horrified. Rhett stood with him, patting him absently on the shoulder. Not a shred of empathy, only curiosity. I suspected he was itching to go back inside and take a closer look at Gideon’s fucked-up leg.
I moved to stand beside Xander. “Poor bastard,” I whispered with disbelief. “He was set to go to World’s, then the Olympics. Guess that’s done.”
“That’s Castle Hill Academy for you,” said Mike Bollanger, defenseman on the water polo team. “It chews you up and spits you out.”
I nodded. “First it’s Jack Wallace at the bonfire, today it’s Gideon. Now we wait.”
“For?” Xander asked.
“Strike three,” I said absently, watching as Rhett and Tucker moved off. Rhett met my eye and gave me a friendly smile and wave.
He doesn’t know anything. Not a damn thing. He’s a cold-blooded sociopath. Forget it.
But I couldn’t forget it. I’d been angry enough that strike three might’ve been me beating that fucker to a bloody pulp. And that wasn’t me. I wasn’t a violent guy, but this year was all turned around and messed up.
And poor Gideon, Jesus…
I stood in the parking lot like a twat, not knowing what to do.
The idea of going back to Atlas Hall and trying to make sense of my history notes for that blasted paper only made what Rhett—and Harper—had said echo louder in my head.
Instead, I walked straight to Ezra Wolfe’s office in the Arts Wing and prayed he’d be there. And sober.
I got lucky on both counts.
“Orion.” He peered at me, confused. “We don’t have a lesson today. And you look dressed for jock-like activities. I heard someone was hurt at the gym. Glad it wasn’t you. More specifically, I’m glad it wasn’t your fingers.”
“Can we play?” I asked. “I need to play.”
He frowned, concerned, but nodded immediately. “Let’s go.”
***
“Nope,” Wolfe said when I fucked up the cadenza from the Brandenburg No. 5 for the fifth time. “My ears have suffered enough for now, thank you, and you’re still holding yourself back.” He pulled up a chair next to the bench and sat. “You’ve had a day. Tell me. How bad was the gym?”
“Pretty bad,” I said, thinking of poor Gideon in agony, while Rhett fucking Calloway looked on from a safe distance. “Why do the best people suffer while the arseholes among us sit and watch…?” I shook my head. “Sorry. That’s an ungenerous thought.”
Wolfe waved a hand. “Pfft. One I’ve had at least a dozen times per day. Is that all that’s bothering you?”
“No.” I sat with my hands in my lap, wondering how much to say. Wondering why I felt the urge to say anything to this eccentric piano teacher in the first place.
Maybe because it’s been forever since someone has asked how you’re feeling. Except Harper…
“I fucked it up with my girl.”
“Already?” Wolfe’s large eyes widened. “That has to be a record.”
I shot him a look, though I’d basically said the same thing to Easton.
“Sorry,” Wolfe said. “I’m not a pro at this.”
“Neither am I,” I admitted.
“Brilliant! We’ll both bumble our way toward making you feel better, and you’ll be so grateful and indebted to me that you’ll have no choice but to audition for Juilliard come spring.”
“For the last time, I’m not—”
“I know, I know. You’re going to waste your God-given, once-in-a-generation talent to go to work for your family’s company making toilet bowl cleaner.”
After I go to Cambridge. After four more years of school. I can’t bloody do it…
“Hey,” Wolfe said, his hand gentle on my shoulder. “Now I’m being an arsehole. Talk to me.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, waving off my self-pitying thoughts. “It’s just that she had a very large problem that I tried to fix with my very large bank account, and she didn’t like that, and I don’t know why.”
Wolfe arched a brow. “You don’t know why,” he deadpanned.
“Is there some big crime in wanting to take care of the girl you…care about?”
“There is if you trample all over her pride and make her feel like a sex worker in the process.”
“That is not what happened,” I said. “The sex worker part, I mean. But maybe the pride part, yes. She has a lot of that. An excessive amount, really. Harp—this girl’s a fighter. It’s why I…”
“Care about her?” Wolfe said pointedly.
I scrubbed my hands over my tired eyes. “But I don’t know what else to do. She was wrecked and I couldn’t stand it.” I looked up at him. “If I see something I can fix, I want to fix it.”
Wolfe heaved a sigh. “Relationships with women aren’t my forte, but from what I know of the fairer sex, they often don’t want you to fix anything.
It’s enough that you’re merely there. Present.
That they feel seen and heard. Isn’t that what anyone wants?
To feel seen? Understood? And that doesn’t take any doing. It only takes being.”
I nodded, remembering Harper had said as much, but what did I have to offer besides my name, a few jokes, and a broken brain that would eventually betray me?
What if Rhett was right?
Wolfe’s X-ray vision eyes seemed to see right into my soul.
“Do you fear you aren’t enough for her as you are?” he asked gently. More gently than I’d ever heard him speak.
“I’ve always feared I’m not enough as I am,” I said, shocked to say it out loud. Shocked that I let the words out from down in the depths.
“Why is that, Orion?”
“Because…” I shook my head. And that’s when I felt it. Something else trying to follow those words out of me. A swell of emotion. Pain. Grief. Years’ worth.
That’s just because of what Rhett said. I’m not going to let him get to me. Fuck him. Fuck. Him.
“We should get on with the lesson.” My voice sounded rough. Thick. It was hard to swallow. I turned back to the Bach with shaking hands, but Wolfe took the sheet music away.
“Warm-up is over. You’re supposed to compose something for the spring concert,” he said in a low voice. “Have you put anything down?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t,” I said, my voice cracking and rising.
“Can’t…?”
“I can’t fucking write.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said,” I cried, practically shouting now. “I can’t write. The words don’t make it from my brain to my hand. They have holes in them.”
“Words have holes?”
“That’s why I can’t do musical notation or tell you it’s a fucking ostinato. My brain is broken or…I’m a fucking moron.”
Wolfe watched me steadily, without a shred of pity, which was a good thing or else I was going to lose it. “You’re not a moron, Orion. In fact, you’re quite the opposite. You’re a genius—”
“Bollocks,” I said, standing up so hard and fast, I knocked over the bench. “I have to go. I have to…”
I started to for the exit, but Wolfe blocked my way, his gaze intent on me.
“Orion, don’t,” he said. “Don’t run away from this emotion. Don’t shove it down or ignore it or pretend like it doesn’t matter because it does. This is what’s holding you back. Let it out. Let it go.”
I shook my head. It was too much. Harper, and Dash, and Gideon, and the poison pills that make me sick and Rhett’s poisonous words…
“I’m just having a bad day,” I said. “That’s all it is. Forget I said anything. I can write just fine. I don’t know why the hell I said that.”
“Orion…”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Professor Wolfe.”
Then I pushed out into the Academy’s gleaming halls and headed to Atlas Hall on campus, because there was nowhere else for me to go.