Chapter 3
Andy
The palms of my hands burn as I grip the bar, pulling my chin just over it.
“Twenty,” I say, not letting my voice waver.
I let myself drop to the floor, pulling down the towel hanging on one of the lower pull up bars, roughly using it to wipe the sweat off my face.
My eyes catch on the glow of my phone screen, where DAD has apparently texted me.
I know what he wants to know: how Will’s handling Ben’s reappearance.
He hasn’t explicitly told me Ben’s a problem, but it’s clear.
And of course, he’ll use me to manage it.
I ignore it, sniffing as I roll my neck, deciding he can wait.
The weight room is empty today, just Will, Josiah and Scott. Josiah’s over near the mirrors, taking more photos of himself lifting free weights than actually working out. Will and Scott, on the other hand, are by the bench press, where Will’s spotting him.
“Jesus, Scott. You really are just a bitch boy, huh?” Will grins as Scott struggles to lift the bar back on to the rack, his face red as his arms shake. I sigh, walking over for an assist, pulling the bar onto the rack for him, and Will rolls his eyes. “He had that man.”
Scott doesn’t look too pleased either. “Yeah, what the fuck? I had it,” he pants, wiping his own towel across the back of his neck.
“Right…is that why you looked like you were about to pop an artery?” I chuckle, snapping my towel at Scott’s arm. Will swats the back of his head.
“He has a point, man. You really need to be training more. You’re barely at one sixty.”
Ever since Ben, Will’s older brother and our old captain returned to campus, Will’s had all of us in the gym for extra weight time and speed training.
Not that he needs it; the only guy on the team who can lift heavier is Grant and that’s because the dude’s basically a brick wall.
Will’s easily the fastest—other than me.
I’ve learned in my years of friendship with Will Chapman that staying in second is usually in your best interest.
We move to the free weights, cracking up at the sight of Josiah mid pose.
“Fuck you guys. The ladies love this,” he says, using the weight to gesture toward himself.
Scott joins us as we roll our eyes and grab some weight for bicep curls, and I consider how much I dislike the guy.
Will’s always keeping him around, likely because Scott is the epitome of a yes man.
Literally—Will asked him to jump off a bridge when we were all tubing over spring break. Scott did it. Gladly.
“Speaking of ladies…what are we getting into tonight?” Scott’s voice is overly goofy and anytime we bring him anywhere he completely fucks up my game. I glare at Will in the mirror, a subtle warning to shut the fuck up, but I see that mischievous glint in his eye.
“Why don’t you hit up your boy Ian, Scotty? I could be up for a party tonight.” Scott's cheeks flame at the mention of your boy. Honestly, he’d be far less insufferable if he gave up being a misogynist and embraced whoever he actually is, but that’s none of my business.
“We aren’t really boys…but yeah, sure. I can hit him up.” He clears his throat, grabbing lighter weights than the ones he originally attempted, the same dumbbells both Will and I are using. I wince, because I can’t help it. I’m an empath, for fuck’s sake.
“You gonna invite Olivia?” I ask, sort of a punch back at Will on Scott’s behalf because I know the pure tenacity with which Will avoids his girlfriend.
I don’t really get the fascination. Olivia’s cool?
Fine? I don’t know. She’s clearly a beautiful woman but a little too tightly wound for my taste.
She keeps to herself, is the picture of control.
When she does socialize, she talks down to whoever she’s speaking to.
Actually, that might be the hottest thing about her.
Still, she’s a prop, as if Will keeps her around to show he’s not completely out of control.
I’d argue he’s been spiraling the entire time I’ve known him.
And I don’t dislike the guy; disliking him would’ve made all of this a lot easier.
Unfortunately, I’d probably call him my best friend.
He has a heart in there. Buried deep in shit, sure, but it’s there.
He’s never blown my flimsy old money cover, even though he’s been to my mom’s tiny two bedroom in the city.
Even though he’s helped me out with Carmen on more than one occasion.
No one at Astor knows I’m not a legacy or new money, except for him.
He’s held that fact close to his chest. Hasn’t used it as a bargaining chip like I’ve seen him do with so many of the other guys' on the team, using their deepest scars against them. I’ve learned that’s just the cost of being part of this world.
Every piece of you is up for scrutiny—is fair game.
I sure as hell don’t need these rich assholes knowing that I’m broke as fuck and I definitely don’t need them digging into who I am or how I’m here, both things Will’s never bothered asking.
Yeah—behind the douchery, he’s a good person. And when he isn’t, I know we have his father to thank for that.
Will’s jaw hardens at the mention of Liv and I can tell I pressed too far. But Scott’s soft, and I worry about going too hard on him, even as he and Josiah file out toward the locker room.
“Let me worry about my girlfriend.” Will’s arms flex as he continues his bicep curls and I watch his technique for a second.
“Elbow.” I point out the error in his form and his eyes meet mine for a second, violence there at the forefront of his gaze before it dissipates and he chuckles.
“Fuck you, man.” He drops the dumbbells into the rack. “I’m gonna shower. Want me to DD tonight?”
I contemplate it for a second. “Yeah that works. I’m not planning on leaving alone, so you should probably have your car,” I grin and he shakes his head laughing.
“You’re the biggest slut I know.” He grabs his towel from the bars heading toward the lockers.
“You still got time man!” Another reminder that he still has a whole year to end things with his girlfriend. Be each other’s wingman. He waves me off not turning back.
I watch my own form in the mirror, picking up the heavier weights now that Will’s gone, finally feeling my muscles strain, and hyper focus on my reps before seeing my phone remind me of my dad’s text message. I drop the weight, unbothered by the way it bounces across the floor and into a bench.
When he first contacted me in my senior year of high school, it felt kismet.
My mom spent so much of my life warning me off the idea of him that I formed this unrealistic attachment to his ghost. Luis was everything I could’ve needed in a father, but that’s the kind of thing you only ever realize in hindsight.
I loved him as much as humanly possible, but that small bubble of paternal insecurity convinced me, for a long time, that maybe I’d love my real father even more.
Which is fucked, I know, but seeing him there, outside my high school gym, so soon after Luis had died, made so much sense to me.
Here was the man I’d never so much as seen a photo of but who looked so much like me, who I’d tried filling in the gaps for my entire life.
The supposed villain in my mom’s story—the older man with a secret family—rolling into my life late one afternoon, offering me the world on a silver fucking platter.
Felt a lot like a love I maybe just didn’t have any experience with.
Admission to Astor: paid. A spot on the team, even though they’d passed me up initially: done. Access to all the things I didn’t have. What he didn’t mention were all the god damned “simple” favors he’d be asking. Like keeping my eye on Will Chapman.
Refusing him didn’t even cross my mind because he was my father. I think he knew that; think that’s why he chose me to begin with. His other son knew him too well to fall for it.
It’s really done a number on how I see myself.
It’s just updates that I give, answers to innocuous questions, and for a while it didn’t bother me.
But I’m not an idiot; I pieced together that he’s a fixer, a corporate attorney who can covertly make your problems disappear should you have enough money.
That world was so intangible to me, even through that first year, but now?
Now the men who hire my father are the parents of my peers.
Peers I know and like, who I drink with on the weekends, who I study with in those too small cubicles that line the library.
If my father’s morality is in question, his clients’ are already damned.
And Dan Chapman? Damned more than any of them.
Will looms larger than him now, so he can’t beat him anymore, but I’ve seen him flinch.
A grown man, flinching when his father’s voice dips in disappointment.
A man past his prime, spying on his son instead of just talking to him.
But for whatever reason that I’m not privy to, Dan needed Will watched, and my dad decided he’d manipulate me into doing it for him. He holds the keys to the kingdom, so I don’t really have a choice, and I’ve resigned myself to that.
But quietly, in my mind, I can hate it.
I switch to single arm overhead presses, moving up more than I should, hoping it’ll quiet my mind. The phone practically glows at me instead, until I finally check the message.
DAD
Call me when you have a minute.
Great.
The ringing sounds colder when it’s his number I’m dialing, and I swear the AC goes down a notch.
“Yes?” I’m more curt than I should be, and I brace myself for the blow back.
“Is that anyway to greet your father?” he asks, his voice thick with mockery. “You’d think you’d be more grateful.”
I want to say for what—after all, it’s not like I’m getting his financial support for free. Just selling my soul one secret at a time.
“I’m just in the gym,” I say, walking back my obvious irritation. “What’s up?”
“I need you to keep an eye on someone.” Papers shuffling against a desk sound in the background. “Sloane Fielder.”
Grant’s sister, bent across that pool table, hair spilling down her back, plays vividly in my mind.
What the hell could he want with her?
“Uh…” I hesitate, already imagining the inconvenience. “Why?”
“Because I said so, Andrew,” he says, like the question is outlandish.
“No, no I know. It’s just…” I glance around the gym before knocking my head back. “It’s harder with people I’m not already around, you know?”
“She’s your teammate’s sister. If that's too hard for you to figure out—”
“It’s not,” I cut him off, avoiding the latent threat he’s always ready to throw in my face—that he can make this all go away in an instant. That he can rip the rug out from my family’s life with a simple phone call. “Can I at least know what I’m supposed to be looking out for?”
“Not important. I just need to know where she goes, who she’s with. That kind of thing.”
“So you want me to stalk her?” I scoff, gathering my bag from the bench I left it on.
“Of course not,” he laughs, and I hear the papers again. “She’s your type. I was told she’s staying with her brother, so whenever she’s around just…do whatever it is you do. Get her to open up.”
The insinuation that I could and should use sex to manipulate someone has me grinding my teeth, but I know I wouldn’t be so bothered if he was wrong. The trouble is, he isn’t. That woman is exactly my type. If she wasn’t, maybe my gut wouldn’t be churning with premature guilt.
It’s for that reason that I know I can’t do this. It’s a line I’m realizing I can’t cross, but telling my father that is not an option. His lines are nonexistent, and he expects me to follow suit if I want him to keep paying me the stipend that barely helps my mom make ends meet.
A flimsy plan formulates in the silence on the end of the phone: if I barely see Sloane, I’ll have nothing to tell, and I’ll chalk my failure up to chance. Easy.
“Andrew?” my father cuts through my thoughts with a decisive edge that confirms what I already know—refusing him will never be an option.
I run a hand through my hair, relishing the cool air that hits my face as I walk to my car.
“Yeah. Got it,” I lie, praying he doesn’t hear the slippery deception in my voice.
“Great. Talk soon, kiddo.”
Fucking kiddo, I think to myself, as walk back to the fraternity housing he cuts the check for.