Coach taps the desk once. Soft. Heavy.
“I’m going to ask you one time,” he says, leaning forward slightly. “And you’re going to answer like a man who wants to keep wearing this jersey.” A pause. “Is there anything else I should know?”
My mouth goes dry. The exact tone. The exact phrasing.
The chance I already wasted.
I could manage it. Spin it. Protect myself.
Wren’s voice cuts clean through the impulse.
Silver tongue.
I swallow. It feels like glass.
“Yes,” I say. “There is.”
He waits.
“The posts are true,” I continue. “There was a bet.”
Coach exhales through his nose, slow and braced.
“Start from the beginning.”
So I do.
The party. The dare. The pursuit. Hoping Isabelle would let it go. Reed. The attempted assault. The fallout.
Coach’s gaze sharpens by a fraction.
“Why go to such lengths for a girl?” he asks.
The answer is ugly. That’s why it matters.
“Because my ego wanted to win,” I admit. “Because I liked being the guy people bet on. Because I thought it wouldn’t matter.”
A beat.
“That her feelings wouldn’t matter,” Coach says.
“Yes.”
“And when were you planning to tell me?”
“I wasn’t.”
He studies me. I can see the calculation behind his eyes—liability, Title IX, program risk, safety.
Then he asks, “Did you win the bet?”
Something drops through me, fast and heavy.
“Yes.”
Coach leans back, exhaling.
“And you’re telling me now,” he says, “after the entire campus watched her shut you down.”
