Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Thea held up a warning finger at Kevin. “Wait outside. I don’t trust you not to coach him on what to say.” Kevin frowned at her, but Thea stared him down until he gave an aggrieved sigh and left. Thea waited a few moments after the door closed behind him like she thought he’d come back in, then folded her arms across her chest and turned a too-heavy stare on Jean. “Good morning, Paris.”
It would’ve been too much to hope she’d outgrown that nickname. Jean scowled at her. “For the hundredth time, Marseille.”
“You look like hell,” Thea said, neatly ignoring the correction as she had every other time. “Kev says you’re sidelined for a few months. What happened to you?”
“Bad scrimmage,” Jean said. “Armor was loose.”
“Yesterday I might have believed that,” Thea said. “But he’s swearing it’s something else. Try again, without lying to my face.”
Without lying, she said, as if that was even possible. The Ravens were used to enduring the coaches’ heavy-handed discipline, and they inflicted cruel hazing on each other without hesitation when one of them was too far out of line, but Riko was a murky mess where the team was concerned. They knew he carried violence in his heart, and they’d seen it break out on more than one occasion, but Jean and Kevin had bent over backwards to hide the true extent of his sadism from their teammates.
It wasn’t for Riko’s sake, surely: the Ravens could and would follow a tyrant straight into hell if that was what was asked of them. Riko was King, the beating heart around which Castle Evermore was built. Perhaps it was pride, then, or a reckless sense of self-preservation. Kevin did not want the Ravens to see him submit, and Jean was scorned enough as it was. He could not tell them I am a Moreau, this is what I deserve when they didn’t even know who the Moreau and Moriyama families really were.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Jean said.
It was a waste of breath to try sending her away. Thea sat on the bed and pointed up at her face. “Look at me right now.”
Try as he might, he couldn’t ignore that tone. He’d spent two years watching her play from the Ravens’ sidelines, enamored with how thoroughly she dominated the backline. Night after night his freshman year he’d fought to get time alone with her, escaping Riko’s clutches while he was distracted with Kevin so he could ask her for advice and tips. Her little Parisian duckling, she’d joked, ignoring every plaintive demand to learn the correct city.
He’d never had good defenses against Thea, and Kevin knew that. Jean would kill him for bringing her here. For now he helplessly dragged his gaze back to hers. “Don’t ask me.”
“I’m not asking,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
“To Kevin’s hand?”
“You have twenty-one good ribs,” Thea said. “For now.”
There was a fifty-percent chance she was bluffing, but Jean tilted toward her anyway and said, “Do it, then. It wouldn’t take much; we all know I have brittle bones.”
He heard the bite in his words, but he couldn’t stop it. It was as much an accusation as it was a mockery. The Ravens had said it about him for years, knowing there was more to it but opting to stay out of it. His propensity for showing up to the court with stitches was hard to ignore. The Ravens had found him at the bottom of the stadium stairs four times, and he’d brought six broken fingers to the court over three short years. It was safer to say he was ridiculously fragile than to attract unwanted attention from above by prying.
“The King is an asshole and a bully, but he would never go this far,” Thea said. “Not to his Court. Not during championships.”
Rejection was automatic and fierce: “He did not do this to me.”
Thea considered him a few moments before guessing, “The master, then? Jesus, Jean. Tell me you weren’t up to your old tricks.”
She didn’t have to spell it out when her tired tone said enough. Memory had his heart crackling like breaking glass. The Ravens knew he’d fucked most of the defense line his freshmen year; it was an open secret that refused to die even as most of those involved graduated from Edgar Allan. Since none of the five would betray Riko by saying he’d put them up to it, they laughed it off as the price paid for the number on Jean’s face. Tolerating that ridicule and scorn was wretchedly unfair, but it was better than telling the truth. Even Kevin didn’t know the full story, only the jagged half-lie Riko fed him.
Jean still remembered their names and numbers. Two had attempted to show him some patience, picking up on the distress in his unsteady hands and writing it off as nerves. The other three didn’t waste their time on pretenses. The Ravens were an angry, codependent lot trapped together in the Nest for almost every hour of their day. It was inevitable they’d fuck almost as often as they fought. Jean only caused a stir because of his age and how quickly he went from one partner to the next.