Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
But maybe it was real. Maybe Ichirou really had chosen them.
Free was a transparent lie, and safe was impossible to believe in, but maybe—
“I need to get back to the others,” Nathaniel said.
“I have him,” Renee promised. “I’ll see him back to Abby’s when he’s ready.”
Jean heard cloth rustle as Nathaniel stood, but as soon as Nathaniel stepped away Jean blindly reached out for him. He barely recognized his own voice when he said, “Neil,” but it was enough the other man stopped. Jean’s fingertips finally found denim, but he didn’t try to get a good grip on the other man. “It was a good game.”
“Yes,” Neil Josten said, with a smile in his voice. “It was, wasn’t it?”
The door creaked faintly as it opened and clicked even quieter when it closed again. Jean focused on the feel of Renee’s heartbeat and counted his breaths until it didn’t hurt so much to be alive.
-
The cruelest joke of the week wasn’t Riko’s death or the Foxes’ unimaginable win, but that the school semester kept ticking on anyway. Monday brought with it the start of finals. Edgar Allan had agreed to let Abby administer Jean’s exams so long as he took them on campus grounds; his professors would fax one over to Wymack’s office once a day. Monday morning Jean got up when Abby did and rode out to the Foxhole Court in her passenger seat.
Bright orange ribbons had been wound through most of the links on the chain fence around the stadium, and students had stopped by to tape up handwritten signs of triumph and support. Socks and shirts added to the chaos, and Jean spotted at least one bra hooked around a fence hinge. It was bewildering that they’d deface their own stadium like this. Edgar Allan would have come down hard on its students for the discourtesy.
Maybe this was the one scenario they’d allow it, and if the students had left tributes for Riko outside of Evermore. Jean felt his thoughts tip and his center start to give and he shoved Riko from his mind so hard his heart ached.
Abby got Jean set up in the main room, handing over the exam before reading the brief instructions aloud to him. Jean poked his fingertips with his pencil as he waited for Abby to start the timer and leave. He hadn’t studied at all this weekend, but the endless hours he’d had to focus on his classes this last month and a half paid off. The one place Ravens weren’t required to excel was in class; so long as they made the minimum GPA to keep their spot on the line-up the coaches expected nothing else of them. Despite that permission to half-ass his test, Jean was fairly confident in most of his answers.
He finished with a few minutes to spare. Instead of checking over his responses he got up and went to the far wall. Someone had covered it with pictures of the Foxes. Some were from game nights or clipped out of newspapers, but most were the Foxes at rest and very few of those were taken at the stadium. Jean saw movie theaters and cozy bedrooms and restaurants. There were cockeyed selfies of the women dressed for a night out, shots from Exy banquets, and more than a few of the Foxes pulling unflattering faces for the camera as they sprawled across picnic blankets or misshapen couches.
They looked ridiculous and mismatched. They looked bright and alive and carefree, like they’d somehow forgotten everything that made them qualify for the Fox line-up.
A timer sounded down the hall. Jean considered retreating back to his spot before he was caught nosing about, but in the end he stayed as he was. Near the edge of the collage was a photo of Renee. She had the back of her head to a window and was pointing up and over her shoulders with both hands. It took Jean a moment to see the rainbow in the distant sky. Someone had taped a small sticky note to the corner of the picture that read “Who wore it better??”
Abby came out to check on him and collect his test. “Let me get a look at your knee.”
Jean peeled Renee’s picture off the wall. Abby said nothing about the theft, though she had to have seen it, but led him back to her office in silence.
After a thorough check of that and the new injuries he’d sustained when he’d apparently demolished Neil’s dorm room, she gave him permission to walk laps in the stadium. He still wasn’t allowed access to weights or a legitimate fitness routine, but he would take whatever he could get.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t disconcerting to be completely alone in the inner court, and Jean had to force himself to start moving when everything in him ordered him back to the locker room where Abby was. He walked laps for hours, testing the easy way his knee and ankle held his weight, and added stairs in that afternoon. Now and then he felt a tired twinge from his knee, so he walked rows of seats until it faded before trying again.