Page 145 of A Heart of Bluestone

“And,” Eric sighs, reluctant, “with Dray, it’s…”

“What?”

“A lot of people around here think that… We expected that he would chase your contract.”

My face crumples. “Why would anyone think that?”

Dray hasn’t kept it secret how deep his hatred for me runs.

Eric tuts something unsure. His thoughts aren’t what is uncertain, but rather how to voice them.

Ill-at-ease, he shifts in his chair. “There were signs.”

“Signs?” I scoff. “Eric, you’ve gotta help me out here. Signs that he wants me dead, yeah. That’s about it.”

“Maybe things you didn’t see—”

“Like what?” I bite out the words, and the urge to smack the truth out of him is getting annoying, impatient.

“Well, we play snow-rugby. I’m not on the same team as Dray, but we all use the same locker room before and after the games.”

I arch a brow. “Ok…”

“Teddy might have said something a couple of years back, something about your, uh, backside.”

My cheeks flame.

His do, too. “Particularly something about how he can’t keep his eyes off it when you are wearing breeches.”

Ok, now my face is ablaze.

Eric simmers in the shame with me. He turns his hot cheek to me and looks across at the smeared chalkboard. “Dray was there, didn’t say anything. And Teddy is on his team, so when Dray slammed him into the barrier and broke his arm during the game, it got attention. It stirred whispers.” Eric shrugs. “A lot of the guys think he was retaliating for what Teddy said before the game.”

My brow is levelled with my stare. Dully, I summarise the ridiculous notion, “So Dray put Teddy in the infirmary for saying my ass is nice in breeches?”

The grin that tickles his face is guilty. He brings his gaze up to meet mine. “When you put it like that…”

“So… that’s it?” I flourish my hand. “That’s all that happened, and you didn’t pursue me because of that one crazy assumption?”

“Other things over the years, I guess, but… yes.”

I narrow my eyes on him, but there’s a playful edge to our chat now, and I’m mostly teasing him, because this—of course—is fucking ridiculous.

“Other things…” Eric slowly pushes up from the chair. “Like when you wear shorter skirts,” he says and advances on me, “he is often looking in your general direction.”

To emphasise, his gaze drops—but today I am wearing breeches, so Teddy better send me athank youcard.

“Or,” Eric takes another step closer, “when Eli asked you out to the VeVille, then went missing for a while before he was found in a broom closet.”

My memory jolts at the reminder.

Eli, a gentry from the year above, graduated and gone now, did ask me to the village back when I was just in my final year of high school at the academy, and he was in his junior year of tertiary education within the same walls.

But he never showed in the atrium.

After that, I always assumed it was a joke, that I was the butt of it, just another prank.

I never heard that he was locked in a broom closet.

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