8

Piper

No Big Deal

There it was. The question I'd been waiting for and the one I dreaded the most.

Eyes swiveled from looking at Adam and landed right on me. I sat still for a moment, hoping it'd pass, before I wobbled to a standing position, reluctant in every sense of the word. I had to talk to Coach Lawson. Multimillionaire coach of the Romans. No big deal. We were two people who worked for the university. I was an adult, he was an adult. This would be fine.

If my knees stopped shaking.

I eased past Zariah and Kassie. The two of them gave me encouraging smiles.

Okay. I can do this. It'll be fine.

The walk down the aisle took forever. With clammy hands, I found myself sitting in the same seat Adam had been. He watched from the other side, and when I glanced over, he had the nerve to grin.

Nope. I wouldn't look at him.

"Ms—uh—" Coach Lawson checked his paperwork. "Ms. Fontaine?"

"Yes, sir," came out as the kind of squeak you get from a dog toy.

"Where do I know you from?"

"I—I used to go to KYU…sir."

"Oh, that's nice." He smiled down at me, and suddenly, I felt a lot better. "Came over to the winners, huh?"

I gave a small nod, and the room chuckled.

Coach Lawson glanced at the pretty redhead. "Bennight, can you record this?"

"Already am, sir."

"Good. Ms. Fontaine. Can you tell me exactly what happened?"

In the span of nine minutes and forty-seven seconds, each of which I kept my eyes firmly trained on the clock in the corner, I recounted everything that had happened in the most sanitized way I could. I didn't lie. It's not my thing. But I figured there were some things Coach Lawson needed to know, things that were important to the line of events, and there were other things. Like me embarrassing myself fifty times over. That didn't need to go on the official record.

It didn't work.

"What I'm asking— specifically —Ms. Fontaine, is, during the argument you had with Russell, was he drinking?" Coach Lawson pressed.

I winced but tried to salvage the situation. "Um, with…the Birchwood Bowl win…"

"So, he was drinking?"

My voice had never been smaller. "Yes, sir."

"And being a jackass?"

I had to look at Adam then. I just had to. And there he was, the cocky football player, leaning up against the wall, with a smirk on his lips like he had anything to smirk about. Maybe that's what was so infuriating about him. While the rest of us faced consequences, he honestly didn't care. I couldn't imagine living like that.

But for as much as the guy grated my nerves, as much as I couldn't stand being in the same room as him, and as much as he'd embarrassed me again and again in the last few days, I couldn't let that stop me from seeing the bigger picture.

Coach Lawson was yelling about something else, but I held up a hand. "Sir?"

He stopped in his tracks.

"Um—so—Adam might be a lot of things…" I cleared my throat. "He might…um…"

Coach Lawson had the answer ready for me. "A gigantic jackass?"

"Yes." I sighed.

"Peacocking all over campus?"

I couldn't argue with that.

The coach gestured towards him. "The most arrogant fool in Texas?"

Adam grinned even wider at the insults and nodded back to me. My eyes flew away from him the moment I could. He was too much. Adam Russell was too much and every time I looked at him, there was an entire emporium of butterflies in my stomach, which was not the right reaction. I needed that impersonal distance between us.

An RA and her resident. That's all.

One of the many RAs that he messed with. And even if they were yelling and screaming at him, it wasn't like Adam hadn't done this before. This had to stop. Now.

"Adam might be a lot of things," I started, "but we need to remember something."

"That's right," Adam agreed.

Why he felt the need to speak, I had no idea. I had to resist rolling my eyes. "He might be cocky and arrogant and conceited and smug and egotistical and annoying to everybody in my building. Maybe everyone high-fived me after I smashed a piece of pie in his face—"

"Don't pretend like you don't love me, Piper."

I ignored him. "But that just means there's something he can do to make up for this. If he wants to prove himself, give him that chance." Wringing my hands together, I tried to speak a little louder. "There has to be something to get him to stop terrorizing people in the building."

Coach Lawson held the back of his chair. "Alright. Thank you, Ms. Fontaine. You're excused."

Thank god.

I hurried from my seat. All I wanted was to curl up in my bed and forget that any of this had ever happened.

"Hey, coach? You know what an RA is? Piper? Piper!"

Adam's words stopped me in my tracks and I turned back. Big mistake.

He gazed back at me from down below, a new look on his face. "Do you really believe that?"