Page 125 of Final Drive

“Go back to the grandstand.”

“I came off badly.”

Reese looks at him. “You weren’t named.”

“No. Just an unnamed male student with a Title IX file.” He rolls the coffee cup between his palms. “Everyone in my house knew who it was by lunch.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“My father’s counsel called me that afternoon. He asked if there was anything else.” Quinton laughs once, but there’s nothing funny in it. “Twenty-two years and that’s the first question he’s ever asked me twice.”

“Quinton, leave.”

“I’ve been managed my whole life, Reese. I’m good at it. Better than you.”

Something changes in his voice. Not louder, exactly. Looser.

I shift my weight, and Cameron notices that too.

Quinton takes another step toward her. “I could’ve kept doing it. You know that, right? Kinsley would’ve gone away. The complaint would’ve done what it was supposed to do. Your father would’ve kept his mouth shut.”

Reese hasn’t moved since he got here. She’s holding the tape measure in her left hand with her right loose at her side, looking at him the same way she looks at us when the boat starts getting stupid at rate thirty-six. She’s giving him nothing to fight with.

“You sat down with a reporter,” he says, “and gave away the one thing I couldn’t take from you. You gave away your own father. Who does that?”

“Somebody who was done paying for him.”

For a second, I think that’s going to be it.

Then Quinton closes the distance and grabs her upper arm.

Everything in me goes white. There’s no thought between seeing his hand on her and moving. No three years ago. No Title IX file. No statement sitting in Okafor’s office. There’s just his hand around Reese’s arm and the sound that comes out of me when I see it.

I get there before I know I’ve crossed the distance. My left forearm goes across his chest, my right hand closes around his wrist, and I strip his hand off her arm and put myself between them.

My fist doesn’t close.

That’s the first thing I notice. Not Reese behind me or Bo saying my name. My hand is open.

I hold Quinton’s wrist until his fingers loosen, then let him go and drop both hands to my sides.

“Get off me,” he snaps.

“I already did.”

His eyes drop to my hands before he looks past me, and I watch him register the rest of it. Nine crews. Two volunteers. Bennett coming fast from the far side of the trailer line. Kowalski thirty feet away with her camera out now.

He knows. I can see the exact second he understands that there’s nothing he can do here that helps him.

He does it anyway.

The punch catches me square on the left cheekbone. My teeth crack together and the side of my head lights up hot. I stumble back one step, plant my foot, and get my balance.

Every part of me knows what comes next. I’ve done it a thousand times in my head, in the gym, in parking lots. In that boathouse three years ago every time I’ve replayed it and changed the ending.

Quinton is right there. One step is all it would take, and I already know where I’d hit him.

I look at my hands instead.