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As he did, Rhodes’ gaze found mine. Everything inside me locked up. The connection lasted barely a heartbeat before he looked away and moved on to calling someone else’s name as if it never happened. But me? I couldn’t help how my stomach dropped at what felt like a dismissal without words.

“Theo!”

My heart lurched into my throat when Rhodes finally shouted my name. The visceral response was ridiculous, but I’d been waiting for this moment. Every time he called another player’s name, disappointment and anticipation built inside me. He’d saved my conversation for last, which was either a great thing or a horrible thing. Only time would tell.

I tossed the ball back to Wyatt with a forced smile and jogged across the field. Rhodes waited near the sideline with his hands resting on his hips. His expression gave me absolutely nothing—no indication of what to expect.

“Walk with me,” he ordered when I was close.

“To where?” I asked.

“Just around the field, Theo,” Rhodes said. I fell in step beside him. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d chosen walking because standing still or sitting down would’ve meant he had to look at me. This way, he could stare straight ahead. “Tell me about school.”

“What?” I stopped, thrown by the question, but Rhodes didn’t. He continued walking toward the end zone like asking about my coursework was a reasonable way to begin this conversation. When it became clear he wasn’t going to wait for me, I jogged after him to catch up. “You want to talk about school?”

“Yes.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and his gaze was glued on the turf in front of him.

Fuck that. Fuck talking about my classes like he barely knew me. I wanted answers.

“What about this?” I demanded and gestured between us. “What does—”

“We are not talking about that here,” Rhodes warned, his voice dropping an octave and sending a shiver down my spine. My body reacted before my brain could remind it that we apparently weren’t doing that anymore. Goddamnit.

“But we are going to talk about it, right?” I asked, lowering my voice but refusing to back down. His jaw ticked with his frustration.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Theo,” he said. “We had a thing, and now that thing is over.”

A thing. That’s what he was calling it? He’d reduced us to two simple words like we’d been nothing—like it’d meant nothing to him.

“Because you’re my coach.”

“Because I’m your coach.” He said the words so simply and so logically it was almost jarring.

“I don’t like it.” I sounded pathetic. I knew it. I just didn’t care. His level of indifference was frustrating and mind-boggling.

“You don’t have to like it, Theo. You just have to accept it.”

Well, that sounded miserable. Accept it? I didn’t want to accept it. Rhodes had somehow become one of the best parts of my life. I looked forward to him—his texts, his house, his hands. Maybe we weren’t dating, but sometimes it had felt dangerously close to that.

And apparently, I’d been stupid enough to start believing I meant something.

“Tell me about school,” Rhodes prompted again, and I almost laughed. He was actually doing this. He was just going to end whatever we were with a few quick sentences and immediately transition into some kind of responsible coach questionnaire like I hadn’t seen him naked forty-eight hours ago.

“School is school,” I answered bitterly.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is.”

“It’s not a good answer,” he said. Yeah, well, it was all he was getting out of me. Truthfully, I was doing well in school. My grades were fine, but I didn’t enjoy it. I never had. “Tell me about football.”

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“Do you enjoy it?”

What kind of question was that?

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” I answered with more attitude than I meant to. It was just such a dumb question. He knew what football meant to me—well, naked Rhodes who bossed me around knew. Maybe he was separating our lives so much that he was pretending he didn’t know anything else about me.