Page 19 of Bend & Break
He looks up at me. “What the fuck happened?”
I try to pull my arm back, but he holds on. “I… I don’t know. I woke up like this.”
It sounds so much more concerning when I say it out loud. How the hell did I sleep through someone zip-tying me to my bed?
“We need to tell Coach Carmichael,” he says. “Or Doc. Or someone.”
“No.” The word escapes before I can think better of it. I yank my arm back and stumble off the bed.
“We’re not tellinganyone,” I say. I cannot risk that. I think of some bullshit excuse. “If I tell Coach what happened, he won’t let me practice today. Or he’ll send me to counseling. Or flag it with the campus security, and then I’ll be on some damn administrative hold while they do a safety evaluation. You think I want to sit out the season because I overslept and someone thought they were funny?”
“You didn’t oversleep,” Mads says, standing too. His voice is firmer now. “You were tied up. That’s not a joke. That’s someone intentionally stopping you from getting to practice. Or whatever the fuck it was they were actually trying to accomplish.” He looks around the room. “Are you hiding drug money or something?”
I glare at him. “No, and I’mnotgetting benched over this.”
He doesn’t need to know what Iamhiding.
“You could’ve gottenhurt.”
“I didn’t.” Much.
“You couldn’t get free. What if I hadn’t come back when I did?”
“But you did.” I exhale, dragging a hand down my face. “And now I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He lifts one of my wrists again. This time, I let him. He runs his thumb slowly over the mark. A pale indentation rimmed in raw red; the skin is slightly raised and tender. His hands are warm. No jokes. No bravado. “You need to get these looked at,” he says. “Even if you don’t tell Coach the whole thing. Go to the trainer. Say it was a workout band or something. But you can’t ignore this.”
I hate that he’s right.
I hate that helooksat me like that.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But I’m not missing practice.”
“I wouldn't dream of suggesting it,” he says. “But if you pass out mid-drill, I’m carrying you off the field. Bridal style. In front of everyone.”
“I will stab you.”
“Promises, promises.”
He lets go of my arm, finally, and steps back. The air between us feels different now—charged, unsettled, like he’s crossed a line but somehow landed on the right side of it. For all his cocky remarks and infuriating grins, he hasn’t pushed too far. He read the edge and stopped, like he always does.
And that’s the part that throws me. Because this is a borderline horrifying situation—me, cornered and vulnerable, him, close enough to dismantle every defense I’ve built. Yet instead of bracing for the worst, I catch myself breathing easier.
And I can’t decide what scares me more: the way this whole thing could have gone wrong in a hundred directions… or thefact that I might actually trust him, of all people, to catch me if it does.
Chapter 7
Blake
My wrists are wrapped in two layers of athletic tape, covered by compression sleeves.
They itch. They throb.
I jog onto the field twenty-two minutes late, already soaked in sweat from sprinting across campus like it would undo the fact that I missed warmups. It doesn’t. Coach Carmichael gives me a look that lands somewhere between “I’m disappointed in you” and “I’ve already texted your scholarship advisor.”
“Nice of you to join us,” he calls, blowing his whistle with unnecessary force.
“Alarm didn’t go off,” I mutter.
