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“Millie, what about you? Anything you’d like to share today?”
Millie stares at the ground, folding her arms around herself.
“I know you were particularly worried about going home for the holiday?”
“It was fine,” she murmurs.
“Fine. Do you want to expand—”
“No.” Her head whips up and she glares at Miss Linley. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know it’s hard—”
“You don’t know anything.” She doesn’t spit the words, she just lets them spill out in a soft defeated manner.
I see it again, the hurt in her eyes. The pain.
“I’ll go,” another student says.
“Thank you, Chloe.”
“My sister was home for the holiday, so I might not as well have been there. Mum and Dad were so wrapped up in her being there it was like I didn’t exist.”
“And how did that make you feel, Chloe?”
“Angry. Bitter… Sad. But it’s happened so much over the years, I’m used to it by now. I guess more than anything, it just makes me feel numb, you know?”
“That must be very hard for you?”
I tune out, staring at a blank spot on the wall.
But my eyes drift back to Millie as she stares at the floor.
There’s something about her. A tug I feel. A sense of familiarity.
Maybe it’s just that I see myself in her a little. Or maybe this place is already getting to me.
Whatever it is, I don’t have time for it.
Besides, putting yourself out there—trying to make friends—isn’t worth it.
Letting people in makes you weak.
It makes you vulnerable.
And I’ll be damned if I let anyone walk all over me again.
6
THEO
“Pick it up, ladies. All those pigs in blankets aren’t going to burn themselves off,” Coach bellows as we run drills up and down the pitch.
Sweat pours from my body, mixing with the mud from the waterlogged ground beneath us. My heart races to the point I’m pretty sure I’m one more length from an actual heart attack.
Someone—I have no idea who—roars in pain a little farther up the row of exhausted and pissed-off rugby players.
“Just because the first half of our season has gone okay, it doesn’t mean the rest will fall into your laps,” he continues. “You want those scouts here, you need to look like you want it.”
