Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 87395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Neil should be used to this by now. He'd spent the last eight years on the run, spinning lie after lie to leave a twisted trail behind him. Twenty-two names stood between him and the truth, and he knew what would happen if anyone finally connected the dots. Signing with a college team meant more than standing still. It meant he'd be stepping into a spotlight. Prison couldn't stop his father for long, and Neil wouldn't survive a rematch with him.
The math was simple, but that didn't make this any easier. That contract was a one-way ticket to a future, something Neil could never have, and he wanted it so badly he ached. For a blinding moment he hated himself for ever trying out for Millport's team. He'd known better than to step on a court. His mother told him he'd never play again. She'd warned him to obsess from a distance, and he'd disobeyed her. But what else was he supposed to do? He'd run aground in Millport after her death because he didn't know how to go on without her. This was the only thing he had left that was real. Now that he'd had a taste of it again, he didn't know how to walk away from it.
"Please go away," he said.
"It's a bit sudden, but I really do need an answer tonight. The Committee's been hounding me since Janie got locked up."
Neil's stomach hit his shoes at that name. He snapped his gaze from the folder to the coach's face. "Foxes," he said. "Palmetto State University."
The man—who Neil now knew had to be Coach David Wymack— looked surprised at how quickly he put it together. "I guess you saw the news."
Technical difficulties, he'd said. It was a nice way of saying his last recruit Janie Smalls tried to kill herself. Her best friend found her bleeding out in a bathtub and got her to a hospital just in time. Last Neil heard, the girl was on suicide watch in a psychiatric ward. Typical of a Fox, the anchorman had said in crass aside, and he wasn't exaggerating.
The Palmetto State University Foxes were a team of talented rejects and junkies because Wymack only recruited athletes from broken homes. His decision to turn the Foxhole Court into a halfway house of sorts was nice in theory, but it meant his players were fractured isolationists who couldn't get along long enough to get through a game. They were notorious in the NCAA both for their tiny size and for getting ranked dead-last three years running. They'd done significantly better this past year thanks to the perseverance of their captain and the strength of their new defense line, but they were still considered a joke by critics. Even the ERC, the Exy Rules and Regulations Committee, was losing patience with their poor results.
Then former national champion Kevin Day joined the line. It was the greatest thing that could happen to the Foxes and it meant Neil could never accept Wymack's offer. Neil hadn't seen Kevin in almost eight years, and he'd never be ready to see him again. Some doors had to stay closed; Neil's life depended on it.
"You can't be here," Neil said.
"Yet here I stand," Wymack said. "Need a pen?"
"No," Neil said. "No. I'm not playing for you."
"I misheard you."
"You signed Kevin."
"And Kevin's signing you, so—"
Neil didn't stick around for the rest.
He bolted up the bleachers for the locker room. Metal clanged beneath his shoes, not quite loud enough to drown out Hernandez's startled query. Neil didn't look back to see if they were following. All he knew, all that mattered, was getting as far away from here as possible. Forget graduation. Forget "Neil Josten". He'd leave tonight and run until he forgot Wymack ever said those words to him. Neil wasn't fast enough.
He was halfway through the locker room when he realized he wasn't alone. There was someone waiting for him in the lounge between him and the front door. Light glinted off a bright yellow racquet as the stranger took a swing, and Neil was going too fast to stop. Wood slammed into his gut hard enough to crush his lungs into his spine. He didn't remember falling, but suddenly he was on his hands and knees, scrabbling ineffectually at the floor as he tried to breathe. He'd puke if he could only manage that first gasp, but his body refused to cooperate.
The buzzing in his ears was Wymack's furious voice, but he sounded a thousand miles away. "God damn it, Minyard. This is why we can't have nice things."
"Oh, Coach," someone said over Neil's head. "If he was nice, he wouldn't be any use to us, would he?"
"He's no use to us if you break him."
"You'd rather I let him go? Put a band-aid on him and he'll be good as new."
The world crackled black, then came into too-sharp focus as air finally hit Neil's tortured lungs. Neil inhaled so sharply he choked, and every wracking cough threatened to shake him apart. He wrapped an arm around his middle to hold himself together and slanted a fierce look up at his assailant.
Wymack already said the man's name, but Neil didn't need it. He'd seen this face in too many newspaper clippings to not know him on sight. Andrew Minyard didn't look like much in person, blonde and five feet even, but Neil knew better. Andrew was the Foxes' freshman goalkeeper and their deadliest investment. Most of the Foxes were self-destructive, whereas Andrew seemed keen on collateral damage. He'd spent three years at a juvie facility and barely avoided a second term.
Andrew was also the only person to ever turn down the first-ranked Edgar Allen University. Kevin and Riko themselves set up a meet-andgreet to welcome him to the line, but Andrew refused and joined the dead-last Foxes instead. He never explained that choice, but everyone assumed it was because Wymack was willing to sign his family as well —Andrew's twin Aaron and their cousin Nicholas Hemmick joined the line the same year. Whatever the reason, Andrew was blamed for Kevin's recent transfer.