“Yeah,” I mutter through my teeth. “He’s… he’s not a problem.”
“Is he not?” My father glances across the room.
This time, I follow his gaze. Brody is laughing, loud and bright, head thrown back, something warm blooming in his eyes as he talks to Fish and Sean. One of my best friends and one of my co-captains, who happens to be one of the top Division One wrestlers in the country. Someone my father has compared me to for most of my time here at Huntston, despite us being in completely different weight classes.
Brody’s smile lights up his whole face. It lights up the people around him too. Something inside me knots.
Dad gives a low, displeased noise. “Clearly you’re doing a good job keeping him in line.” His tone is edged with dry amusement. “Look at him. Carrying on like an idiot. Doesn’t look like he takes anything seriously,” he says, eying Brody’s black slacks and faded tuxedo t-shirt with disdain.
The words slip out before I can stop them. “He doesn’t. It’s infuriating.”
I can feel my shoulders drawing up to my ears, tension crawling up my neck until my temples start to throb. Watching Brody laugh so easily with everyone, watching his arms draped over friends and teammates who used to follow me unquestioningly, makes something sharp and stupid flare inside me.
Dad steps past me, already scanning the room for someone more important to talk to. “Work on it,” he says over his shoulder. “Knock him down properly. He needs it.”
Then he’s gone. And I’m left standing there, seething so hard I can barely breathe, every muscle tight enough to snap.
I look at Brody again and scowl so hard I’m surprised lasers don’t shoot out of my eyes and cut him clean in half. He doesn’t see me watching. He’s too busy being liked. Being natural and effortless as always.
That ugly, tight feeling claws its way up my chest. Something that feels like panic and want and shame all tangled together.
I clamp it down like I’m swallowing down nausea and bury it deep.
Because if anyone—my father, my teammates, Brody—ever saw what was actually happening inside me, it would ruin everything.
And Lincoln Beckett does not get ruined. He ruins whatever threatens him. Because he is his father’s son and that’s who he’s been raised to be.
Or so I tell myself.
CHAPTER 6
BRODY
Two more weeks blur by, and for the first time since transferring here, I feel every single moment of them in my bones. I like staying busy. I always have, but there’s a difference between busy and ‘I will collapse if one more professor assigns a practice exam’. The combination of midterms, early morning lifts, afternoon practices, and late-night study sessions has turned my brain to oatmeal. The mushy instant kind, not the hearty steel-cut kind.
Fall break couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m looking forward to three whole days without classes, practices, coaches, or stupid pranks. And no teammates like Lincoln Beckett glowering at me like my existence is a personal insult to his family lineage. Which, consequently, is exactly how I noticed his dad staring at me during the alumni event a couple weeks back.
All I want is to go home. To hug Mom and make sure she’s taking care of herself and sleeping more than four hours a night. To see Davis and check with my own eyes that he’s eating, healing, getting out of bed. Anything besides the silence and Mom’s assurances that he’s doing great. As if I don’t know better.
My brother has been out of rehab for barely two weeks, and he went through a lot between the hospital and rehab. The doctors told us it was going to be hard. Mom pretending that everything’s just fine only makes me worry about them more. And honestly, I miss them. As upset as I was to move home, I hate being this close to home and still feeling like I’m a thousand miles away.
Plus, I need clean underwear.
Seriously. If this hazing shit keeps up, I’m going to have to take out a loan specifically for boxer briefs and socks. At first, the pranksters would steal whole outfits—shorts, shirts, even my towel. That stopped the day I proved I wasn’t ashamed to walk across campus with nothing but an empty gym bag held strategically in front of me so I didn’t get arrested. Students stared. A few laughed. Even more cat-called and whistled. Of the pranks that have been pulled on me this year so far, that one honestly didn’t bother me all that much. I’ve never had anything to hide when it comes to my body.
But now it’s only underwear that goes missing. Always the underwear, and usually just one sock. And unlike everything else,thosenever seem to make it to the lost-and-found basket Aaron leaves outside our dorm room for whatever pranked items magically reappear over time, or hanging up in a strategic display meant to embarrass me, which never works so it’s been happening less and less. But the underwear hasn’t slowed down, so now I’ve been walking around commando with mismatched socks.
I don’t want to think too hard about what they’re doing with them.
The only joke I can’t seem to laugh off are the beer cans. But even though I never react, they keep popping up everywhere. My book bag, my gym bag, my locker. Sometimes I’ll turn around and one will appear at whatever desk or table I’m at. The laughter and the sound of empty cans clinking together haunts me everywhere I go.
My last name has been an easy target my whole life. “Miller Time.” “Crack open a cold one.” “No wonder your dad was a drunk.”
Kids in grade school thought it was hilarious. Middle schoolers thought they were clever. High schoolers weaponized it, even going so far as to get my mother fired from one of her jobs because her boss noticed her back seat filled with beer cans. But grown adults should know better. Pierce sure as hell should, considering he knows what happened to my father.
But he’s either too cruel or too stupid to realize he’s going too far.
The other day he walked right up to me, handed me a cold, unopened can still sweating from someone’s fridge, and said, “Figured you might want a fresh one. It’s been a stressful few months for you.”
