95

Adam

How Stupid Can You Be?

I wasn't like any of the lovesick idiots on the team that trailed behind their girlfriends like she had a leash around their neck.

I was worse.

Piper's job still depended on us keeping quiet, and I'd do that for her but I still changed my lock screen to a cropped picture of her in my car and I finally convinced her to add pictures of the two of us in her collection, tacked up on her wall. The second we were in the clear, I had her hand in mine, I had her in my lap, I had her hair tangled up between my fingers, my lips on her throat, touching her.

Nobody ever talks about how hard it is not to touch someone you want to touch forever. Or how shitty it is to wait for your girlfriend while she's in coding workshops or RA meetings. Or how difficult it is to pretend like you're not counting down the minutes.

Captivated beyond reason. Hooked and no way out. Pathetically lovesick.

I would've laughed at myself at the beginning of the semester but that dude had been one miserable fuck. He was welcome to stay in the past, hunkered down in himself, bitter as shit, while the present me was happy to tell my girlfriend that I loved her when she muttered under her breath at my kitchen bar, trying to finish a coding project in her sweats.

When Ryan pulled me aside to tell me that we needed an emergency meeting about Coach Lawson's stepdaughter transferring, I burst into laughter.

"Tell those freshmen to keep their hands to themselves," I snickered.

Ryan's frown deepened. "Adam, if you so much as look her way—"

I grinned. "I'm good."

"If anyone looks at her—"

"I'll help you scare them." I shrugged. "Understood."

My team captain stared at me, mystified, while I whistled, getting back to the weights in the training room, slipping on my headphones to listen to an audiobook about scuba diving. A recommendation from Piper's mom.

How happy can you be?

Happy enough not to worry about the bullshit. Happy enough to take the little inconveniences and breeze past them without a care.

Days later, I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing from my nightstand. My phone. Not Piper's. I pushed up from the bed and had to stop to gaze down at the love of my life, with her blonde hair all draped across my pillow.

She groaned. "Who—who is that?"

"Mine—sorry," I apologized and dipped down to kiss her shoulder.

I didn't recognize the number. No doubt, Ryan had gotten another virus and had to pay for it by memorizing a new phone's layout. I chuckled and answered the call.

"What'd you do to your phone this time, dumbass?" I grinned, pushing out of bed. One look at the time and I made a noise at the back of my throat. "It's three, man. Can this wait until the morning?"

"Broken Nose. Laceration to the jaw. Metacarpal Neck Fractures—"

I stared at the wall, unable to move from the floor. The voice listed off the injuries that Thomas Sullender received when I beat the crap out of him at the rodeo but it wasn't the injuries that made my heart stop.

In a cool tone, my high school coach continued to list off everything that Thomas sustained.

Dad .

"Adam?" Piper asked, her voice soft. "Who is it?"

I jerked back to stare at her in the darkness. My blood ran so cold, icy lines crept up my back and left me speechless.

"Who is that? " my dad mirrored her question.

No .

My parents weren't allowed to know about her. I knew how they could worm themselves into someone's soul and strip it to pieces. The idea that they would even interact together, even something as innocent as hearing each other in a room, left me clenching the phone between tight fingers.

"I'll be right back," I managed, shutting the bathroom door behind me.

I couldn't risk Piper hearing anything. I left Piper's whale-print towels and grabbed mine off of the bar, shoving them down to the inch of space between the door and the floor to block out the noise. The bathroom itself would carry sound but I shut the closet door and leaned against it, so angry I could barely speak.

There was an audible pause over the phone. "And all you received was community service. For fighting with another football player."

"You don't know the full story," I snapped.

"It's about the girl."

I froze.

"Your mom has eagle eyes," my dad said, humorless. "She recognized her right away. It's the same girl that you elbowed into a pool—"

"I didn't elbow her," I interjected. "And I apologized for—"

"You don't apologize. That's admitting guilt and someone could be recording. We taught you better than that." There was a pause over the phone. "The same girl who's working for you. What are you doing, Adam? I told you these girls will fuck with your head. How stupid can you be?"

My hand curled into a fist at my side.

"Piper Elizabeth Fontaine—"

"Don't." Red-hot anger pulsed from my chest. "You don't get to speak her name."

"Marrs has done irreparable damage to your value, " he sneered. "I didn't raise you to act like this. I raised you to have discipline . Impulsive, violent, and now? Addicted to pussy? All that hard work, wasted . You're a professional, you're throwing your career away for some—"

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking—"

"Does she know you have us to thank for your position?"

"She knows everything." I didn't realize my hands were shaking until I tried to run my hand through my hair. "And you better understand this. If I ever catch you in the same room as her—I fucking promise you—if I ever see you talking to her, I will break every bone in your legs and you're going to learn how much it hurts to crawl."

There was another pause over the line.

"We're family, Adam," my dad said, his tone clipped. "She'll meet us eventually."

Piper was too good. Too sweet. They would dive at that in an instant.

I shook my head. "No. She'll never meet you two. Our kids won't even know your fucking name. It'll be like you never existed."

" Kids? "

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. It was that same feeling when I'd pull a muscle and I knew he could sniff it out, probing at the weakness until he was satisfied. And then he'd use it against me. Make it a learning lesson.

My kids didn't exist yet but mere thought of my children —with Piper's gray eyes and the way she scrunched up her nose when she was irritated with me—left alone with my parents, brought rapid breaths out of me. I had to calm down. I wanted to hurt him so bad, it scared the shit out of me.

"Stay on the script," another voice whispered.

My anger disappeared. Confusion replaced it.

"Mom?" I lurched forward.

There was a longer silence and in the silence, I replayed back my words. Making threats against my parents. Laying out every single way they could hurt me, every way they could twist the knife in. My mind reeled.

"What is this?" I demanded, hoarse. "What do you want?"

They didn't say anything.

I yanked down my phone and put it on speaker, typing immediately, doing the one thing I'd been careful to stay away from. Looking them up. Figuring out what they were up to.

"You don't know how difficult it's been, Adam," my dad told me.

My eyes scanned over their social media accounts, searching for whatever they were hiding.

"I lost my job, Adam."

"Because of what you did," I snapped, scrolling through faster and faster.

"It was an accident."

"No, it was the only one there was a crowd for," I muttered and checked their following lists. I froze over the new followers. Professional people in suits, smiling next to bookcases.

I double-clicked the profiles and gaped at my phone.

"Adam—"

Without another thought, I ended the call and tossed my phone to one of the shelves with folded shirts. Those were editors, directors, agents, and more. The brand-new people they followed all worked for a professional publishing agency.

They're writing a book.

And I just gave them a fucking gold mine.

Violent, impulsive Adam Russell, telling his dad that he'd break his legs.

And they knew Piper. They knew who she was, they knew how important she was to me, and I couldn't stay with her twenty-four hours a day. Eventually, they'd be at the corner of my vision. Waiting. Watching.

I opened the door and left the closet, left the bathroom, unable to calm down. Maybe I was in a dream. I could just go back to bed and pretend like none of this ever happened, curl up with Piper, and figure it out tomorrow. If they were still contacting people, the book couldn't be ready yet. I just wanted to hold Piper. That's it.

That's all I need .

But when I opened the bathroom door, an empty bed greeted me.

Piper was gone.