Well, not certain F-words, anyway.
He pointed the letter at me, and the paper brushed my chest. “I don’t know where you’ve been going, but I willnothave another repeat of your little jaunt to the city.”
Ah, this again.My short-lived gay Rumspringa. Never mind that the event in question had taken place four years ago. He was never going to let me forget it. I’d lost my phone for three months after that trip. My parents hadn’t appreciated the photos I’d texted them during my stay in the Big Apple.
I kept my eyes on my father’s throat, my gaze snagging on a tiny nick he’d probably given himself while he shaved. “I haven’t been going to the city,” I said. “I don’t have any money, remember?” Which was a situation that absolutelyhadto change. Now that I wasn’t playing football, I could get a job. I’d flip burgers if I had to. Anything to stop relying on my parents. They doled out cash like characters in a Dickens novel, tracking every fucking penny. I’d saved enough money from mygrandmother to buy a decent car, but I couldn’t spring that plan until I was ready to move out for good. Because once I left, I knew I could never return.
My father spoke as if he hadn’t heard me, his tone matching his agitation as he wielded the letter. “Pastor Mark says your mother and I are supposed to tolerate certain things from you. Well, I’m tired of tolerance. I’ve kept my mouth shut. Let you have your way. I didn’t say anything when you quit the football team, although that didn’t really surprise me. I think it’s pretty obvious why you couldn’t get along with your teammates.”
Red flickered over my vision. I balled my hand into a fist at my side. “You’re wrong?—”
“But academics are another matter. You think you can do as you please, but that isnotthe case. Not while you live in this house. Your mother and I pay for your phone. We bought you all new clothes after your growth spurt this summer. We agreed to pay your tuition. We paid for private tutoring when you fell behind. We don’t have to do it, but we want you to succeed.”
I clenched my jaw to stop the rebuttal that sprang to my lips. My parents didn’t want me to succeed. They wanted me to be someone else entirely. Sure, they paid my tuition, but only because I agreed to attend theChristiancollege that was practically in my backyard. And the tutoring was a problem of their own making. If they hadn’t insisted on homeschooling me with materials they bought on some megachurch website, I wouldn’t have struggled so much. They’d never admit it, but I knew the state got on their asses about my test scores when I hit my teens. When my parents finally enrolled me in public high school, the guidance counselor had dropped enough hints to let me know the New York State Education Department wasn’t impressed with my “faith-based” education.
But my father was right about one thing: I couldn’t do as I pleased. Not just yet. Because I couldn’t afford Hale Valley’stuition, let alone groceries or rent. I’d struggle to afford either of those things without a college degree. Not that a degree was some golden ticket to financial freedom, but it wasn’t like I had any marketable skills. I didn’t delude myself that a piece of paper from Hale Valley would land me in a penthouse, but it was better than the alternative. If I could keep my mouth shut and endure my dad’s taunts and open hostility until next May, I could collect my prize and get the fuck out of my parents’ house.
My father stared, unspoken threats bristling between us. He could kick me out. I was twenty-three years old. His job as a parent was done, never mind that he’d failed miserably at it. Sometimes, I wondered which one of us wanted me out more. But at the end of the day, Michael and Jennifer Lawson couldn’t quite bring themselves to toss their only son into the street. What would the neighbors say? What would the ladies at the church socials think? My parents wanted the picture-perfect family life. Farmers’ markets and Little League games. It was the reason my father had moved us from the city to upstate New York when I was a toddler. Then I hit puberty and ruined everything.
My father was never going to forgive me, but he’d pay for my phone and private college because appearances were everything.
Still, I couldn’t take any chances. Before August—before the jogging trail—I might have fired back a smart-ass reply. Told my father exactly what I thought about his grand plans for my future. But things were different now. I had to get through my meeting with the dean. Get through my internship. Get through the rest of the semester and the semester after that.
But first, I had to get through my father’s determination to make everything more difficult than necessary.Eyes on the prize.I’d made it this far. I could make it until May.
I stuffed down my anger and slammed a lid on top of it. “You’re right, sir,” I said, my gaze on a random spot over my father’s shoulder. “I won’t miss class again.”
He waited, his regard like a magnet tugging at me. Daring me to meet his eyes. When I didn’t, he huffed—a smug, humorless sound I’d heard countless times over the last few years. “Straighten this before you go,” he said dismissively, brushing the letter over my tie with his blood-scented fingers.
Another rush of saliva filled my mouth. The rage thumped harder, syncing with my heartbeat like bass pumping in a car at a stoplight.Boom, boom, boom.It urged me to act, to eliminate the threat before me. Somewhere in my brain, “eliminate” had a specific, unambiguous meaning.
Before I could acknowledge it, I straightened my tie and left.
Chapter
Two
CALEB
It was a twenty-minute walk to campus. Not long enough for the chilly mid-November air to cool my blood, so I spent all of my public finance class doing deep breathing exercises while Professor Keating explained pass-through taxation.
My knowledge of deep breathing exercises was limited to shit I read on WebMD so I wasn’t sure my efforts were effective. On the bright side, the whole class looked confused as fuck so it seemed Keating wasn’t being all that effective, either. He didn’t appear to notice as he went to the smartboard and started explaining a graph. His voice rippled through the lecture hall, which had a sloped floor and desks arranged in tiers.
A sudden kick to one of the legs of my chair made me jump.
“Hey, asshole,” Nathan Brooks whispered behind me. When I turned, he leaned forward and pitched his voice even lower. “Any chance you stop being a dick and play on Saturday?”
Regret gripped me—the same tight, sour feeling that had plagued me since I walked into Coach Gannon’s office last month and told him I was quitting the football team.
“Why?” he’d demanded, his eyes as sharp as the toothpick nestled in the corner of his mouth. “You’re really gonna fuck over this whole damn team right as playoffs are starting?”
Coach was probably the only faculty member at Hale Valley who didn’t censor himself. The team had won two national championships in five years, so he got away with it.
“I don’t want to quit, sir,” I’d said, wishing a hole would open in the floor of his office and swallow me.
“So don’t. You’re the best tight end I’ve seen in seventeen years of coaching. You’re not the biggest kid out there, but you’re damn fast. And you’ve bulked up like a goddamn puffer fish since August. I can’t make any promises, but if you work hard through the off-season, some colleges might look at you for their coaching staff.”
It was a dream come true to even hear it spoken aloud as a possibility. My business administration degree was probably a one-way ticket to a cubicle in an insurance company. Coaching was a career path I would have given just about anything to pursue. But it was impossible. With every tackle, pinch, or muttered line of trash talk at the bottom of the pile, I risked losing control. The fact that I couldn’t explainwhywas almost as frustrating as being forced to give up the one thing about school I actually enjoyed.
