The solid door clicked shut behind me, but the sick feeling in my gut only got worse. My polite denials weren’t going to kill off this investigation. Hastings needed a scapegoat, which meant he was already hunting for another angle.
I was already running through a mental list of who else Hastings might have questioned before Aleksey got blindsided. But that plan died the second I pushed through the double doors into the main athletic hallway and froze.
The corridor was totally empty except for the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead and my brother. Elliot stood dead center in the hallway with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at me like I was a rookie who had just blown a play.
“You look like you’re about to throw up,” Elliot said, his voice bouncing off the metal lockers.
“Good to see you too,” I said. I tried to step around him. “If we’re done, I want to go to sleep.”
He stepped sideways, blocking my path. “Stop deflecting. Hastings talked to you about Zotov, right?”
“Yeah, he asked if the guy knows how to read flashcards. It was a thrilling ten minutes.”
Elliot didn’t laugh. His jaw clenched tight, the way it always did when he was losing patience with my bullshit. “I know he pressed you. I was in that same chair an hour ago.”
My feet were locked to the floor. The cold buzzing of the lights suddenly felt a lot louder. “Why were you talking to the AD?”
“Because he asked if I noticed anything weird going on with you.” Elliot dropped his arms and took a half step forward. “And I wasn’t going to lie to him.”
“About what?” I asked. My voice went dangerously flat. “What exactly did you not lie about, Elliot?”
“The fact that you have been off for weeks,” Elliot’s volume crept up. “So I told the AD that the guy has been aggressive all season.”
The air in my lungs went stale.
“Are you out of your mind?” I dropped the unassuming act. “You just handed them the excuse they need to pull his scholarship.”
“I am trying to bail you out!” Elliot shot back. “Hastings is building a case against him, Karter. They are looking for proof that a senior is preying on a freshman. So if he tried something on you...”
“He didn’t.”
“Thenwhyare you defending him?” Elliot grabbed my shoulder, his grip tight. “Didn’t I tell you not to let that guy get to you?”
I shoved his hand off my shoulder. “El, I don’t need you to play captain with my whole life.” Closing the gap between us, the rest of my words came out cold. “He didn’t do anything to me,” I said. “I wanted it. I wanted him.”
Elliot froze, face going blank as his arms fell slack at his sides. He just stood there staring at me as if I’d just grown two heads.
“You’re telling me you’re... with Zotov?” Elliot asked me with an incredulous scoff. “Withhim? The guy I told you to stay away from?”
“Yeah.”
I then waited for the yelling, the lecture about team optics, or the family reputation.
But Elliot didn’t yell. Instead, the fight just drained right out of his posture. He stared at me as if he didn’t even recognize the guy standing in front of him.
“I need time,” he mumbled.
With that, he turned around and walked down the corridor without looking back. And I just stood there in the empty hallway, watching his Ridge Cross jacket disappear around the corner.
I had actually done it. I just torched the only family tie I gave a shit about.
The hurt of it hit hard, but blind panic burned right through it. The administration was coming for Aleksey right this minute. So, I broke into a dead sprint, shoved open the exit doors, and ran across campus to the Ice House.
Sprinting across campus did nothing to burn off the adrenaline flooding my system.
About halfway to the Ice House, Clay stepped out of the student union. He opened his mouth to say something, probablyasking where I was going in such a rush, but I blew right past him. A girl from my bio lab called my name near the quad a minute later, but I kept my head down and kept running.
When I made it back up to the attic, my room was dark. Matt wasn’t in, leaving our shared space quiet. I dropped my phone on the desk and stared at the screen, still lit up with the message I had sent on the sprint over.
