This old fucker who got cut from the Premiere League in the UK joined on. Fletcher Huckleberry or something. Dude thinks he invented rugby. Walks around like a god. Has this cameraperson following his every move like he’s some kind of influencer. His game isn’t shit anymore and he’s only here because no other English team would take him after Nottingshire released him. He’s gonna ruin our game and management is too stupid to see it.
This season should be fun for Silas.
But considering what Silas did the last time I had a date, and the time before that, and the time before that, and—you get the picture. Point is, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t exuberant at the idea of my brother’s pending suffering at the hands of Fletcher Huxley too.
When I’m not here to watch.
I love my brother, but our overall relationship can best be described as complicated.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
“You and your brother are proof positive that gene distribution is fucked up,” Odette murmurs to me when I rejoin her at the refreshments table. Evelyn’s moved to help Sheila at the check-in desk at the other side of the tent.
“I keep waiting for my mom to admit he actually arrived on a spaceship and is some kind of aliens-on-earth experiment they can’t talk about.”
She cocks a look at me, then cracks up.
And that’s when I make the worst mistake of my life.
I glance over at Fletcher Huxley.
His cameraperson has left him, and apparently so has the nurse who removed the needle in his arm. He’s holding two fingers to the white gauze on his elbow, but he drops it to reach behind himself and pull his shirt over his head, leaving him bare-chested there in the seat.
Tattoos on his biceps and shoulders? Check.
Chest hair? Also check.
The straining neck and forearm tendons that guys get when they spend too much time at the gym?
Yep.
It disgusts me that he’ll probably be walking around town with a girlfriend from the upper echelons of Copper Valley society within the next two weeks.
But that’s not my problem.
And unfortunately, I do have a problem when it comes to Fletcher Huxley in this exact moment.
That problem?
He’s gone sheet-white.
His face. His abdomen. His arms.
He’s a ghost, and when it comes to blood drives, I know exactly what that means.
“Flag the nurse,” I tell Odette while I spring into action. “Any nurse.”
“It’s always the big buff men, isn’t it?” she murmurs while I grab Goldfish and an apple juice and she heads around the table in the opposite direction.
I tuck the snacks into my hoodie pocket. “This’ll make six since you all started volunteering here last year.”
No idea if she heard me. I’m already halfway across the room to the chair at the end of the row.
Fletcher’s rising from the donation chair.
His skin is so pale that the dark hairs on the non-tattooed half of his chest look black as night in comparison.
“Fletcher. Sit down,” I order.
