Page 29

I huffed and rolled my eyes, hanging my pads on their hook. This was exactly like me—I was a first class choker.

He took a step closer, dropping his voice to a low rumble. “I’m serious. Stop playing like you’re fucking scared.”

I spun to face him, lifting my chin high. “I am scared, asshole.”

He crossed his arms over his broad chest, staring down at me. “Well, you shouldn’t be.”

I snorted. “Easy for you to say.”

And it was easy because he was Hunter Fucking Callahan, and he’d never sucked a day in his charmed goddamn life. He didn’t have a single goddamn thing riding on this camp except his pride and the stupid “son of a legend” marketing bullshit.

So yeah. Easy.

He leaned his shoulder against my stall, one leg crossed in front of the other. “I’m telling you, you’re freaking out over nothing.”

“Fuck off, Callahan.”

He sucked in a quick breath, his brow furrowing. “You called me Callahan.”

I shrugged, picking at some adhesive stuck to the hairs near my wrist. “That’s your name.”

I hadn’t meant to call him that; it had just slipped out. The truth was, I didn’t even really think of him as “Callahan” anymore. He was my friend, and my friend was Cally. Or even Cal sometimes. I didn’t know that other guy—Callahan—the one I’d met back on day one.

He blinked rapidly a few times. “But you always call me Cal or Cally.” His voice climbed at the end, almost like he was asking a question. “You’re the only guy here who never uses my full name.”

That couldn’t be true, could it?

Even as I searched for a counterexample—pretty sure I’d heard Bonesy call him Cally in the weight room—I knew it was beside the point. The point was …

Fuck.

Who the hell knew anymore?

“Look. I don’t know what you want me to say.” I turned away, grabbing my gloves from the bench and laying them out in my stall to dry. I kept my eyes glued to them because if I looked at him and saw pity on his face, I might actually cry. “Coach told me what he expects out of me, and that shit show out there today wasn’t it. He’d be stupid to keep me around.” An overwhelming sense of defeat curled my shoulders forward.

Cally blew out a long breath I felt ghost against my cheek. “Look. Just talk to Coach, okay?” He squeezed my arm, then peeled off in the direction of the showers without waiting for me to say anything back.

I stood there for another minute, trying to find comfort in his words. When I couldn’t, I stripped out of my compression gear, wrapped a towel around my waist, and headed for the showers, nearly barreling into Assistant Coach Petras and dropping my towel.

“Shit.” I crouched down to pick it back up and cinched it around my waist again. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Petras waved away the apology. “Coach wants to see you.”

I glanced down at my naked body. “Now?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his ever-present clipboard resting against his left bicep. “Yes, now.”

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. This was it.

Cally had been wrong. I was a dead man walking. Another name to join Mercer and Scotkin and Coombs and Crocker … and all the other guys whose names I’d never bothered to learn.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “Okay. Lemme just …” I gestured over my shoulder with my thumb, pointing somewhere in the vicinity of my stall.

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I dressed in the sweats I’d worn here this afternoon. I finally managed to pull everything on, adding a few swipes of deodorant on my armpits to help mask the stink.

The short walk to Hendricks’s office felt like a mile. Not one single person I passed would look me in the eye—some guys stared down at their phones, some fumbled nervously with their gear, and others spun all the way around so they didn’t have to see me at all.

The only person I didn’t see was Cally.