43

Adam

So There's Nothing To Argue About

I would've been completely cool with the walk into the coach's office if I didn't have my resident assistant, losing her shit next to me.

"Oh my god—I'm going to throw up." Piper sucked in her breath and tried to hide her hands, shaking like no tomorrow. "They know. Coach Lawson knows. Ryan knows. Kassie knows. My bosses know. Your bosses know. Everybody knows—everybody's on to us—"

"Piper, put your hands in your pockets."

She couldn't even shove them in her jeans, she was shaking so badly. Which didn't look suspicious at all. I muttered under my breath, thinking. If I hurried her to my locker, we could grab one of my hoodies, and then Piper could…see her door decorations taped inside. Fuck no, that wasn't happening.

I pulled my own hoodie over my head and handed it to her.

Still shaking, she frowned up at me.

"Put it on."

"Your hoodie?"

"Goddammit, yes. You have to hide your hands," I said. "Just put them in the pocket."

"But it's…so big…?"

I smirked. "I get that comment all the time."

Piper groaned at my ill-timed dick joke but threw my hoodie on anyway. And no arguments against the dick joke made me grin wider.

In the end, Piper looked like the hoodie swallowed her up, but she shoved her hands in the pockets and walked alongside me. I slowed down next to her and glanced at her back, at the RUSSELL printed in big, bold letters.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Nothing," I was quick to say, and strode alongside her, another smile on my face. Weird enough, I felt good. It felt more than good seeing Piper with my hoodie on. There was a lightness to my steps that couldn't have accounted for anything else.

"Adam," Piper whispered. "They know ."

Oh, shit. Right. The car.

I stopped her in front of the coach's office. It was the early hours before class, before the meetings, before the bullshit. His room was empty too and if I knew anything about my football coach, he wanted us to sweat it out before he marched in, asking questions. I couldn't tell her that though. Piper would actually break down.

"Nobody knows anything," I reminded her, my voice low. "There weren't any photos. You just have to be cool."

" Cool? "

I gazed down into her panicked gray eyes. Truth be told, I had no idea what Coach Lawson knew or didn't know. And I was all too aware of the hard vandalism laws the Southern states prided themselves on. It was definitely a felony in Oklahoma, and that was something the papers and reporters would be pumped to hear about.

A year ago, I could've squeezed myself out of jail time. Now? I didn't know.

But I couldn't unravel too. I had to make sure Piper was okay.

I ushered her into the coach's office and sat her down in one of the two seats in front of his desk. There was no way to tell when the coach would be appearing. I had to use all the time I could.

"You're not going to say anything, ice princess," I said. "You're going to keep quiet and only speak when spoken to." Our college careers and future careers were on the line. There was no seconds to fuck around. "Worst comes to worst, you didn't know any better. You were drunk."

"So were you," she pointed out, fretting.

"Yeah, but we'll just say I coerced you into it."

"What?" Piper stared at me. The shaking left when the confusion settled in. "What do you mean, coerced?"

"Coerced means—"

"I know what coerced means."

"You would. Nerd." I tried to get her to smile, but her face remained stony. I shrugged. "We'll just say I made you do it."

Her frown deepened. "But it was my idea. I had to convince you ."

"I'll get into a lot less trouble than you would." I shrugged, not even really believing it. In the grand scheme of things, I had no idea how my coach would react to the idea that I committed a felony, and not one of those fun, accidental ones where a prank goes wrong, but an actual, real-life felony with real-life consequences. I didn't know. But there was no time for speculation. We needed a plan. "Don't say anything and let me do the talking."

"You're not taking the fall for this," she argued. "We both did this. We're both facing the consequences."

I tapped the coach's desk. "For literally one time, can you not argue and just accept the fact that I'm right?"

"It's not an argument."

"It is an argument. You're arguing right now."

"It's not an argument—" Piper gave me a hard look. "Because I am in the right. So there's nothing to argue about."

"If I would've known this is how you relax, I would've started a fight earlier."

"Adam, you're such a child—"

A throat clearing stopped us. I didn't even realize how loud we'd been snapping at each other until I glanced up and saw Coach Lawson's stern face in the door frame. Our words died instantly. I couldn't read the expression on his face but if I was gambling in Las Vegas, I wouldn't put my chips on him skipping for joy.

"Russell." He nodded to me. "Ms. Fontaine." He nodded to her.

We shifted in our seats and waited for him to take his. Coach Lawson wasn't someone to rush though when he set the mood for one of his police interrogations. He took his time around the room, straightening up his photo frames of the Romans, the awards we won for the season and the line of hats he earned as coach.

Piper's foot started jiggling, a nervous twitch. I held out my hand, low enough for the desk to conceal it, and hovered it over her, midair.

Relax .

She stopped shaking a little, but I could feel the tension rolling off of her. It left me on edge.

"Can't tell you how pleased I was to receive an email," Coach Lawson began, not sounding very pleased at all. He sat down and took off his baseball cap, letting it fall to the desk. "An email at four in the morning that said how wonderfully the conference had gone. With pictures. And I cleared them with Bennight. As far as she can tell, they're not photoshopped."

Piper's eyes flickered to mine. I could feel them but I didn't tear my eyes off the coach.

He doesn't know anything about the Clemenza.

There's no goddamn way.

For the first time, I noticed the yellow manila envelope on the desk as he slid it along the wood towards him with a scraping sound. It had both of our names on it. Underneath was a single word. Pictures .

Fuck. We're screwed.