Chapter 8
Reece
The hallway is too loud.
Not because people are shouting, but because I can hear everything all at once. Lockers opening and slamming shut. Metal against metal. Sneakers squeaking on the floor in uneven rhythms. Someone laughing too hard near the science wing—that forced laugh that goes on a second too long.
Everything crashes together inside my head.
The buzz beneath my skin won’t settle. It never does, but today it feels tighter. Meaner. Coiled. Every nerve feels alive, stretched thin, waiting for something to snap.
I roll my shoulders once, jaw clenched, teeth grinding just a little. My hands curl and uncurl at my sides, knuckles itching for something to do. Something physical that hurts enough to shut everything else the fuck up.
The air is heavy. Warm in that exhausted school way that reeks of sweat and cheap deodorant and the lingering trace of cafeteria grease. It attaches to the back of my throat.
I walk faster.
People move around me in clusters. Girls huddle together, whispering behind cupped hands. Guys slap shoulders, shove each other, and laugh too loud. Someone bumps into me and mutters an apology without looking up. I don’t respond.
My focus is off.
It has been all morning.
My mind keeps drifting, sliding back to shit I don’t want to think about. Things I can’t unfeel.
Get a grip, asshole. It’s just another day.
Still, my chest feels tight.
I take a slow breath through my nose and exhale just as slowly. It doesn’t help.
My eyes keep moving regardless.
Scanning more by instinct than deliberate choice.
My brain catalogs everything whether I want it to or not.
I see Jace near the lockers by the stairwell, laughing at something on his phone.
His grin is easy and carefree, which pisses me off a little, though I don’t know why.
Maybe because he looks so comfortable in his own skin.
I walk toward him.
Halfway there, a sound pierces through everything else.
A laugh.
It hits low in my chest and detonates.
My stride falters, even if just for a brief moment.
It’s enough to catch my attention and really annoy me.
That laugh comes softer this time, but it still happens.
I turn my head and see her there.
Sam’s leaning against the lockers, hair loose, mouth curved into a relaxed smile. It’s a genuine smile. She’s laughing at something a guy says, and it hits me quickly, sharp as a blade under my ribs.
I know who he is.
Bryce fucking Andrews. Everyone knows who he is. One of those clean-cut boys who never sneaks out, never drinks, and never gets caught doing anything worth remembering. The type teachers smile at. The type parents point to and say, “Why can’t you be more like him?”
The type Sam smiles at as if he’s something safe.
My jaw locks up.
She tilts her head, smiling wider, eyes shining. Her hand lightly brushes his arm. It seems casual, probably nothing, but I still feel a twinge in my chest until even breathing becomes hard.
I force myself to move before I storm over there and rearrange his fucking teeth for smiling at her.
Every step toward Jace feels like running a marathon.
My temper radiates so loudly it drowns out reason. I keep my head down, eyes forward, pretending I’m not aware of every second Sam’s laughter follows me down the hall.
When I get to Jace, he looks up.
“Hey man.”
I don’t respond. I just lean back against the lockers, my shoulders hitting them hard on purpose. The impact sends a dull jolt up my spine, giving me something solid to focus on instead of my constricted chest, which makes it hard to breathe normally.
Jace watches me for a beat. I can feel his eyes on my face, waiting for something. A reaction. A joke, anything that lets him pretend this is just another moment, another hallway conversation that means jackshit.
Then his gaze shifts.
He follows my stare, tracks it effortlessly, because I haven’t moved my eyes since the second Sam laughed again.
I hate how she makes me feel this way without even looking at me.
I hear Jace snort a laugh next to me. It’s quiet, full of meaning. That sound alone makes my damn skin crawl.
I grind my teeth until they hurt. The locker presses harder into my back as I shift my weight.
The cold metal grounds me before I do something that would get my ass dragged into the Principal’s office.
My fists curl at my sides, fingers flexing, knuckles tight, anger buzzing hot and restless under my skin.
A kid steps into my line of sight.
“What?” I snap.
The word comes out sharp, already loaded.
He flinches.
I clock it instantly.
The nervous half-smile and the way his shoulders pull in, making himself smaller without realizing it.
“You’re in front of my locker,” he says.
His voice cracks just enough to irritate me more.
“Fuck off,” I say, patience already burned down to nothing.
I watch him hesitate. I can see his thoughts flicker across his face—whether he should argue, if the books inside are worth it, or if today is the day he learns a tough lesson about picking fights. He lingers there a moment too long, caught between pride and self-preservation.
I keep staring.
All of this anger isn’t really for him, and I know it. But it’s rolling off me because Sam is still laughing across the hall, and I am still here, stuck in my head, losing my shit over it.
He chooses wisely. He turns and walks away.
Good.
Jace drops his attention back to his phone, thumbs moving quick, probably lining up some girl to keep him busy later. Same shit, different day.
“Still think you can fuck your precious redhead by the end of the year,” he says, confidence dripping off every word. As if he is already claiming the win.
I shove my hands deep into my pockets before walking over to Sam and doing something stupid. My temper doesn’t do well when my brain checks out.
I turn my head when someone calls my name.
“Reece.”
The sound cuts through the noise, enough to grab my focus whether I want it to or not.
I pull my eyes off Sam and focus on the guy a few feet away.
It’s Marcus.
We used to play defense together back when I still showed up to practice and pretended football was just football.
He looks rougher than the last time I saw him.
Tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix. Thick white wrapping tape peeks out from under his shirt, covering one shoulder.
He’s limping, not enough to draw attention, just enough that you notice if you know what you’re looking for.
“What,” I say.
“Coach sent me,” he says, straight to the point. No easing into it. “Tyler blew his knee last weekend. Out for the season.”
I blink. Once. Twice.
A memory slips in—Friday nights under the lights, pads cracking, Tyler cursing when drills went long. He called me an asshole every time I laid him out in practice.
“Okay,” I say finally. “Sucks for him.”
It comes out flat. Detached.
Marcus shifts his weight. “We’re short. Coach wanted to know if you’d be interested in coming back.”
I almost laugh.
“Not happening.”
Jace straightens beside me. “Why not?”
“Because I quit.”
“Yeah,” Jace says easily, shrugging. “Doesn’t mean you sucked.”
“That’s not why I quit.”
Marcus watches me carefully now. Not pressuring, just observing. Examining me as if he might notice the flaw if he looks long enough.
“You were good, man,” he says. “Better than good. Coach still talks about you.”
“Coach talks about anyone who doesn’t fuck up drills,” I snort.
Jace shakes his head. “Bullshit. You were solid. You only stopped because your dad made it his thing.”
The words land and stick. For a second, I say nothing. Because it’s the fucking truth. I quit only because of him.
At first, I thought my dad was proud of me.
I really did.
The first season I played, he actually showed up. He sat in the stands, watched the field, and asked questions on the drive home. I remember thinking, this was it. This finally mattered enough to make him see me. Not just the kid who always fucked things up.
Football was the bridge. That’s what I believed.
It turns out it was never about me.
It was all about winning.
The more I played, the less he talked about anything else. School didn’t matter. Friends didn’t matter. I didn’t either. Just stats, plays, and the things I did wrong. Every missed tackle or bad read. Every second I was half a step too slow.
He never said, "Good job."
Not even once.
If we won, it was because the team pulled it together. If we lost, it was my fault. I should have held the line better. I should have seen it coming, or I should have wanted it more.
He pushed me harder each week.
More drills. More lectures. Winning meant everything to him, and losing felt personal, as if I had just embarrassed him by simply existing.
I stopped being his son somewhere along the way and became just a position. I remember sitting in the car after a game. We had lost by three points. He wouldn’t look at me, only stared straight ahead and told me, “You cost us that.”
Us.
That was the moment something broke, because it was never “us”; it was just football. And when football was gone, there was nothing left between us. No conversation. No effort to know who I was when I was not wearing pads and bleeding for a fucking scoreboard.
I quit because I got tired of chasing approval that only appeared when I was winning and vanished the moment I wasn’t.
Jace goes quiet.
That alone says everything.
He understands how much football meant to me—how it was the one thing that made me feel alive, like I was good at something that mattered more than just getting by every day.
Jace also knows exactly why I had to walk away.
Why quitting was the only way to break free from my dad’s grip before it shattered whatever was left of me.
Marcus scratches his jaw, shifting again on his bad leg. “Well, Coach just said to ask. No pressure.”
I nod once, not trusting my mouth.