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And I remember thinking how weird that was in the first place.
My new warden is a bit stuffy and pretentious, yeah, but he’s pretty innocuous overall. Spineless, even, but maybe that’s just around me. He clearly had no problem standing up to this man, whoever he was, so maybe he’s actually a raging dick when his wife’s not around to mind him. Who knows?
I mean, it did always baffle me how someone as sweet and excitable as Tillie could end up with someone so boring after all. There’s gotta be some fire in him. But he’s all but ignored me since I moved in with them, so I’m not complaining if I rarely get to see it.
Tillie must’ve sensed the tension between the men too, because just like back in juvie, anytime the inmates would start to get riled, she did that thing she always does, where her voice gets all bright and excited as she asks, “Everything okay?” knowing full well things aren’t, in fact, okay.
There’s just something about the tiny woman and her sunny disposition that never seems to fail to break the ice. Be it in juvenile detention centers or high school football games. You name it, and she’s got everyone shitting rainbows.
Or, at the least, not killing each other.
The man who had just been fuming at poor ol’ frazzled Walt instantly backed away. Features smoothing over like he wasn’t just snarling and clenching his fists in the slightly shorter man’s face mere seconds ago.
I’d never seen this man in my life, and yet, as soon as our gazes connected over Walt’s shoulder, I got the distinctive impression he somehow knew me.
When he quickly turned around to walk away, there was no missing the last name printed across his back, just over the same numbers plastered on the front of the jersey.
Riviera.
33.
The same name and number I’d find emblazoned across a similar jersey moments later on the other side of the chain-link fence.
He wasn’t the only one staring at me, but as far as I was concerned, the other two sexy brutes at his side may as well have not existed.
Even before I got number 33’s first name, even before I learned the school board was all in a hissy over getting me as their new student because someone had to go open their trap about my less-than-stellar record (Walt, I’m looking at you), even before I put two and two together, and realized the man facing off with Walter was the star quarterback of the school’s daddy…I felt it.
A change in the air.
A shift in the course of my future.
Those eyes…
Dark and fathomless. Watchful, and yet somehow blank even after all these years.
I couldn’t believe it.
Vale DuPont.
The boy who saved me.
The boy who wrecked my life.
The boy I never thought I’d see again.
For weeks now, I’ve bided my time. Waited to see if he really did in fact recognize me, remember me, seeing as my name didn’t change.
And I’ve gotta hand it to him—he’s good. Still super sneaky. Because up until today, walking down the hall, catching that black, bottomless stare…
I thought maybe, perhaps, I was wrong. That maybe what happened didn’t stick to him like it did me. That somehow, he managed to escape what I never could, despite not even being able to fully remember that night.
I even started to convince myself that maybe it wasn’t my Vale at all, and it was just a really freaky coincidence that he shared a first name and black eyes with the boy I once called brother.
But it is him. It really, really is.
And I’d be an idiot to let this opportunity go.
Fate clearly wanted us to reunite. Now I just gotta figure out why.
