2. Lincoln
TWO
LINCOLN
H ot water trickled down from the shower head, soothing the tense muscles in my shoulders. I hated to admit it, but I might have gone a little too hard with training that day, overzealous with the new routine Coach Whitmore had me on.
The pre-season started a couple of weeks back, and I’d spent almost every waking moment in the confines of Fenton’s boxing facility. It was senior year, and I needed to bring my A-game. I needed as many wins under my belt as I could manage.
While I didn’t want to box professionally, being Fenton University’s top boxer had the potential to open doors.
Doors that could turn things around for me and ensure a level of financial stability that I hadn’t experienced.
Things like working in a gym that specialized in boxing.
I could do that now. But I was aware of the pay bump that came with being backed by a degree along with a championship title.
Resting my forehead against the cold shower tiles, I welcomed the drumming of water on my skin. Part of me wished I could stay there for a while, tune out the world around me, and just soak a little longer.
But that wasn’t my reality.
When I closed my eyes, all I could hear was my mother lecturing me about how I was going to make her late for work. Again .
At least that night, missing the bus wouldn’t be an excuse thanks to Andrew, my high school best friend, offering me a ride home.
Dragging my hands through my hair, I grabbed a towel off the hook outside the shower stall.
The towels at Fenton felt a lot more expensive than the sheets of sandpaper I used to dry myself off at home.
I pressed the plush material to my face, exhaustion ramming into me like an uppercut.
All I wanted was to get home and climb into bed.
But I was on big brother duty that night, which meant watching Sadie’s favorite princess movies on repeat until she dozed off.
I made quick work of ringing as much water as I could out of my hair.
The weather was still surprisingly warm for New York in mid-October, but the nights were starting to gain their autumn chill, and there weren’t many things worse than your hair turning into icicles.
Throwing the towel around my hips, I headed towards the locker room.
As I made my way out of the showers, Dante Wright, Fenton’s star quarterback, was coming in.
“You heading out for the day?” he asked, his fist colliding with mine.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “How’s it been going? I heard you guys are killing it so far this season.”
Dante’s easy-going grin spread across his face.
He didn’t carry an ounce of smug bravado like most athletes I’d come across at Fenton.
Instead, he was a genuinely nice guy. That’s probably one of the reasons why Whitmore didn’t mind having him around.
Fenton’s football team had their very own state-of-the-art gym to mess around in, but Dante opted to use the facilities over here a couple of times out of the week.
I didn’t get around to asking why—figured that it wasn’t my business—but if I had to make a guess, it would be because the boxing gym was more low-key.
There were less people breathing down your neck, waiting for machines, and no juiceheads blasting heavy metal to get them through their sets.
“So far so good, man,” Dante said. “We got a good group of guys this year.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“No chance I can convince you to try out mid-season? I don’t think it will take much to get Coach Lopez on board.” He landed a light punch on my bare shoulder. “We could use a couple more agile players.”
I offered up a sorry excuse for a smile.
This wasn’t the first time Dante had hinted at me to try out for Fenton’s football team.
Boxing aside, I wasn’t much of a sports guy.
I didn’t grow up following any league or worshiping a team.
The only competitive sports team I was a part of was soccer back when I was six.
And that didn’t last. It didn’t take long for my mom to figure out that I wasn’t a team player.
I’d rather get things done on my own. It was easier that way.
No one else to depend on, no one else to blame if shit went sideways.
“Thanks for the offer, but football’s not really my thing.”
Dante nodded in acknowledgment. “If you don’t love it, it’s not worth it. But you don’t need me to tell you that. I’m sure it’s the same thing with you and boxing.”
Boxing was my lifeline. The one thing that didn’t have me giving up and throwing in the towel.
That thought in itself left a bittersweet taste in my mouth.
I wouldn’t have gotten into an Ivy League school without it, much less community college.
I owed a lot to the sport. More than Dante or anyone else would ever know.
But it was also the kindling to my own personal hell.
“Well,” Dante said, pulling me from my thoughts. “I’m going to hit the showers. Have a good night.”
“Yeah,” I said as he brushed past me. “You too.”
The walk to my locker was short. Dropping the soggy towel to the floor, I sifted through my old gym bag to find a clean set of clothes. I tossed my things back into my gym bag. A rip was forming on one side of the zipper, and I made a mental note not to shove so much shit in it from now on.
When I was done changing and ready to leave, I closed my locker door with a bang reverberating through the room.
“Pierce!” Coach Whitmore shouted through his ajar office door. “Get your ass in here.”
I mentally winced at his tone. What did I manage to fuck up now?
Pete Whitmore was in his late fifties and one hell of a coach.
He had a sharp eye for talent, something he was sure to share the night he came to scout me at one of my high school matches.
Whitmore was a man of few words, but trust me, you didn’t want to get onto his bad side.
The sophomore who had come late and hungover to practice on Saturday morning figured that out the hard way.
Poor guy lasted ten minutes before Whitmore had him puking into a garbage can in the corner of the gym.
Tossing my bag onto my shoulder, I made my way over and peeked into his office. The stench of his pine scented cologne smacked me in the face. “Yeah, Coach?”
“You wanna tell me why I got an email saying you’re flunking out of Anatomy?”
Probably because I’m flunking out of Anatomy.
“Well?” Whitmore pressed, raising a thick, graying eyebrow.
I straightened up to my full height in the doorway. “I’m just falling a bit behind, Coach. I’ll pick myself back up.”
Even as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I didn’t believe them.
While I had tried to start off on the right foot in his class, Hamilton’s workload was unrealistic.
Never mind the fact that I didn’t understand half of the words in the damn textbook he had written.
The cherry on top? I needed this course in order to graduate with my degree in Kinesiology.
And he was the only guy who taught it.
“Damn right you will,” he said. “You’re being assigned a tutor.”
I almost choked on my own spit. “A tutor?”
Coach Whitmore glanced up from his laptop screen, twisting it towards me to show me the email. The vein in his forehead began to pulsate, a sure sign that this was a huge inconvenience. An inconvenience that he was pinning on me.
“Professor Hamilton is placing you with another student for supplemental instruction.”
Of course, he is.
Professor Hamilton was a stickler for the rules.
You’d think that at his age, he’d be over giving a crap about his students passing or failing.
Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t the case.
Even though he was well past the age of retirement, Professor Hamilton was on top of his shit.
Which meant that passing his class wouldn’t come easy.
Unlike the majority of the Fenton U faculty, he didn’t hand out grades for being athletically inclined .
“Coach, with all due respect, I don’t need a tutor. The last couple of weeks?—”
“It’s not up for debate, Pierce. You either agree to supplemental instruction, or you’re off the roster.”
The revelation knocked the air right out of my chest.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Coach Whitmore’s face had gone red with frustration.
“Do I look like I’m kidding to you?” He heaved a sigh and rubbed at his forehead.
“You’re a good kid, Pierce, and an incredible fighter, but my hands are tied on this one.
Fenton has a strict policy when it comes to athletes and their grades.
You want to continue to fight, you’ll agree to the supplemental instruction.
Or, if you’d like, I can reply to Hamilton, let him know you’re turning him down, and pull you from the matches we have lined up,” Coach said.
He was fucking taunting me, except we both knew he was more serious than a head injury.
It was no secret that I was the university’s best boxer.
And that wasn’t me trying to toot my own horn, either.
Coach Whitmore needed me. I was his headliner.
The funding for his department doubled the moment I brought Fenton up the D1 standings.
We both knew Fenton would only continue to fund a team if it proved beneficial, and I could guarantee that their standing would plummet without me.
The shitty thing was, I needed boxing just as much as Whitmore needed me.
There weren’t too many ways to get into a school like Fenton University unless you were born into money—or super fucking smart. And I was the furthest thing from a millionaire’s son. I was more like the gum on the bottom of their shiny, expensive dress shoes.
My grades were mediocre at best, definitely not enough to keep me in a place that prided itself on educating the future of this country. I was on a boxing scholarship. No boxing, no scholarship. No scholarship—bye-bye university degree.
“I’ll take the tutoring,” I muttered in disdain.
Coach Whitmore gave me a stern nod of his head. “Don’t let me down, boy. Don’t let the entire department down because you can’t remember what bone is connected to the hip bone.”
Way to lay on the pressure.
This was one of many times Whitmore had reminded me that my performance was directly correlated to how much funding Fenton received for our sports department. Affirmations like that might have gone to someone else’s head. Instead, his words only added more weight to my shoulders.
“You got it, Coach.”
“Good, now get outta here.” A slight twinkle sparked in his gray eyes. “Some people gotta go home and sleep.”
I gave the door trim a pat. “‘Night.”
“Goodnight, son.”
I walked out of the locker room like a poltergeist was on my ass. That wasn’t exactly the conversation I planned to have right after my workout. The faster I got out of there, the faster I could clear my head and figure out what the fuck I was going to do.
And most importantly, how I was going to get out of this tutoring thing without Hamilton or Whitmore knowing.
When I pushed past the locker room door, Andrew was already waiting for me.
“What the hell took you so long? Did you shit yourself or something?” Andrew’s head of brown curls was erratic after his shift at Red Room, a pub on campus.
They served the best deep-fried pickles and the kind of greasy food that cured hangovers.
Needless to say, it was a popular spot among the students at Fenton.
He was still in his black button-up, an apron half-haphazardly thrown over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” I said as I brushed past him. “I just finished getting an earful from Whitmore.”
He matched my pace with ease, a smirk playing on his lips. “About what? Leaving your tighty-whities on the floor?”
“More like I’m failing Anatomy, and if I don’t get my grades up, I’m cut from the roster.”
Andrew blew out a low whistle. “Shit, it’s that serious then, huh?” He paused for a moment before continuing. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t have too many options,” I said as we walked out the gym doors. The cool autumn air nipped at my face. “They’re assigning me a tutor.”
The parking lot was barren, aside from Andrew’s Jeep and Coach’s vintage BMW.
With a nimble click of his fob, the blue Wrangler roared to life.
I’d been envious of Andrew’s wheels since he received it as an early birthday present from his parents during senior year of high school.
It was a hand-me-down. A rite of passage passed down from each of the other five Bryant siblings.
“A tutor?” Andrew coughed out in amusement. “You’re actually going to sit through tutoring sessions?”
I couldn’t remember the last time academics were a priority for me.
Maybe it was because my teachers always looked at me as if I were stupid or because I didn’t think I’d actually go anywhere in life.
But even if I wanted to apply myself, I was so low on sleep most days that I physically couldn’t focus .
I stuffed my hands in my pocket. “Well, it isn’t like I’ve been given much of a fucking choice.”
“Wow, Lincoln Pierce with a tutor. I never thought I’d see the day.”
I huffed out a sigh. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
Andrew analyzed me for a moment.
I raised a thick brow at him. “What?”
Andrew shrugged, his thumb running along his jawline. “Nothing, I just know you well enough to know that you’re going to try to get out of this. I can practically see the gears in your head turning.”
“Oh,” I said, opening the passenger side door. “You can count on that.”