Page 20 of Touchdown

“Yeah, I guess so. Tell Brandon for me, won’t you?”

“Sure thing.”

Brandon thankfully accepts Cody’s absence easily enough. Cody doesn’t want to come out for dinner, so I bring him some in the tent, but he refuses it, claiming that he’s not hungry. I’m worried about him. If he’s not right by tomorrow, maybe I’ll insist that Brandon gives us temporary leave to go and see a doctor.

I don’t suggest sex that night—Cody clearly isn’t up to it—but I pull him into my arms and hold him close as I drift off.

I’m woken at some point later—I’m not sure how much later—by shaking. It takes me a moment to realize that Cody isn’t shivering; he’s crying. I hesitate, wondering what I should do. My instinct is to comfort him, but I don’t know how he’d react knowing I saw him like this. People are funny about others seeing them cry, and Cody thinks I’m safely asleep.

Perhaps it’s better to pretend I’m still asleep, but after five minutes, when Cody shows no sign of stopping, I can’t help myself.

I tighten my arms around him. “Cody,” I whisper. “Cody, what’s wrong?”

I know immediately it’s a mistake. Cody stiffens in my arms and pulls as far away from me as he can in the confined space. “Nothing. Please, go back to sleep, Luke.”

“I hate seeing you in pain,” I murmur. “Please, talk to me.”

“Luke, please just go back to sleep. That’s the best thing you can do for me right now.”

“Okay,” I say softly after a moment. Cody has told me what he needs, even if it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Of course, getting to sleep now is easier said than done, but I allow my body to go loose and my breathing to deepen. Cody’s sobs intensify as he becomes more secure in his assumption that I’m asleep.

I wish I could do more to comfort him, but if pretending to be asleep to give him his privacy is the only thing I can do, then that’s what I’m going to do. I can only hope that at some point, he’ll confide in me.

I only drift off after Cody eventually cries himself into exhaustion and sniffles himself to sleep. When I do sleep, my dreams are troubled, and I wake several times to hold Cody closer. In his sleep, he shifts automatically toward me, entwining the two of us more tightly together.

“LUKE!”

I jerk awake. The sound of Brandon bellowing my name like that never bodes well. I scramble out of my sleeping bag. Cody is nowhere to be seen. I’d worry that he worsened during the night and Brandon is calling me to accompany him to hospital or something, except Brandon doesn’t sound alarmed.

He sounds pissed.

I hurry out of the tent, pulling my shirt on as I go. “What’s wrong?” I look around and don’t see Cody anywhere. “Where’s Cody?”

“That’s a good question, Luke!”

I stare at Brandon, perplexed. “What are you talking about?”

“Care to tell me why Cody came to me in tears at the crack of dawn, telling me that he’s quitting the team and leaving immediately?”

“He did what?” I gasp.

“You heard me, Luke.What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! You saw that we were getting on—more than getting on. Everything was going so well between us. I can’t believe he’d just leave like that…”

Brandon narrows his eyes. “So you’re telling me you two didn’t have a fight that prompted this?”

“No! I could tell Cody was upset about something, but he wouldn’t talk to me. We just went to bed. I was hoping he’d open up today, but…” I stare hopelessly around the Cody-free campsite.

I remember how he cried last night. What happened to prompt this? I remember how happy he was to win the three-legged race, but everything went downhill from there, seemingly out of nowhere. I wrack my brains to try to figure out what could have happened, but I’m coming up empty.

“I’m going to go call him.”

“No cell reception here, Luke.”

“Then I’m going home.”

“We’re out here on a team-building ex—”

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