Scandalize Me

Yet Hunter followed her anyway.

The school was a mess. Dingy walls, peeling paint. No facilities to speak of, or none that hadn’t seen their glory days a long, long time ago. It was a far cry from the exclusive prep school he’d attended outside Boston. This was a place where dreams were pounded down into dust, then denied. The apathy soaked into the walls, echoed down the dim corridors, burrowed under Hunter’s skin and made him feel guilty with every step. Guilti-er.

Sarah had walked here. She’d lived through this, and somehow, when he’d met her at Harvard, she’d been like a live wire. Not beaten down. Not crushed. She’d bristled with all the dreams she’d planned to make real, and she’d insisted that everyone around her do the same.

If it hadn’t been for Sarah, he’d have taken the path of least resistance straight into the hedge fund his father ran in Boston, a path his younger brother had followed without a murmur. He’d have lived the life Zoe Brook had laid out for him in that strip club, all Monopoly money and Mayflower blue bloods like his sister, Nora, and her snooty art charity their parents were happy to subsidize, because that was what he’d always been expected to do. He was a Grant, and Grants were financiers. Businessmen. Occasional philanthropists, not professional athletes. Such vulgar displays were beneath them, as his mother had only stopped reminding him after his third or fourth much-publicized scandal.

It had been Sarah who’d told him he should do what he wanted to do, not what his family expected him to do. And who knew what his life might have been like if he’d handled things differently ten years ago? Maybe he would have saved Sarah from her nightmare. Maybe then he would have taken pride in the dream she’d encouraged him to make real and done something other than waste it.

But he’d never know now.

He stopped walking when Zoe did, and saw they stood outside an empty gymnasium and the sad little weight room with broken blinds that abutted it. He frowned through the glass, and it took a moment for him to understand that he wasn’t angry, despite the kick of something a lot like anger in his blood. If anything, he was defensive.

He was so tense it actually hurt.

“That’s the high school football team,” Zoe told him. “Such as it is.”

He stared at the kids on the other side of the window. They didn’t look anything like a football team. They were scrawny. There wasn’t a natural athlete in the group, something that was painfully evident even at a cursory glance.

That foreboding feeling was starting to choke him again, and harder this time.

Hunter raked his hands through his hair, agitated. He wanted to move. Do something. This restlessness was his undoing. It always had been. It led him to fight or fuck, no matter what his brain told him to do. He doubted Zoe would appreciate either.

She was very still beside him. Too still. It tripped all kinds of alarms in him, but he didn’t understand why, and he liked that about as much as that restless thing inside him, still kicking at him.

She pointed at the young teacher in the corner, talking intensely to one of the students.

“That’s Jack,” she said. “He teaches math and I’m pretty sure the only thing he knows about football he watched on YouTube. He bought most of the weights in there himself and pretended he’d found the money for it somewhere in the athletic programs budget, which, let’s be clear, doesn’t exist in a place like this.”

“Is this a charity thing?” he asked after a moment. “Because I didn’t have to drive two hours into the hinterland to hear another fucking sob story. I could have written you a check in your office yesterday.”

“This isn’t a charity.”

“Then what? Why am I here?”

She frowned at him when he turned to look at her, and there was a storm he didn’t understand in her gaze, turning it a dark, rich gray. Making him wish—but that was ridiculous. Insane. If he reached out to her she’d probably amputate his hand with a single glare.

“For all you know, one of these kids is the next—” She stopped. “I have no idea what constitutes a football prodigy. You? Maybe one of them is the next you.”

Hunter wouldn’t wish that on anyone, much less a kid who already had nothing.

“There are no prodigies in that room,” he said flatly. “This football team sucks. And yes, that’s an assessment I feel comfortable making without having seen even one of them throw a ball.”

Her eyes were too dark to bear.

“Lucky, then, that they have one of the best players in football history at their disposal. You can teach them how to throw a ball.”