Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
His mouth knotted, his eyes screwing up, his voice wavering. Rian leaned over quickly, curling his hand against Chris’s ankle through the sheets.
“Hey,” he said, putting as much conviction as he could into his voice, trying to hold and keep Chris’s gaze, searching. “I am not disappointed in you. Not at all. I just want to make sure you’re all right. That’s why I’m here, Chris. Because I care about you. I’m not upset with you, and you’re not in trouble, and you are most certainly no one’s disappointment.”
With an upset sound, Chris looked between Rian and Damon. “But... I’m missing practice, and I still haven’t finished my class project, and now I’m going to miss class...”
“And none of that matters,” Damon said. His gaze fixed on Chris firmly, words soothing and warm and full of such utter conviction, such reassuring calm. “You matter. You matter more than football practice or homework, or anything like that. We care about your future, yeah, and that means caring about your education. But you come first. Once you’re okay and safe, then we can give a fuck about your grades.”
Chris sucked in a breath; his voice dropped small. “... I thought you said we were only allowed to say that on the field and never inside school halls.”
Damon grinned, wide and fierce, white teeth stark against brown skin. “I made the rule, I get to break it.”
With a shaky laugh, Chris finally left off plucking at his sandwich, though he made no move to pick it up and eat it. “That’s not fair.”
“Well, when you’re the teacher, you can make those kinds of rules,” Damon teased, as he settled to sit on the edge of the mattress at Chris’s hip. “Is that what you’re so afraid of? Breaking the rules?”
With his hand still resting on Chris’s ankle, Rian felt the moment Chris tensed again. “I’m not breaking any rules,” Chris said quietly.
“Maybe not,” Rian murmured. “But someone is. Because whether it’s against the rules of the school or general rules of society, no one’s allowed to hurt you the way someone has been. Decent people don’t do that to others. And if someone’s going to be punished for that, it won’t be you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Chris retorted with a sharp edge, “because no one’s hurting me.”
Rian closed his eyes, breathing in deep and straightening, pulling his hand back to rest on the footboard. When he opened his eyes, Damon was watching him, clearly troubled, and Rian didn’t have to ask to guess why. Chris was already shutting down—and clearly lying. Unless he was somehow doing that to himself, but...how? How was he bruising himself that way? Why was he dehydrated and exhausted unless he was deliberately depriving himself?
What could push him to harm himself that way?
Rian shook his head slightly, helplessly; he didn’t quite know what to say now, and Damon knew Chris better than Rian did. Damon was closer to him, had forged that familial, almost fatherly bond with him as part of the football team. Rian was probably as useless here as he was anywhere else, a presence of moral support and nothing more. He’d been deceiving himself thinking that he and Damon had come together like Chris’s parents, when really...
Damon was the only one who had that role, here.
Rian was just...aching to have that feeling of closeness back, and grasping desperately and pathetically at whatever straws he could.
Damon gave Rian an odd, questioning look, before turning back to Chris. He studied him thoughtfully for several moments, then said without preamble, “We’ve contacted your parents.”
Chris had started to take a bite of his sandwich, looking like he’d rather chew on raw nails but so obviously trying to put on a pretense of normalcy—but he spluttered around the mouthful he’d been sinking his teeth into, letting it drop from his lips with several bits still clinging and half-tethered to the sandwich.
A sandwich he dropped messily back to the plate as he strangled out, “What? Why?”
“Because their son is in the infirmary, dehydrated and exhausted and beat to shit,” Damon said firmly. “And they have a right to know. Don’t you think they’d be worried about you?”
“I don’t want to worry them!” Chris flared. “That’s why—”
He cut off short, flushing guiltily and pressing himself back against the mattress, the pillows. Rian leaned forward, hands gripping tighter at the cool metal railing.
“Why what, Chris?” he pressed. “What are you doing to keep from worrying them?”
“Nothing,” Chris said a little too quickly, a little too desperately, and he fumbled for the bottle of orange juice sitting on the tray, fingers shaky on the cap. “I’m just trying to stay out of trouble like I’m supposed to. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
“Except I don’t think it is,” Rian said softly. “You know why kids come to Albin, don’t you?”