Page 81 of Blindside Me
The room goes still.
No shuffling backpacks. No coughing. Not even a whisper.
Just Drew’s voice, raw and unguarded, stretched like a bare wound across the air.
Beside me at the podium, Drew stares straight ahead, his jaw tight, knuckles white around the edge of the laptop.
I don’t dare look at him. I can barely breathe.
Because I feel it.
The way he said “she.”
The way the syllable cracked slightly as if he hadn’t meant to say it at all.
A soft, almost imperceptible gasp comes from somewhere in the audience. Maybe another student. Maybe me. I can’t tell.
All I know is the jolt hits hard enough to sting.
I swallow and click to the next slide, my hands shaking just enough to notice.
If anyone else caught it, the weight behind his words, they don’t show it.
But I caught it.
And from the way Drew’s shoulders tense beside me, he knows I did, too.
I’m dizzy from everything that happened in that room. Everything that came out of our mouths and stayed there. We both said more than we meant to, but not more than we wanted to. The shared honesty hangs like a thick cloud, and I’m not sure whether I’m walking through it or drowning in it.
Then it finally hits. The implications of it all.
Me being the coach’s niece.
His potential career on the line.
If we’re caught, he stands to lose everything. Me? I won’t lose a thing, except my heart staying intact.
Because losing whatever this is between us has complete devastation written all over it.
But I’d survive.
I always survive.
I sneak a glance at him and want to whimper.
This is going to cost him way more than it cost me.
Why couldn’t I’ve seen that before?
Someone mutters, “Damn.” The spell is broken, but the tension isn’t. Not with us.
“That was amazing,” a guy calls out. His tone’s too shocked to be anything but sincere.
“I thought it was intense,” a girl says. “A little much.”
Drew turns to me. My eyes dart down, away, back up. He holds my gaze, the biggest question I’ve ever seen. One I don’t have the words for yet.
The professor beams and nods, arms folded. “Outstanding. The real strength of this piece is how you’ve let the audience in. Wonderful job.”
