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Hunter drove out to Edgarton the next day, hours earlier than the usual time he showed up for his makeshift practices. He waited until classes were in session before he walked into the school, not wanting to cause any kind of commotion. Not wanting anyone to see him until he got what he came for.
The security being as nonexistent as ever in Edgarton High, it didn’t take him long to find Jack’s classroom simply by walking the halls until he happened upon it. Jack looked different standing at a blackboard. He stood taller, was more engaging. Because he knew who he was when it involved math, Hunter thought. Just as Hunter knew who he was with a football in his hand. It was what he could do, what he was good at.
He might have been walking around without a heart since Zoe had ripped it out and flattened it right there in front of him, but he could still throw a football. He supposed there was magic in that, somewhere. And as he’d wasted enough of his life feeling sorry for himself, he might as well use it.
He stood in the hall until Jack glanced out and saw him, then he indicated the other man should come out and speak to him with a simple lift of his chin. Jack look startled. Hunter heard his voice rise, ordering textbooks opened and talking stopped, with the supreme confidence of a man who expected to be obeyed in his domain.
Jack closed the door behind him gently as he stepped through it, and cleared his throat a few times as he moved into the hall. He looked around as if surprised to see that Hunter was alone—or, Hunter reflected, maybe he simply wasn’t comfortable looking Hunter in the eye. That made him feel like an ass, so he made an effort to adjust his stance, to ratchet back that unconscious level of aggression he suspected he broadcast automatically. Maybe he always had.
Maybe that was why she’d left—but he stopped himself. He knew it wasn’t. Just as he knew that he had to let her choose. He’d promised her that he’d never force her into anything. He couldn’t rescind that promise because things hadn’t gone the way he’d wanted them to go. That would make him no better than Jason.
But Jack didn’t relax. As if the man who commanded that classroom so easily was only a role he played. And suddenly, shockingly, Hunter realized where he’d seen that before. In himself. In the dumb jock role he’d played for his more intellectual friends, the whole world, all the way back to the ruthlessly smart Sarah, who he’d believed cheated on him with the most intelligent man they knew: Jason. He’d been playing his clown role ever since.
And Zoe was the only one who hadn’t bought it.
That insight stunned him so completely that for a moment he hardly knew where he was.
“I knew this day would come,” Jack was saying, and his rueful tone snapped Hunter back into the here and now. “It’s okay. I’ll think of something to tell them.”
Hunter only stared at him and Jack cleared his throat again, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Do I make you uncomfortable?” Hunter asked. Jack look startled, but then he grinned.
“Only in the sense that you’re built like a tank, and could crush me with one hand,” he said. “Maybe two fingers? But I wouldn’t say that makes me uncomfortable. Reasonably cautious, perhaps.”
Hunter found he was biting back a grin. “Caution is good.”
“They won’t thank you, so I will,” Jack said after a moment, his own grin fading. He straightened, squared his narrow shoulders. “What you’ve done here made a difference. I know what kind of prospects these kids have, and they do, too. They’ll carry this with them for a long time.” He took a breath, and met Hunter’s gaze straight on. “No one in Edgarton will ever think you’re anything but a hero, Hunter. That’s who you are. Not that story they tell on SportsCenter, stitched together from disgruntled old teammates and too much envy. I hope you know that.”
It took Hunter a very long time to catch his breath against that sudden pressure in his chest, that mighty fist around his head, making him think he might burst wide open, betray himself.
“I’m not a hero,” he said gruffly, when he thought he could speak. “Not by a long shot. Ask anyone.” Ask Zoe, who he couldn’t save. Not from Jason. Not from herself. Or Sarah, who he’d never tried to save. “I only came here to make myself look good. It was a cynical manipulation from the start.”
Jack’s gaze didn’t waver on his.
“Maybe that’s why you came the first time,” he said evenly. “But that’s not why you kept coming back.”
