Page 28 of Lucky Shot

“I have football here.” And the swing my dad built me in the backyard. My friends who know me. My park where I can ride my bike. My mum. “I’m not going.”

Monty sighs as my mum glances nervously at him and then back to me, making that smile even faker if that’s even possible.

“I can’t possibly decline the headmaster’s offer. After all, The Cannondale School does treat its benefactors well.” He’s paying them to take me away?

“So they don’t want me then.” Just like you don’t. “You had to pay them to take me.”

“That’s not what Monty meant,” my mum says as she kneels before me and places her chilly hands on the sides of my waist. Her hug that seemed so warm moments ago feels so cold. “He means that the school year has already started, and the school was set with its students so he requested they take you halfway through. You’ll have a cool roommate—”

“Can’t be too cool if it’s halfway through the year and his current one left,” I mutter.

“Alexander,” Monty warns.

“I hate you,” I grit out as my mum gasps. “I wish you’d never met my mum. I wish you were dead. I wish—”

“That’s enough.” Monty’s voice thunders through the room as he rises from his seat. “This is not up for negotiation. It has already been settled, and this is what will be happening.” His smile looks like a cartoon shark’s—scary and daunting. “The conversation is over. We’ll leave this weekend.”

This weekend? The buzzing gets louder as I stagger a step back out of my mum’s reach. “Say something,” I beg her, but she just stares at me with alligator tears and a trembling bottom lip.

“It’s for the best,” she whispers. “For you. For me. For everyone.”

“Please don’t do this,” I say.

Her fake smile flickers. “It’s for the best.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hardy

“Hello?” I call out and knock on the office door yet again.

I glance at my watch. It’s ten in the morning on a Saturday. Where the hell is everyone? I take another walk around the facility. It’s . . . okay. And that’s being generous.

The pitch is decent in grade, flat across its plain. The grass is green with a few dirt patches, but I can tell those have been seeded. Someone cares for it.

The nets are worn but patched properly, and the painted lines have faded so you can see delineation in some parts and not so much in others.

There are a few bleacher-like stands on one side. They’re painted the same Columbia blue to match the club’s colors, but no amount of paint can hide the worn wood planks or how they bow in the center. I can only imagine every fan sitting there is aware of every other fan as they move across them by the way they bounce with each footfall.

There are a few small outbuildings, and one is the office door I’ve been knocking on. The sign on it says as much. To its left is a much larger building with garage roll-up doors—no doubt for gear and equipment. Then there’s another larger building that runs the stretch of a field, dotted with windows, in what looks to be an old dormitory perhaps.

I know more than enough about those fucking places.

A chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter. Some sections are silver, others black, and still others a dark gray where it’s clear the metal has been painted over to hide what I can assume is graffiti.

There’s no major signage except for a few vinyl posters fastened to the fences, rectangular in shape with the Prestige Soccer Academy logo and website. They are most definitely the newest things out here.

I walk around, more curious about the academy than I thought I’d be and even more so about the woman from last night.

Who exactly is Whitney Barnes? What is she to this program? Where does she fit in? Does her boss know she walks around insulting guys like me who could make or break a place like this?

And bloody hell, she was right—I just might be here in the hopes of getting laid.

I chuckle. You’re pathetic, Hardy. Fucking predictable and pathetic.

“Hello,” I call out again feeling like I’m in an echo chamber, but there isn’t a sign of life here.

Not. A. One.