Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Jean knew they were going to be talking about him, but there was no point trying to listen in. He closed the door behind them and slowly made his way across the room to the window. There wasn’t much of a view, as the houses were all packed in around here, but a low wooden fence separated this one from the next and someone had spray painted stick figures and daffodils on this side of the posts.
This was a mistake, he thought, but it was far too late to do anything about it.
Unpacking took only a few minutes. The picture of Renee he’d stolen from the Foxhole Court was set face-down on the top of his dresser beside the laptop Wymack hadn’t let him return. His notebooks from the Ravens were hidden in the top drawer alongside his destroyed postcards and magnets, and his clothes fit into the second drawer with room to spare. As he was checking the pockets of the carry-on to ensure he hadn’t missed anything, he found an envelope in the outer pouch. Inside was a stack of bills and an index card that just said “I’m not dealing with this again. Buy some fucking clothes. –W”
The presumption of the other man was annoying beyond belief, but Jean put the cash and note in with his postcards. The carry-on was tucked into the closet, and just like that Jean was done. There was no reason to linger here with his few things. After two months of quasi-isolation at Abby’s house, he finally had a place again. He wasn’t sure what to make of these Trojans yet, but his opinion came second. They were his teammates, Jeremy was his partner, and Jean had too much at stake to not make this work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jeremy
Cat made a beeline for the kitchen. When Jeremy realized she was going for her boombox, he caught hold of her sleeve to haul her to a stop. She pinched her fingers together rapidly, miming the flapping of a mouth, and he gestured to his ear and in the direction of Jean’s room. The music would keep Jean from hearing whatever she wanted to say to Jeremy, but it also meant they wouldn’t hear when Jean left his room in search of them. Whether Cat understood what he was getting at or not, she gave up on her music and whirled on him instead. She opened her mouth, put up a finger in a bid for him to wait, and then just stared into the distance.
“Yes?” Jeremy prompted her.
“He’s a little off,” she said.
“We knew he would be,” Jeremy said.
Cat drummed her fingernails on the counter for a few moments, then put her restless energy to work at the island. She scooped rice into open Tupperware with an almost angry pace, and Jeremy went in search of the broom. “Are you sure it’s the right thing to do, playing into whatever’s going on in there?” She gestured to her head with her rice spoon. “You could probably split babysitting duties among a couple of us so you don’t get overwhelmed.”
“Buddy system,” Jeremy corrected her patiently. “Kevin seems to think it’s important; he said it was our only chance to acclimate Jean here.” More specifically, he’d confessed his own lingering reliance on it: Kevin had gone from Riko’s side to Andrew’s, and in his first year he had never put more than a campus between him and the short goalkeeper. Jeremy wasn’t sure he was completely comfortable with the idea, but until he figured out something better it felt best to play along.
“I can help,” Cat said.
“I know,” Jeremy said, smiling down at his work, “but you and Laila are already helping. You’re letting him stay here and watching over him when I have to go home during the week. The rest of it will be easy. I don’t exactly have a lot of classes left, you know? Keeping an eye on him at campus will give me something to do this year.”
“Easy,” Cat echoed, with skepticism. She worked for a minute in silence, then flicked him a sly look. “Easy on the eyes, maybe.”
There was no point denying it when they’d known each other this long. Jean was exactly the kind of guy Jeremy was prone to trip himself up over: raven-haired, gray-eyed, and tall without being gangly. His nose had obviously been broken more than once over the years, and his mouth was always halfway to a disapproving frown, but neither of these detracted from the overall picture. There was no point dwelling on it, though; between the unrelenting rumors and Kevin’s cryptic messages, Jeremy knew a bad idea when he saw one.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jeremy said with a theatrical sigh. “Like you said, he’s a bit off. It’s not fair to either of us if I look.”