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)
Cat’s words haunted him: “What we don’t understand is how a grown-ass man took a bunch of kids and turned them into monsters for sport.”
The master knew what he was doing. This was his sport; this was his legacy. Everything he’d done to them, he’d done for a reason. Everything he’d demanded of them had been demanded with the sole purpose of making them legends. The master knew best.
Did he?
It was sacrilegious even in the privacy of his head, and Jean hunched his shoulders against a blow that never came. He ran a nervous hand over his ribs, but the pain was gone. He’d been out of Evermore for too long to find even a bruise to dig into. In a few weeks he’d be back on a court, and life would start making sense again, but right now he was trapped between who he was and who the Trojans were asking him to be.
He wasn’t sure where the words came from. “They didn’t deserve this.”
“No,” Jeremy agreed quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Apologies wouldn’t bring them back. It wouldn’t undo what had been done to them or erase what they’d done to each other. But what else could either of them say? Jean put his notebook away and went to sit beside Jeremy. In the quiet he could hear Jeremy breathing, and it was almost as comforting as the heat of another body this close to his. It thawed the parts of him the sun hadn’t reached despite soaking up its glare all day.
Jean closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift far away. The sound of pots and pans dragged him out of a near-doze sometime later, and Jeremy noticed his distraction.
“She can handle it,” he said before Jean could get up. “Stay with me.”
Jean didn’t mind cooking, but he didn’t say that. This was the first time his room truly felt safe and right, and he was content to hold onto it for as long as he could. He closed his eyes again, but now his thoughts were snagged on Jeremy. At length he broke the silence to say, “Two beds would fit in here.”
It took Jeremy a moment to figure out how to respond. “Two twins, maybe,” he said slowly, “but isn’t it nice to have your own space? After having a roommate for so long, I mean, and after—” He didn’t finish that train of thought, but he didn’t need to. Jean knew from his tone what he was biting off. Jean hated his earlier carelessness, but it was too late to take it back.
That didn’t mean he had to acknowledge it. All he said was, “You are my partner and my captain. You don’t need to be sleeping on a couch.”
Jeremy didn’t let him get away with it. “That’s not the issue and you know it. I don’t want to crowd you.”
“You are not them,” Jean said. “Kevin would not have sent me here if you were.”
Jeremy was quiet for so long Jean finally had to look at him. He wasn’t sure what to make of the look on the other man’s face. It wasn’t wounded, but there was still an undercurrent of pain. Jean didn’t know how to interpret it; no Raven had ever looked so gutted. He tipped his head in silent question, but Jeremy only looked away.
Jean searched for anything else to say that would get him what he needed and settled on, “Ravens aren’t meant to be alone.”
“You are not a Raven,” Jeremy said, right on cue.
Jean resisted the urge to shove him off the bed, but just barely. “Until I left Evermore, I never had a room of my own. I shared with Kevin and Riko until my freshman year and Zane every year after that. It is too quiet with just me.”
“What about before?” Jeremy asked. “Back home, I mean?”
Jean trailed a thumb over his palm, chasing the fractured memory of a small hand in his. He remembered the weight and warmth of her burrowed against his side; he remembered her wide-eyed and unblinking stare as he read her stories late into the night. He could almost remember the sound of her voice as she begged him for one more chapter, but louder in his thoughts was the crack of his mother’s belt against bare skin when she realized overheard them. Jean felt his stomach tip and heart crack, and he slammed Marseille as deep as he could go.
“I don’t want to talk about home,” he said. “Now or ever.”
Jeremy let it slide without argument, and silence fell in the room once more. It wasn’t until Cat called down the hall to summon them for dinner that Jeremy finally said, “I’ll see what I can do about a bed.”
-
The next morning a suited stranger was on their doorstep. Jean let his introduction go in one ear and out the other and refused to take the business card that was offered to him. The man was one of the campus psychiatrists, sent over by the school board to evaluate their newest player in the wake of the Ravens’ escalating tragedies. Jean wanted to close the door in his face, but if the coaches had signed off on this, he didn’t have the right to turn the man away.