10. Chapter 10
Bram
Rory Hale keeps her promises.
I woke at six, flat on the diagonal of her too-small bed, with Rory asleep on my chest, exactly where she said she'd be.
Her curls were everywhere, one hand thrown over mine, one hand resting over the mark as if she'd been guarding it in her sleep.
I lay under her for the better part of an hour, just basking in her presence.
I didn't want to wake her. I wanted to lie there feeling her breathe against me for as long as she'd let me.
Now her travel mug sits in my cup holder, the school rises up ahead through a flat gray November morning, and my passenger sits in my truck, chatting about this and that in her light, musical voice.
"For the record," she says as I turn in past the flagpole, “you snored all night.”
"I'm a gargoyle. We do not snore.”
“Like an old lawnmower. It was awful,” she repeats, delighted, like she's won something.
Her car sits where she left it last night, frosted white to the door handles. I pull into a space near it. The bolted sign at the head of the staff row says HEAD COACH, and the space under it is already full, because it's a playoff week and Gene Thackery is always the first one here.
Good. I want him early. I've been thinking about what I'll tell him since last night.
I want him to hear it from me, coach to coach, before the building fills.
Gene cares about every kid on that team.
He'll be sick about Friday, and then he'll back me.
After eight years working beside him, I can't imagine him doing anything else.
We come in through the side door together, into liniment and floor wax and the gold-and-navy of my wing, and Rory peels off half a step toward the main corridor, letting go of her smile. That's when Gene's door opens.
He fills the doorway the way he fills every doorway.
He's six foot eight of moss-green orc, with an iron-gray buzz cut, polished tusks, and a barrel chest. At forty-eight, he's still fit enough to put most of his players to shame.
Usually, he'd already be asking me about practice. He doesn't say good morning.
"My office." His amber eyes go past me and land on her. "You too, Miss Hale."
Rory stops beside me. I look from her to Gene, the pleasure of the morning fading as he steps back to let us in. Gene's office door is usually open so the whole wing can hear him run his program. He waits until we're both inside and then shuts it, and I turn at the click of the latch.
The walls are covered in plaques, team photos going back twenty seasons, and clippings gone newspaper-yellow in their frames.
A game ball sits mounted on a walnut stand, beside a desk that leaves little room for the two visitor chairs in front of it.
Nobody sits. Gene plants himself in front of the photo wall, arms crossed, and looks at me the way he looks at a player who’s late to practice.
"Patricia called me at my kitchen table at six this morning.
" He runs loud at practice and quiet when it counts, and eight years taught me which one to worry about.
This is the quiet one. “That’s how I found out that my own assistant coach benched my star quarterback two days before playoff and filed paper on him with the principal. "
"You'd have heard it from me in about four minutes. I came in early to brief you."
"Brief me." He bites the words like they taste bitter.
"There are recruiters driving up Friday with offer sheets in their glove boxes for Cole Braddock. That boy is the best thing this program has produced in decades, and you think to just ruin this for all of us? Without even running it by me first, on top of things.”
"I saw what I saw."
“Well, here's what happens now." He doesn't argue with what I saw.
He doesn't ask about Eli, either. He looks at me as if he's giving me instructions before practice and expects me to get on with them.
"You withdraw the complaint. Both of you.
Cole plays like planned and we make the run this town has been owed for fifteen years, and by June nobody remembers this week happened.
We handle it within the team. It doesn't need to go any further. "
"No."
It comes out flat and immediate, and his jaw shifts. For a second, neither of us moves. I stand my ground, waiting for him to argue with me.
Instead, Gene turns away from me and to Rory.
"Miss Hale." His voice becomes almost gentle, which is worse.
"Walk me through your proof. Because here's what I'm looking at.
A boy with four spotless years. Not one complaint, not one mark against him, a family this whole town knows and respects.
And you're hanging an accusation on him that follows that kid for life. "
"I have proof.” Rory's feet are planted, and her voice is clear and steady. There is nothing friendly about it. "I've seen Eli's injuries. He's told me who's been hurting him. And I have a signed eyewitness account from your own assistant coach, who walked in on it happening."
"A tipped laundry bin and some horseplay is all this was.” He says it without heat, without even glancing at me.
I can hardly believe he's describing what happened as if he was there.
He hasn't heard a word of it from me. "Boys scrap, Miss Hale.
It's a locker room, not a library. What you have is a story you decided to believe, and you're set to taint a bright kid's future with it.
And the way I learned this business, your job is the kids.
All of them. Including the seventeen-year-old you're about to burn on a hunch.
From where I stand, that's not doing your job. That's failing at it."
"Failing at..." Her chin comes up. I know how much she cares about this job and those kids. Hearing him accuse her of failing them makes me want to step between them, but she's already answering him. "There is a sixteen-year-old in this school who has been bullied for months, right under your nose. It’s not me who failed him, it’s you.”
"Then where is he?" Gene spreads his big green hands. "If it's real, the kid comes forward himself. He sits in Patricia's office, he puts his name on it, he says it out loud. That's how this gets taken seriously. Not a counselor building a file out of guesswork."
"He's afraid of Cole." Her hands cut the air. "He is half his size and terrified of him, and you want him to sit in a room and tell everyone what happened while he's afraid of what Cole will do afterward. I won't put him in that position."
"Then you've got nothing." The gentleness leaves his voice.
"And understand me, because I'll say this part once.
Your contract renews every June. Every June, somebody upstairs decides whether Saltford High needs you back.
Keep pushing these baseless accusations at one of our star students, and you are risking your job.
That's not a threat, Miss Hale. That's a fact. "
I draw a breath and hold it. My chest is burning, and my wings have pulled in so tight the ache runs to the roots. Eight years I've given this man my time, stayed late, came in early, done it all gladly. Now he's threatening Rory's job because she won't let him ignore what happened to Eli.
I can still hear the kid hitting the lockers. I can see him break down in tears in Rory’s office.
I want to get in Gene's face. I want to tell him what will happen if he goes after her, and I know what I'll sound like if I speak now. He'll hear more than an angry assistant coach. He'll hear a mated gargoyle defending his mate.
And I can't let him know that.
Gene hasn't threatened my job. Nothing about me renews in June.
My file is clean, my position is permanent, and I'm the man he's spent eight years grooming to take over from him.
He knows how difficult it would be to get rid of me.
He's aiming at the one person in this room on an annual contract.
If I lose my temper over what he's said to her, I could give him something else to use.
He has just seen us arrive together. The moment he suspects there's more between us, he can make this about the assistant coach and the guidance counselor sleeping together, backing each other up against the star quarterback.
I can almost hear him saying it. He wouldn't need to convince everyone.
Just enough people to make Rory's complaint sound questionable and mine sound like I signed it for her.
He wouldn't have to prove a syllable of it.
He'd only have to say it, in the right rooms, with all the authority his years here have given him.
Then Rory would be defending herself as well as Eli, with her contract coming up for renewal and Gene waiting for her to make a mistake.
She could lose the job she loves. Eli could lose the person he trusts enough to ask for help.
I let my breath out slowly and keep my face still.
Gene doesn't get to see what she means to me.
I won't give him that. My report is already with Patricia, and that's where I'll take this next.
I can tell her exactly what he said about Rory's contract.
Make sure Gene doesn't get to decide what happens to either of them alone.
I hold on to that while Rory turns toward me. It has only been a few seconds, but she has spent them standing beside me, waiting for me to speak.
Her eyes come up to mine, and she waits. I know what she wants to hear. But Gene is watching us, and I'm still trying to get my anger under control. I keep my hands at my sides and my expression still.
Rory searches my face. She has seen enough of me now to know there's more than this, and I can see her waiting for it.
I want to tell her that I haven't changed my mind, that I'm going to take care of this.
Instead, I stand beside Gene's photo wall in what must look like comfortable silence with the man who just threatened her.
I've been quiet for most of my life. Right now, I need her to know it doesn't mean I agree with him, but I can’t tell her that.
Her chin stays up. Her eyes move over my face one last time, then she stops looking for an answer. Her hands come to rest at her sides. They were moving with every word a moment ago. Now they hang still, and I dread what she's going to say.
"Okay," she says. Very quiet. Just to me.
Then, still to me, steady in a way I will be hearing for the rest of my life: “I’m done. I want nothing to do with you."
She turns to Gene, and her voice doesn't waver. “My complaint stays filed with the principal. Every word of it. I'm not withdrawing anything, and I'm not asking a terrified boy to face his bully to make it convenient for you. Threaten my job all you like."
She opens the door and leaves, closing it gently behind her. Her heels go down the corridor at a perfectly level click, no hurry in it, a sound I could pick out of a full stadium, getting smaller.
Her distress surges through the bond. I don't need to guess why she's hurting.
And the warmth in my body goes with her.
It always goes with her. It fades out of my chest and down both wings, wingtips last. I stand in the same place while the cold returns, wanting to call her back and knowing she won't want to hear me.
She's just ended things with me, and she still won't withdraw the complaint. Her job is at risk, and she hasn't backed down at all. That's my mate. My courageous, stubborn, generous mate.
The woman who just told me she wants nothing to do with me.
Gene exhales through his tusks and picks his whistle up off the desk.
"Talk to her." He starts toward the door. "Roster posts at three tomorrow. Get the paper pulled by then and this all shrinks down to a bad week. It's for the kids, Bram. All of it. One day you'll sit at this desk and you'll understand."
He leaves his door standing open, the way it always stands.
Somewhere up the main corridor the first bell buzzes its harsh half second.
Kids start moving toward their classrooms, voices rising outside the office.
I barely hear them. I keep listening for Rory's heels, even though she's too far away for me to hear them now.
I stand in his office and let the grief hit me. I don't know what else to do with it. A few minutes ago, I was thinking about all the ways I could make her happy this weekend. Now I don't know if she'll ever talk to me again.
Gargoyles mate once. I will feel her for the rest of my life.
She can be across a room or across town, and I'll know she's there.
I'll want to go to her, and she won't want me anywhere near her.
The band presses the inside of my glove.
I press my thumb against it and remember her fingertip moving over the raised stone last night. I can't seem to stop touching it.
She thinks I've betrayed her. I was trying to keep Gene from using our relationship to hurt her.
I don't know how to explain that without making it sound like an excuse for leaving her to face him alone.
She couldn't hear what I was thinking. All she had was my silence, and words have never come easily when I most need them.
I lift my head and look toward the open door. I'm still furious with Gene, still sick over Rory, but I know what I have to do next.
Gene Thackery has used his position to threaten the woman protecting a sixteen-year-old who is too afraid to come forward, and he called it protecting kids.
He taught me this trade. He told me to look after every kid on the team, not just the best players.
I believed he meant it. I wanted to be the kind of coach I thought he was.
I look at the plaques on his wall and wonder when I stopped knowing the man who earned them. Or whether I ever knew him as well as I thought.
I can't fix what she read in my silence. Maybe nothing fixes it. But I can still do what I meant to do when I kept my mouth shut.
Gene threatened her contract in front of a witness. Patricia needs to hear about it, and she needs to know that I'm standing by my report. Eli's safety doesn't get to depend on how badly this town wants a championship. Rory's job doesn't get to depend on whether she'll help Gene win one.
If it costs me the whistle, my place here, everything I've spent eight years working toward, so be it.
This does not stand.